Animation Day 2024 is on Monday, October 28, 2024: what is 3D animation? Explain me in datail?

Monday, October 28, 2024 is Animation Day 2024. international-animation-day_ ... International Animation Day

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Okay, I've defined 2D animation for you. In that answer I differentiated between the concept of animating in a 3D space and that of animating in a 2D one. This is still relevant.

The three dimensions are height, width and depth. 2-D images are images which use only height and width to (usually) create the illusion of depth. 3D animation is using all three of those dimensions. You can do it in two ways: you can create a 3D space (using models, for example, or in some films VERY patient actors) and film that, or, these days, you can construct all of the elements in a computer and put them together logically.

Why am I conflating those two methods? Simply put, problems of design when you are using 2 dimensions and when you are using 3 dimensions change drastically. Things which are exciting when seen from the front can be BORING if you move a few feet to the side -- if they have depth. If they don't you see essentially the same exciting image. In terms of design problems there is no difference between using clay or cast figures and using Blender or some other program.

The difference between 3D and 2D design is essentially, you can cheat. In my youth before the Da Vinci Code the little secret they used to tell us kids about Da Vinci's the Last Supper was that if you looked carefully there was no room for all the legs under the table. It remains a very striking and memorable image. C. S. Lewis was reportedly open to the idea of a traditional or a limited animated version of the Lion The Witch and The Wardrobe, but opposed a live-action version. I've been very sarcastic about the new Narnia movies because they are live action. Lewis and his fellow inklings J. R. R. Tolkien and Charles Williams (The Greater Trumps) dealt with fantastic subject but often with a polemical or allegorical element. It would be overstating things to call them allegorical (though Lewis wrote The Great Divorce which appears to be allegory, Ministering Angels and Till We Have Faces fall apart if you approach them from that point of view) but they clearly did not just want their ideal reader to take them at face value. The stylizations and compromises possible in traditional animation will be accepted by a viewer, regardless of how "sophisticated" he or she is or isn't. It can also free a conscientious adapter to concentrate on how best to retell the story in a visual manner, without worrying about nonsense like physics.

The Lord of the Rings of course had a disastrous first adaptation in traditional and limited animation (I loved Ralph Bakshi's "adult movies", Fritz the Cat and Heavy Traffic, and Les Abram's designs for the DePatie Freleng Hobbit -- so I would be inclined to be charitable towards their Lord of the Rings Part 2 but the best I can say is they coped with the disaster of Bakshi's LOTR part 1 as well as anyone could.) The live action movies are a classic, but the tone of LOTR is different from Lewis's tone, and especially Lewis's tone in the Narnia books (you could conceptually do a That Hideous Strength without either CGI or animation of any sort. Nobody would but you could). John Lessiter and the folks who did Ratatouille have shown you can definitely provide that sort of alienation, which can be constructive, in a computer animated film. At the same time they still deal with physics. And 3-dimensional design.

Anime still relies on 2D animation. And of course does very well. There is definitely room for both. However, if you are really asking about different animation, it is probably better to ask about different media (computer, puppets, silhouettes) than about 2 vs 3 D animation.

Even though this is a 3D discussion, theoretically, I'm using sources to link to a multimedia gallery by a pioneering cartoonist/animator named Philippe Druillet who is best known in the US for the work which has been reprinted in Heavy Metal but who works in both 2D and 3D and has been incorporating CGI into his work since his Lone Sloane comics in the sixties which were done when most computer art was output on plotters. He is both historically important and a good example of what is done in both 2D and 3D animation.

Does the entertaintment industry create stop motion animation these days?

Wallace and Gromit

Nightmare Before Christmas

In fact, it seems like there are more being made today than ever...

Question on Pencil Animation?

That technique would be called Rotoscoping

It has been used practically since the beginning of animation. What would happen is that the director would shoot a certain scene in live action and then the animators would trace their drawings upon the footage. It's then up to the animators and the director to decide whether to make his or her drawings an actual copy of the live action footage or if to use it more as a guide for the animation of particularly difficult movements or angles.

There are lots of famous examples of popular characters animated with rotoscoping, from the movements of Prince Charming in Disney's 1937 Snow White to Don Bluth's Thumbelina and Goldie the pheasant from Rock-A-Doodle.

One of my personal favorite examples of rotoscoping is a Max Fleischer animation of Betty Boop as Snow White from 1933. A bit out in the animated short Koko the clown will start dancing. The animation there is made by a single animator with the use of rotoscoping.

You can watch it LEGALLY here as the animation is now public domain:

Good luck with your assignment :)