Types of animation: 2D, 3D, Traditional and so on

Before you dive into the world of animation, it's crucial to understand the different types available. Why?

Because knowing the various styles of animation helps you determine which one is best suited for your needs—whether you're a beginner who is starting out, a professional honing your skills, or working on a specific project.

Plus, different animation types require a unique approach, principles, software and level of expertise; catering to different needs and understanding these differences is essential.

So, make sure you have a solid grasp of the basics, uses, and difficulty levels of various types of animation.

Before we jump into animation types, let's get what animation is. It's pretty simple: animation brings still pictures to life by showing them super fast. This trick makes things look like they're moving characters and scenes with a lively, real-world feel.

Whether you're watching a fun 2D cartoon or a fancy 3D model, animation can turn boring pictures into cool stories that grab your attention. Getting this basic idea is super important if you want to check out all the different kinds of animation styles out there.

Over the years, animation has changed a lot, which is why we have so many different types to use today.

Animation's roots go back to old civilizations that used picture sequences to tell stories. In the 1800s, people started making modern animation with cool gadgets like the zoetrope and flip book.
In today's world, early animators like Winsor McCay and Émile Cohl tried out hand-drawn animation tricks in the early 1900s. They set the stage for what we now call traditional animation.

After that, from the 1930s to the 1950s, Walt Disney Studios and other big animation companies got good at traditional animation. They made some of the characters we all love, like Mickey Mouse and Snow White.

Big changes happened in the second half of the 1900s, like when computer animation showed up in the 1970s. Things changed when Pixar made "Toy Story" in 1995. It showed everyone how cool 3D animation could be in regular movies.

These days, animation comes in all sorts of ways. You've got old-school drawing, 2D and 3D stuff, stop motion, and those moving graphics. There's even animation you can play with in virtual and augmented reality.

Right now, people like looking at pictures more than reading words. So, lots of businesses that used to just use words or other ways to get their message across are starting to use animation.

It's not just game makers, movie companies, or cartoon folks; other than these, some marketing, business, and other areas are also using this flexible tool to make their stuff work better.

Here are some main areas where animation has a big impact:

a) Entertainment Business: Places like Pixar, Disney Animation, and DreamWorks Animation make animated movies, TV shows, and games that grab and keep people's attention all over the world.

b) Ads and Marketing: Commercials, promo videos, and online marketing often use animation to share ideas in cool ways and catch people's eye.

c) Learning: Educational videos, online courses, and hands-on simulations use animation to make hard ideas easier to grasp and to keep students of all ages interested.

d) Healthcare and Medical Visualization Doctors use medical animations to show how surgeries work, to display what happens in the body, and to teach patients about treatments and illnesses.

e) Architecture and Real Estate: Architects, real estate folks, and their clients use 3D animations and building visuals to see how buildings, rooms, and city plans will look before they start building.

f) Gaming Industry: Game makers use tons of animation to create characters that seem real, worlds you can get lost in, and gameplay that keeps you on your toes.

g) Film and Television: TV cartoons, movie special effects, and visual stories in documentaries use animation to make their stories better and look cooler.

h) Engineering and Manufacturing: People use animation to design products, show how assembly lines work, and make videos that teach how to do machine work and stay safe.

i) Virtual Reality (VR) and Augmented Reality (AR): VR/AR apps have animated worlds and stuff you can interact with to create cool experiences in games, training fake scenarios, and virtual tours.

j) Government and Public Sector: Animated infographics, PSAs, and policy breakdowns use animation to make complex info easier to grasp and get people interested in big issues.

Traditional animation, which people also call frame-by-frame animation, is the oldest and simplest way to animate. In this method, artists draw many separate pictures, each a bit different from the last one. When you play these pictures one after another, it looks like things are moving.

This takes a lot of time, but it allows artists to do whatever they want. That's why people have used traditional animation a ton in old animated movies, cartoons, and short films for a long time. People still use it today for shows and stuff that need to look like they were made by hand or remind you of the old days.

Disney's classic animated movies like "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs" and "The Lion King" have used it a lot. Popular cartoon shows such as "Tom and Jerry" and "Looney Tunes" have also made good use of it.

Is it Good for Beginners? Traditional animation needs you to be patient, pay attention to small things, and know how to draw well. It can be tough for newcomers because you have to make each frame by hand, which takes a lot of work. But it teaches you the basics of animation and helps you express yourself through art well.

2D animation, or flat animation as some call it, happens when you make characters and scenes in a flat digital place. People use programs like Adobe Animate and Pencil2D to do this.

It's super popular, and you see it everywhere - in ads, cartoons, animated films, learning videos, and those explainer clips. Think of cartoon shows, Ghibli movies, YouTube stuff, and animated stories. There's a bunch more, too.

