The word animate is derived from the Latin word meaning soul or to give life. An animation is mostly used in the film industry where images or drawings that are lifeless to move and give life to it. You would have witnessed animation is cartoon films and television videos. It is possible to animate anything, and it is based on the creativity of the animator. An animation character can fly, jump, etc with getting hurt. Here you get a detailed understanding of the standard animation techniques.

Two Dimensional Animations
This is an animation technique where handmade drawings are given life. Sequences of drawings that are two-dimensional are animated using this technique. In this technique, the illustrations are photographed using a motion picture camera. In each frame, the picture is altered by moving it slightly. Now the final film looks like the drawing is moving. Thus using this technique when you have to film a single action, it is necessary to come up with many illustrations. Therefore for an animated feature film, you may require millions of drawings. When you make use of fewer drawings, the resulting animation would not be realistic.

The handmade drawings are then traced in cells where it is painted on the reverse side. Now the cells with the drawing are placed on a background, and a good camera is used for taking photographs. A sequence of the drawing is followed and you change the background for each frame. It is possible to add a soundtrack and other effects to the animated video. These drawings can also be scanned using a computer which makes the job easy.

Three-Dimensional Animation
In this technique, three-dimensional images or objects are animated using stop motion photography. Puppets, models, objects made with clay are used in stop motion animation. These objects are captured frame by frame using a particular camera. In each frame, the object or model is adjusted, and thus the figure looks as if it moves at the end. This type of animation technique is mostly followed in short films, feature film, and television ads.

Computer Animation
This is the recent type of animation which is widely been used in the animation industry. A computer is used for creating images and animating them for various purposes. This type of animation is also called as computer-generated imagery. There are different software and tools through which one can achieve computer animation. It is possible to create effects and images that are difficult with traditional animation techniques.

The above are some of the typical animation techniques that are widely used.