And don't think the power went unnoticed by graphic designers.
In the digital age, animation can do more than simply entertain children with a mouse to drive a boat. It is an effective tool for visual communication. Of course, it offers an entirely new medium for expression and creativity, but on a more practical level, animation movement attracts more attention than still images. And considering the limitations of live images, sometimes a bouncing ball animation works best.
In this article, we provide a complete overview of animation. We talk animation for designers and give some techniques from the heyday of cartoons a much-needed update for the modern age. We also show the business side of animation, explaining how you can improve both the UX of your website and the effectiveness of digital marketing campaigns. So without further ado, let's get moving!
What is animation?
Animation is the capture of sequential still images (drawings or photographs of inanimate objects) and video production in rapid succession to imitate the movement of the real world. If you've ever seen a flip book, you know how it works.
But chances are, when you ask "what is animation?" you want more than a technical definition. Where he came from? What is the appeal?
Although the idea of sequential art dates back thousands of years, more depending on your interpretation of the cave paintings, animation as we know it was only possible thanks to the invention of the film strip. However, the optics behind animation have been known since the early 19th century, as we see in Simon von Stampfer's phenakisticope (1833) below.
One of the first animations on film was hand-painted by French artist and inventor Charles-Émile Reynaud on his Praxinoscope, one of the springboard inventions that led to the motion picture camera.
During the early part of the 1900s, artists around the world experimented with animation, such as the recently discovered KatsudÅ Shashin, which dates from 1907 to 1911 and is said to predate much of Western animation. However, animation was primarily thought of as a novelty until the Walt Disney era in the 1920s, when sound was beginning to be implemented in movies. Steamboat Willie (1928), Disney's "flagship" cartoon, was not the first cartoon with sound, but it was one of the most popular at the time.
In the 1930s, other studios realized that money could be made through animation, the impetus behind Warner Bros. with the release of Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies. The 1930s saw a friendly rivalry between Mickey and Bugs, now known as America's Golden Age of Animation, culminating in a Disney play of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, the first feature film to be made entirely with images. hand drawn.
The rest is history. With the popularization of color television in the late 1950s, another pioneer of American animation, Hanna-Barbera, entered the scene. After the cultural revolution of the 1960s, animation was adopted for adults, most famously Fritz the Cat (1972), rated X, based on the work of legendary comic book artist Robert Crumb. Finally, in the 1990s, computer generated imagery (CGI) was able to compete with hand-drawn animation, popularized by the first fully CGI film, Toy Story (1995).
Considering the long history of animation, we see that its appeal is also very broad. Kids love it, of course, because most children's stories involve talking animals, teapots, or visuals that would otherwise be impossible to bring to life.
But the more sophisticated the animation techniques become, so do the topics they address. While CGI is used in almost every movie today, even fully animated features can appeal to adults, just look at popular animated comedies like The Simpsons, Family Guy, or South Park.
Perhaps the greatest strength is not that it attracts different groups, but all groups at once. Animation allows artists to invoke that childlike wonder and wonder of not believing in our eyes, but harness that power to tell more mature stories and even business, as we explain below.
How can this visual technique appeal to both our inner child and our discerning adult at the same time? Just watch virtually any Pixar movie. This is a safe space, are you going to tell me that your eyes didn't fog up for the first ten minutes of Up?
Animation overview for business
Outside of film and television, animation is becoming a favorite technique for companies in the digital space. In particular, animation enhances web / app design and digital marketing campaigns with its practical benefits as well as its entertainment factor.
Motion graphics (i.e. animation elements such as typography, icons, on-site images, etc.) are intended to explain concepts through motion, such as animated objects in web design. While it doesn't focus as much on storytelling as it does on animated videos, motion graphics still encapsulate many of the benefits of animation, but in a different way. Placing motion graphics in the right places on a website can actually make your site perform better, not to mention the delicious side benefits: teaching the visitor how to use the site quickly, effectively, and visually.