People love it because it's great at showing feelings and telling stories with colourful characters and cool backgrounds. The flat look makes it easy to tell stories, but it still works well.

2D animation is cheap, quick, and gives artists room to be creative. But getting good at it takes hard work, lots of practice, and building skills over time.

Can Beginners Do It? If you want to become a 2D animator, then you should be happy as it is a good place to start for newbies who want to enter the animation world. It teaches the basics like timing, movement, and how to design characters in a way that's easy to handle and looks nice.

Next up is 3D animation. It's super popular and fun to work with, but it's also the toughest type of animation out there.

3D animation is about making three-dimensional stuff and settings with fancy programs like Autodesk Maya, Blender, or Cinema 4D. It's different from 2D animation, which is flat. In 3D, we build a model and use a process called rigging to make it move and come to life. This 3D stuff adds depth, makes things look real, and gives characters and scenes a sense of space.

People use it all over the place - in cartoon movies, regular movies (mixing 3D with real filming), video games, TV shows, ads, virtual reality (VR), and even to show off buildings. It lets characters move in a lifelike way, interact in complex ways, and be in super-detailed environments.

Movies like Finding Nemo, Toy Story, Cars Up and others use 3D animation. This shows that 3D animation is super cool and looks real even though it costs a lot, takes forever, and needs tons of people to make.

Is it Good for Beginners? 3D animation can let you make awesome stuff, but it's pretty tough for newbies to learn. To get good at it, you need to practice a lot and learn about 3D modeling, animation basics, and how to use the software.

These days, most movies, video games, and even VR often use motion capture to create some of the trickiest and most lifelike scenes. They do this by using real actors to help out.

People often call it mocap. Big movie studios and game companies use it a lot. In this type of animation, they record real actors moving around. Then, they use that info to make digital characters move more.

This method catches all the little details of how people move and express themselves. It makes cartoon characters look super real. This lets movies, games, and other stuff have life-like animations.

Some big-name games and films that use this are Avatar, The Last of Us game, and Lord of the Rings. Also, this kind of animation costs a ton of money. Only, huge well-known studios can do it, not just one person on their own.

Apart from bringing characters to life, there's another kind where we animate graphics, words, pictures and stuff. We call this motion graphics.

Motion graphics have an impact on moving graphic bits, text, and shapes to make cool-looking videos. Unlike animations with characters, motion graphics aim to breathe life into still designs by making them move.

You'll often see motion graphics in ad videos that explain things opening credits and app designs. This lets companies or animators show tricky info in a way that looks awesome and moves.

Can Newbies Do It? Sure, newbies can jump into motion graphics. There's tons of stuff online to teach you the basics. Programs like Adobe After Effects have easy-to-use features to help first-timers make simple animations.

Ever watched "Shaun the Sheep" or "Wallace and Gromit"? If you have, you might've spotted that these cartoons look like they're made from clay and toys. You're spot on! These cartoons are made using a method called stop-motion animation.

Stop motion is a way to make 3D animations using toys, clay figures, or small models. Each thing is moved a tiny bit and photographed one frame at a time. When you play all the frames one after another, it looks like the objects are moving on their own.

Films, ads, and music videos often use this technique because it has a special, hands-on feel. It's pretty common to see it in these areas due to its one-of-a-kind touchable quality.

Have you seen those videos where someone's hand draws pictures while explaining something? This cool style is called whiteboard animation.

Whiteboard animation records someone drawing on a whiteboard or something like it and adds a voice explaining what's happening. People use this a lot for teaching stuff, selling things, and breaking down tricky ideas because it's easy to follow and keeps you hooked.

The big plus of whiteboard animation is how it makes hard concepts simple to grasp. It grabs your attention and doesn't let go, which is perfect for how-to videos, classes, and ads. While it's not too hard to make if you've got the right gear, you still need to be able to draw well and have a solid plan for your story.

You can spot whiteboard animation in popular explainer videos made by companies like RSA Animate and in Khan Academy's educational stuff. They break down tricky topics into easy-to-get visual stories.

Guess what? Whiteboard animation is pretty easy for beginners to start with. If you've got some basic drawing chops and the right software, you can make some cool whiteboard animations even if you're just starting out.

Have you ever seen words moving around on the screen or spicing up a text message? If you have, that's typography animation doing its thing.

Typography animation is all about making text move to get messages across in a fun way. You'll see it a lot in ads, music videos, movie titles, and social media posts. It's there to make text more fun to look at and catch your eye.

This animation type is awesome for highlighting the main ideas, setting a vibe, or making stories better. It's super useful in ads and getting messages across where you need to catch people's eye right away. It can be basic or super complicated.

