A Brief Discourse on Present & Future of Animation

In the form of art and application in the industry, animation has come a long way. The market size of animation is expected to reach $404.83 billion by the year 2023. Some better practices and the use of advanced technologies have allowed designers to work with different types of animation styles. So, the future of animation looks absolutely incredible.

The biggest brands around the globe have started investing in the current trends of animated video making. In this recent pandemic even, you might have seen how smartly government bodies have used animation to convey their messages. So, good animation work offers a countless number of scopes to reach audience and drive conversation effectively.

Emerging Trends in Animation: Animation uses an optical illusion, where a sequence of still images is presented in quick succession. To the viewers, it turns out to be a continuous moving image. In live-action film making the same principle is used. The continuity of images creates a persistent vision, without allowing the eyes to notice any gap.

Whether you know it or not, an image stays on the retina for about 1/16 for a second, which is called persistence vision. In this period of time, a subsequent image replaces itself to create an illusion of continuity.

Right from drawing the frame on a single sheet of paper to overlapping actions, the use of pose to pose frames, squash techniques, etc. have evolved the animation work in a great way. Here are some current animation trends that might get your attention.

• Live-action Using Animation: A lot of brands today are into advancing live-action videos. As a result, mixed media projects are much in popularity, where simultaneous use of 2D, 3D and motion graphics can create informative and entertaining videos.

• The Character Development: Animation today is a lot more about compelling storytelling, than just making a video visually appealing. Every animated video production company ensures proper character development to let their story look complete and provoking.

• 3D Animation: The creation of 3D animation is no more limited to big studios like Pixar and such animation works are now more affordable than ever. Filmmakers are now using 3D animation which makes the films look more realistic despite the fact that how hard it becomes to create such films. Character sketching is the first step of 3D animation, where an artist has to create photographs of the characters from different perspectives. It works just like the way character modelers use clay or stone for creating sculptures.

• Loud Colours: With so much online and offline content around, the human attention span is shrinking. As a result, capturing the attention of the audience has become more difficult, and this is where loud colours help to drag the attention. Loud colours are actually the eye stopper and compel viewers to pay attention.

• Digital Surrealism: Random effects, distorted figures and other elements come with digital surrealism. If you have a passion for creating strange creative art, then digital technology allows you to paint such art. All you need is to open your mind, bring new ideas and combine them together to form the surreal art of your own.

• Hyper-Realistic Films: Today animation industry is mixing animation with computer graphics. The use of different tools and software provide more control to developers to make realistic environments in animation. Computer animated short film Piper is one of those examples of hyper-realistic animation that will have you questioning what’s real.

• Use of Machine Learning: With the use of traditional software, there comes a lot of manual work- right from cropping photos to creating better output. However, with machine learning, you can add input, assess it and take appropriate action by comparing it with others. For example, denoising is one of the animation processes that can be done in machine learning. In this process, a machine will scan pixelated images to turn the low lighting areas into something clearer and brighter. In addition to this, real-time rendering is done utilizing easy-to-use features. Moreover, the motion capture algorithm can now easily figure out the bodies in the video and guess the shapes at the other side of the body hiding from the camera.

Areas Where the Animation is Used Today:

Since animation is a versatile medium, it is widely used in different aspects. Disney is one of the big names that have been successfully producing animated movies for a long time. Animated characters like Flintstones and Simpsons are some familiar characters we loved watching on our TV screen. Apart from that, animation has turned out to be a highly effective tool in education and advertising as well. Here are the areas where animation has got a lot of hype –

• Filmmaking: The animation business is getting a lot of success being part of the top-grossing films of all time. Movies like Toy Story 3, Frozen, etc. are some examples that show how some virtual subjects have got popular among different age groups. On top of it, the movie Avatar shows how far technology has come up allowing fantasy creatures and the environment to interact with the real environment.

• Business Development: Modern businesses are also using animation to grab the attention of the audience. For advertisement, the marketers are using animation to keep the audience engaged besides passing the information quickly. It has been found that if advertisements use likeable characters to touch their pain points, then customers like it a lot.

• Education for the Children and Adults: To educate younger age groups, the animation is used as a great tool. It makes communication and understanding easy between a child and a mentor. This in turn helps students to learn faster. Moreover, adults can also learn essential life skills with animated content nowadays. Skills to perform CPR or taking care of the disability are some trending contents searched by adults.

• Anime: Regardless of origin and style, all the animated works in Japan are known as anime. You can easily characterize it by the use of bright colours and vivid imagination. It could be hand-drawn or computer animation that focus on creating three-dimensional views in a cinematic style.

Want a Career in Animation? Know the Scopes it Holds for the Future:

Animation is one of the sought-after options to choose as your career. And why not? Right from pursuing a carrier to showcasing creativity to getting a high salary – there is everything that today’s youth want.

Movies like Kung Fu Panda, Baahubali and Ice Age are examples that are loved most among adults and children as well. The technology and entertainment industry came on the same page, with the use of layout, design and drawing of rich multimedia clips. Job roles like Image editor, character animator, 2D animator, 3D animator, layout artist, modeller, keyframe animator, lighting artist, clean up artist, rigging artist, background artist, rendering artist, storyboard artist etc. are on demand.

Did you know a typical animation movie requires a minimum of 500 animators to carry out the final result? Giant labour goes behind to carry out incredible work. Initially, animation was targeted to entertain children, but today adults are finding the animated content refreshing as well as innovative ones.

The major segments on which the success of the animation relies are 2D, 3D gaming, VFX, web designing and multimedia. Depending on the creative skills, expertise and experience, the animation industry offers a high-paying career today.

So, if you are seeing yourself building a carrier in the animation industry, then you are expected to know the fundamentals as well as new trends in animation. Why not join ARENA ANIMATION – PARK STREET to learn cutting-edge technologies from experts in the industry? With Media and Entertainment Skills Council (MESC) certification, Arena is leading the Gaming, VFX, animation, web and graphics design training gracefully.