Till recent past, I thought animation an uphill task to me as an individual because of its requirement of process time, manpower
and complex equipments. I used to watch
cartoon films with wonder how those were made. But thanks to ever growing computer technology alongside software industry which has made it possible to me to design graphics and animate it as I wish to see it on screen of my powerful enough home computers. What I can do alone now was done in past with a large team of sketchers, dozens of animators and very complex procedures. Computer animation itself covers a wide variety of genres and applications. It is simply categorized into 2D and 3D animation. 2D means "two-dimensional", whereas 3D means “three- dimensional”. Today you can watch both 2D and 3D animation on your TV programs, cartoon films, advertisements, surfing the web, e-cards and almost in every TV programs.
2D animation is rendered in a two-dimensional space and 3D animation is rendered in a virtual three-dimensional space, using polygons captured by various virtual "cameras" to "film" the animation. 3D animation has a variety of applications, from video games to animated films and most commonly, 3D animation is used to render many of the special effects in live-action films, getting rid of model sets or staged stunts. Both types of computer animation can be accomplished by either frame-by-frame animation or by mathematical interpolation between key frames, the initial steps prior to animating are definitely different, the two separate processes also require different software applications. For 2D animation, the most popular computer
application is Macromedia Flash, Macromedia Director, Anime Studio etc. whereas for 3D animation, the most popular software are 3D Studio Max and Maya etc. For 2D graphics designing there is a large number of software available including Macromedia Freehand, Adobe Illustrator. Corel Draw etc. To become a graphics designer or animator, creativity is a must alongside a skill over the required software.