Discusión

Animation production is a very labor-intensive business process that can be segmented in different stages some of which are highly suitable to outsourcing to lower-cost locations. The process can also vary considerably.

In American animation, there are up to 12,000 to 16,000 drawings, while the highly stylized form of Japanese animation requires only about 4,000 drawings for every 22-minute episode. In two dimensional (2D) animation, labor accounts for 70 percent to 80 percent of total costs. Even for three-dimensional (3D) animation, in which software and hardware play an important role, labor still accounts for 60 percent of the cost. Content for film & TV are the major animation consumption segments and accounts for about half of the total global computer animation production. This comprises of movies for TV, home videos etc.

The animation industry can be classified in various ways.

Technically, it is divided into two dimensional and three-dimensional animation. 2D animation is the cel animation as is seen in the traditional Disney style. 3D animation allows one to create within a 3D space, and almost no film today is devoid of 3D animation and special effects.

Compositing is an element of the entire post-production process that allows one to work in layers. The ability to do this on computers once again ensures non-destructibility and no generation loss. Special compositing Key facts

▪ The first completely computer-generated (CG) feature length film, Toy Story, was released in 1995 and represented the successful convergence of cinematography and increasing the speed of production.

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software allows the artist to work on a platform unhindered by other elements, and at the same time is economical.

Classical 2D animation is applicable to TV-series,-commercials and fillers, feature films, short films and film sequences for digital media and computer games. Due to the complexity of the full production line, it is a time and resource consuming process, but it is still utilized due to a large and grateful audience. But while the emotional points you score with the consumers when using it in commercials can outweigh the production cost, profits in most other cases depend on the company‘s ability to brand, market and merchandise their products. In addition there are segments such as Visual effects, Web animation, corporate services, Flash productions, Games as well as animation services targeted at mobile handheld devices.

2D ANIMATION

This constitutes the largest segment in the global animation industry.

2D animation production is a labor intensive process, which involves building up animated sequences by hand. Most of the effort goes into drawing, inking and coloring of the individual animated characters for each of the frames. This involves the following stages Story board, Sound Track, Sound Detection, Layout, Background Painting, Key Frame Animation, In-Betweening, Cleaning, Paint, Check, Record by shooting frame-by-frame on film or video. 2D animation constitutes a major part of the industry followed by 3D animation.

Two-dimensional animation techniques contribute a great deal to computer animation by providing the tools used for sprite-based animation,

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blending or morphing between images, embedding graphical objects in video footage, or creating abstract patterns from mathematical equations.

2D animation or Cel animation derives its name from the clear celluloid sheets that were used for drawing each frame. The series of frames in between the keyframes (first and last frame of action) are drawn in a process called tweening. Tweening involves action calculating the number of frames between keyframes and the path the action takes, and then actually sketching onto a cel with pencil the series of progressively different outlines. Cel animation is the traditional method of eight overlapping stages: Storyboard (scripting), Soundtrack, Exposure sheet (giant spreadsheet to log sound and direction for animation), Background painting, Drawing, Pencil testing, Inking and coloring andCompositing.

The most common form of 2D animation is sprite animation. A sprite is a bitmap image or set of images that are composited over a background, producing the illusion of motion. They are usually small with respect to the size of the screen. For example, to animate a rabbit hopping across a meadow, the animator would create a sequence of images showing poses of the rabbit hopping. This sequence of images would then be composited one image per frame onto a background image of the meadow.

Sprite-based animation can be done extremely quickly with current graphics hardware, and thus many elements of the scene can be moving simultaneously. The disadvantage of this technique is that subtle changes in lighting and depth cannot be reproduced. Consequently, sprite animation is most often used in interactive media where rendering speed is more important than realism.

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Digital 2D animation techniques are mostly used for web-TV, interactive animations for websites, TV-series, and commercials. It is a timesaving process, enabling the animators to produce more footage per animator. There are serious limitations to the extent of expressions, which bids professional consideration to be given to its appliance. 2D is often hand drawn, but nowadays, is mostly computer aided, which has increased the productivity of artists by six-fold or more. 3D animation involves a great deal of advanced computer software and processing power.

