2D Animation Techniques

The world of animations is becoming more sophisticated day by day as we progress from traditional paper animations to virtual reality. This makes it easier to make our presentations, lectures, and even marketing campaigns more fun as people love watching short clips that are somehow relevant to their own lives and problems. After all, a short video is worth a thousand words, right?

While 3D motion and virtual reality are becoming a new fascination, most of our business, education, and entertainment purposes are fulfilled well with 2D animations. Let’s look at some of the interesting, advanced works and techniques that are being used these days to create them.

Frame-by-frame

We all heard that videos are nothing more than a series of pictures being shown with a negligible in-between duration and our “persistent vision” makes them look like a smooth motion. That’s the basic idea behind 2D animation.

What the frame-by-frame technique refers to is that we declare each frame as a “key frame” and make a new image for it. This is especially more useful to show complex, detailed animations in two-dimensional.

Digital Rotoscoping

Ever wonder how those special visual effects are achieved in animated movies? Digital rotoscoping is the technique used here. In simple words, an object that needs to be shown in a different background is traced and a matte or silhouette is made out of it. This allows placing that object in a different environment as required.

The glowing lightsaber in Star Wars movies is a good example of this technique.

Motion Capture

Not all people prefer digital rotoscoping, especially when we have a better technique of motion capture. It is amazing to see taking trees or rocks in animation, right? They are often achieved by motion capture. An actor wears a skin-tight nylon suit and his joints are covered with light balls. Then a scanner detects the joints and makes a digital version of the actor’s expressions. Now, these expressions are embedded in an animated character.

Motion capture is relatively more accurate and less time-consuming than other 2D techniques.