There are many more ways to use animation for business, but take a look at some of the common instances below:
How-To Videos - One of the most popular uses for animation in modern business, animated how-to videos add joy to boring and un-fun how-to videos. Companies can explain the finer points of their services without getting bored. The only downside is that this trend has become so popular that companies should go for more experimental and unique animation styles to stand out.
Page Loading - Nobody likes staring at an empty screen. Loading page animations not only mitigate the damage of loading times and the risk of your user bouncing, but they also provide an opportunity to show your brand personality or make your user laugh. Sometimes people remember a loading animation more than the actual site!
Transitions: Anyone who has used an old computer knows how jarring it is when new windows are opened without ceremony. Animated transitions (slides, sweeps, gradients, shrinks, etc.) play with the biology of the human eye to make visual changes as fluid as possible, adding to the overall immersion of the site or app. Even minor visual changes, like dropdowns, benefit from a little animation.
Micro Interactions - Motion graphics have many UX benefits. If you're having trouble with your interface design, adding some animated micro-interactions could fill in the cracks in your UX. For example, adding an animated effect to a call to action can improve conversions.
Infographic Animation - An infographic animation is a visual representation of data and insights in the form of online video. Infographic videos are created by combining various animations to create an informative video that helps explain the data in an engaging way and aims to improve your perspective on the topic.
Social Media Videos - The heart of animation is entertaining and telling a story, so sometimes you have to make animated videos just for themselves. Creating an animated video for social media can help small brands get noticed and help big brands stand out on their followers' feeds.
Ads: Ads also benefit from the attention that animation attracts. Especially banner ads, which need as much magnetism as possible to counter banner blindness. With the right animation style, it is sure to convert; Just ask Launchpeer, who proved this point with his animated Instagram ad.
Animated Logos: While orthodox advertising dictates "never change your logo," branding experts today say animation is the exception to the rule. Responsive and animated logos - logos that change depending on how and where they are used - have been shown to be more effective than static ones.
But so far we have only been talking about the theory behind the use of animation. Let's go over the specific types of animation and how you can use them.
Types of animation
Let's start by explaining that "animation" is really a general term for a variety of different techniques for adding movement to images (or inanimate objects). Although there are more, these are the top four that designers find most useful:
- Traditional animation: each frame is created individually and then executed sequentially to create the illusion of movement. This is the historical root of animation, but its cost and time commitment are the reasons animators developed more modern methods.
- Vector-based 2D animation - Most advanced software supports traditional animation. The principle is the same, but Flash and other vector-based animation tools generate many of the individual frames based on input from the animators.
- 3D Animation (CGI) - A completely new approach to animation, where all the images are generated by computers and the motion and angles are input by animators. CGI animation is said to be closer to puppets and traditional animation - animators focus more on controlling movements and leave images up to the computer.
- Stop motion: individual frames are captured by manipulating and photographing real objects; more commonly known as clay, but it can be used with more than just clay, as you can see below. Although it is as expensive and time consuming as traditional animation, the end results often look unique and invaluable.
The style you choose depends on your goals, brand personality, and budget. Making a stop-motion explainer video can help yours stand out from the sea of generics, but making a stop-motion interface for your website ... maybe see it here not so much.
By now you should have an idea of how animation can benefit your business, and maybe even some plans on how to use it. Check out our ultimate guide to video marketing to learn more!
But having animation is not enough, it has to be good animation. And for advice on how to make quality animations, who better to ask than the Disney animators during the movie company's heyday?
Conclusion
Whatever happens, animation is a complicated process. Drawing a well-done image is quite difficult, let alone thousands. That's why animation is more of a lifelong discipline than something artists dabble with on the weekends.
But it is a discipline that is well worth the effort. Animation not only has clear benefits for business and design, it is a truly magical art form that can transport any mundane project to the heights of the imagination. Try the animation and you will wonder how you managed to stay still in the world of static design.