2D animation is one of the major types of animation. It’s widely used for creating animated movies, cartoons, marketing videos, advertisements, corporate presentations, educational materials, video games and so much more.
With the rise of video content, more and more businesses consider using animated videos for promotion, as they increase conversion rates by 20%.
Animated videos have a huge impact on the audience in three different ways: visual, auditory, and kinesthetic. Besides, they can be simply adorable.
What is 2D Animation?
Two-dimensional or 2D animation is characterized by having its objects and characters created in a two-dimensional space. It means that they only have width and height.
It’s considered a traditional animation style, known from the 1800s. Initially, it was created by pulling together the frames in which one drawing was followed by another one that slightly differed from it. Every second included 24 frames.
We all remember the classic Disney animations, right? Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, Bambi, The Little Mermaid, and so on. They are some of the most popular 2D animations.
With the development of computer technologies, this process was also digitized through various 2D animation software with the option of drawing the characters and backgrounds directly into the computer and animating them.
Production
Production is the process of creating the animation by gathering all the created materials together and producing the scenes. This includes painting the backgrounds, creating the individual scenes and character activities, making the rough animation, cleaning up the animation (tracing), inbetweening, coloring, and painting the drawings with the help of computer software, compositing, and export.
To pull everything together, animators create an exposure sheet that includes all the instructions on how to make each scene. The exposure sheet is divided into 5 parts:
- Actions and timing
- Dialogues and music
- Animation layers
- Backgrounds
- View perspective
Once the rough 2D animation is created, it needs to be cleaned up and polished. This process is also called tracing and can be done in two ways: in a new layer or directly over the same layer with different colors.
Inbetweening is used to make a smooth animation by adding additional drawings between two frames. For example, if you want to create a bouncing ball scene, you should draw transitional frames between the first scene where the ball is on the top and the second frame where the ball is on the ground.
After the frames are fully ready, they are scanned into a computer, if they are not drawn digitally. Then, it’s time to combine all the visual elements based on the exposure sheet. During the compositing process, the specialists add the backgrounds, frames, sounds, and any other effects that are required.
This is mostly achieved through different animation software. When the compositing process is over, the animated scenes are rendered as videos or movies.
Post-Production
Post-production is the final editing process of 2D animation. During this phase, the animation is enhanced with additional sound effects or recordings which increase the emotional impact of the animation. Once the final version is ready, it’s rendered and exported to different formats.
2D animation is everywhere: on the screens of our TVs, on the internet, in the cinemas, even on the billboards on the streets. Somehow, we constantly interact with it by watching or creating them.
Thank you
Dr. Md Faisal Islam