You need to be good at design and have a knack for timing, but typography animation is pretty easy for beginners to pick up. Software like Adobe After Effects and some websites have pre-made stuff and how-to guides to help newbies start out.

You can see typography animation in movie openings like "Catch Me If You Can," videos that show song lyrics, and flashy words in TV ads.

Have you ever thought about how some animations look so real as if someone just drew over an actual video? That's rotoscope animation doing its thing!

Rotoscope animation uses tracing to make cartoon characters and scenes move like real people. Artists draw over real videos, frame by frame, to get lifelike motions that are hard to do with normal cartoon methods.

Movies, music videos, and video games use rotoscoping a lot to mix real footage with animation. It's good to make people move realistically and add tiny details. But it takes a long time and you need to be super careful when tracing each picture.

This way of making animations can be tough but also doable for new people. If you have the right computer program, like Adobe After Effects, and practice a ton, you can start trying out rotoscoping, even if you're just starting.

Films like "A Scanner Darkly" and "Waking Life," along with music videos such as A-ha's "Take On Me," showcase rotoscope animation. This technique changes live-action footage into eye-catching animated scenes.

Have you ever thought about how designers and engineers make robots and tricky machines come alive on screen? That's where mechanical animation comes in handy.

It plays a big role in engineering and manufacturing. People use it to see how mechanical systems work, fix design problems, and explain hard-to-get concepts.

To do this kind of animation, you need to know a lot about engineering and be good with software like CAD (Computer-Aided Design) and animation programs. It helps engineers and designers show how machines work in a way that's easy to grasp.

People new to mechanical animation can start by getting good at CAD software and basic animation methods. It's pretty technical, but there's lots of stuff out there to help newbies get going.

You can see mechanical animation in things like simulations of how things are put together, engineering demos, and videos that teach you stuff. These are used in car making, planes, and robots.

Flipbook animation is one of the oldest ways to make things move. It's a bunch of pictures drawn on pages in a book or notepad. When you flip through the pages fast, it looks like the thing in the pictures is moving.

Take "The Thaumatrope" by John Barnes Linnett in the 1820s. It showed how simple optical tricks could make things look like they're moving.

Flipbooks aren't a big deal in offices these days, but people still love making them for fun. They're pretty good at showing off what you can do. Oh, and teachers sometimes use them to explain stuff, but that's about it.

You can make things move with strings, too. That's called puppet animation. It's all about moving puppets around while you film them to bring characters to life.

People use this in movies, TV, and ads to make characters move in cool ways. They mix old-school puppet skills with computer tricks to tell stories and make things look awesome.

But this kind of animation needs you to be good at moving puppets and filming. If you're new to it, start with easy puppet setups to check out what you can do with puppet animation.

Some examples are movies like "The Muppet Movie," TV shows like "Sesame Street," and newer stuff like "Team America: World Police." In these, puppet characters tell stories, make you laugh, and show drama through animated acts.

Movies with real people often mix animation with live shots to make some scenes better, add 2D or 3D characters, or just to spice things up a bit.

This way of doing things blends real-world stuff with animated parts. It helps tell stories better, makes the special effects cooler, and gives the movie its own special vibe.

Movies, TV shows, and commercials often use this method to add made-up creatures, cartoon characters, or cool effects to real-life scenes. It lets filmmakers create stuff that'd be tough or impossible to film for real.

To make this happen, you need to plan and make sure the real filming and animation work together well. You have to use some fancy tech tricks like compositing, CGI, and visual effects to make the animated parts look like they belong in real-world footage.

You can see this mix of animation and real life in movies like "Who Framed Roger Rabbit" and "Mary Poppins." Newer films also do this a lot, where cartoon characters seem to interact with real actors and places. This makes the story more fun to watch and look at.

1. What type of animation looks real?
Ans - 3D animation is celebrated as the most realistic animation style, prominently featured in acclaimed films such as Toy Story, Cars, Up, and many others. It excels in creating lifelike characters and immersive environments, making it indispensable for both foreground characters and detailed backgrounds."

2. What are the five main types of animation?
Ans - There are only five main types of animation, and the rest are either new or sub-types.

• Traditional
• 2D
• 3D
• Motion
• Stop Motion

3. Which type is the best for beginners?
Ans - 2D animation is currently the best and easiest type for any beginner to enter the animation world. It’s not complex like 3D and not time-consuming like traditional or stop motion.

Animation opens up a world of creativity. From old-school cartoons to lifelike 3D stuff, each style brings stories to life in its own way. These different types of animation grab people's attention in all sorts of industries.

If you make animations or just like watching them, checking out these different styles shows you there's no end to what you can do with storytelling and coming up with new ideas.

Jump in, look around, and let your creativity run wild in the colorful world of animation!