Over the past decades the technical development has rapidly provided the businesses with new product possibilities. The actual Content Production for Film, for TV or for the New Media still utilizes classical hand drawn Animation, puppet animation, as well as digital 2D and 3D animation. But the lines between the different media and techniques are blurring. Character Animation is applied by way of Motion capture on to Live Action movies. Props and backgrounds are digitally generated and entered into classical hand drawn animation or Live Action. Effects are generated onto puppet animation and so on. Figure 7 gives the break-up of the global animation industry based on the various market segments.

Global A nimation Industry

FIGURE 7: BREAK-UP OF GLOBAL ANIMATION INDUSTRY BASED ON MARKET SEGMENTS

0 50 100 150 200 250 300

2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012

Break-up of global animation industry based on market segments (US $ Billion)

2D animation 3D animation Web Animation Others

Global A nimation Industry

3D ANIMATION

3D animation allows one to create within a 3D space, and almost no film today is devoid of 3D animation and special effects. Three-dimensional animation involves constructing a virtual world in which characters and objects move and interact. The animator must model, animate, and render the 3D scene. Modeling involves describing the elements of a scene and placing them appropriately. Animating involves realizing how the objects should move in the 3D world. Rendering converts the description of the objects and their motion into images.

The 3D animation market comprises of the 3D movies, 3D animated serials and 3D interactive games. The explosive growth of 3D animation is triggered by the digital games industry. The digital games industry is a very large, multi-billion-dollar industry, and therefore, any opportunity that presents itself in this field will be of a fairly large nature, where the emphasis is equally on infrastructure and capability to sustain the effort.

Most games are now designed in 3D, and the platforms and developmental tools are quite affordable.

As far as the industry growth rate is concerned, 3-D animation is growing at a much faster pace than 2D animation. Traditional animation involves considerable manual labor and all the frames have to be manually drawn. Every minute of action on television is divided into about 24 or 30 frames. Thus, a 2D animation scene of only a few seconds onscreen may take hours, even days to produce. In most cases, the background and some parts of the character remain constant, while only a small part of the

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character – head, legs, or arms – is altered in every succeeding frame. This is made easy by painting the moving part on a series of cells, which are then in turn placed in accurate register against the character‘s body and background, and the frame exposure is made. All the information attendant to the artwork meant to be prepared are listed on a dope sheet which is given to the production crew.

Digital 3D animation techniques are utilized in commercials, feature films, TV series, special effects, and computer games. The commercial breakthrough for digital 3D animation as more than just a technique for commercials, came with Jurassic Park and Toy Story produced by the American companies Universal and Disney/Pixar. The market for digital 3D animation has grown rapidly, and presently the market shares of the digital feature films far exceed those of the classical animation features. In 3D animation, the key frames need to be drawn with computer software, with the rest of the frames automatically supplied by the computer software.

Companies from Korea, the Philippines, India, Korea and Taiwan have a strong presence in the market for supplying 2D animation.

VISUAL EFFECTS

Visual Effects relate to all animation techniques. It is present in all types of media as rain, dust, smoke, water, explosions and so on. Visual effects incorporate into classical, puppet and live action movies, covering everything from animated sequences, animated characters conversing with real characters to graphical finishing of a sequence. In classical animation visual effects have traditionally been done by hand, and still is in many

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cases, but the use of digital visuals has made some of the processes obsolete.

With Digital animation entering the live action movie realm, and the urge for Live Action movies to contain fictitious characters similar to those created in a purely digital space growing, fine tuning Motion Capture was the next logical step. The technique has been developed since 1992. An actor is equipped with sensors that register and map his movements in a magnetic field. Extensive editing of these movement maps is still necessary before they can be imposed on digital characters in a virtual space. The latest blockbuster, where motion capture was used extensively and successfully, has been Lord of the Rings. An actor would be mapped during filming of the actual scene, and then digitally a costume or a new face would be generated onto the virtual movement later to be imposed on to the original Live Action film.

WEB ANIMATION

Web animation has the potential to grow to a large segment. This is enabled by the increasing availability of broadband Internet. As bandwidth increases, networked games will become more and more popular. This will again cause an upsurge in the production of interactive 3D games, and demand for production will rise.

CORPORATE SERVICES

Corporate services include integrating various elements of a corporate entity such as images, animation, sound, music and interactive

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Typically, large and medium sized corporate houses utilize these services on a regular basis.