Throughout our lives, we watch more types of animation than we realize. This could be in a movie, a music video, an advertisement, and much more. That should tell one how popular animation styles have become in our popular culture.

Animation is usually easy to watch, entertaining, and can express information in an easy-to-understand way. Each style of animation has its unique characteristics. But, how many different types of animation are there? Let’s find out.

8 Types of Animation

2D Animation

2D animation styles are hand-drawn and offer the artist stylistic freedom. Artists use this style for crafting characters, backgrounds, and storyboards in two dimensions. The dimensions here are simply the foreground and the background. In the past, people would have to take photos of hand-drawn pictures and place them on transparent sheets.

Today, artists use advanced technology to do the same process in a far easier and faster way. By using software, artists can create beautiful animated 2-D images for different media. These are also popular in the entertainment industry. Examples of this are Lion King and most other Disney movies.

3D Animation

3D animation styles use the same background and foreground, with an added dimension that makes the subject appear as if it’s popping out from its environment. They can be moved and rotated too. 3D animation is more complex to create and requires a working knowledge of certain software that allows animators to digitally model characters, sculpt them, and create a skeleton upon which they can be moved.

Then the artist makes them pose at certain frames, and the computer takes care of the rest. Animated 3D images are used to make short films, TV commercials, full-length movies, and more. Many famous movies use this style, such as Wall-E.

Whiteboard Style Animation

This style is easy to recognize, with its white background and simple cartoons, usually in black. It is a minimal type of animation that tends to have fewer visual effects than others. This brings the focus of the audience to the content being shared. It’s popularly used for informative videos and to explain concepts graphically.

Those who want to make corporate advertisements, training material, or educational videos like to use this animation style. It’s easy to take complex ideas and make them into simple, but appealing visual messages.

Stop Motion Animation

Another popular type of animation style is stop motion animation. Animators physically manipulate different objects to make it seem like they’re moving by themselves. They do this by using a specific sequence of frames, which they playback to create the illusion of movement. Tim Burton’s Corpse Bride is a good example of this and shows viewers the basics of stop motion animation.

Another example is Edwin Porter’s ‘The Teddy Bears’, which was one of the first stop motion movies in history. The final chase sequence in the 1984 ‘The Terminator’ is an example of this style.

Rotoscope Animation

Animators use special software called a rotoscoping tool to trace over the footage. That’s then turned into an interesting and beautiful style of animation called rotoscoping. Filmmakers have used this technique for decades and it’s considered a retro animation style.

Back then, animators would project photographed images of live-action movies onto a glass panel. They would then trace over these images. A Polish-American animator named Max Fleischer developed the project equipment used in this process. It’s called a rotoscope but has been replaced today by computers.

Some examples of this animation are A Scanner Darkly, with Keanu Reeves, Waking Life, and Brad Pitt’s Cool World.

Clay Animation

Also known as Claymation, this animation style uses different characters that are made out of pieces of clay. This clay can be both water-based and oil-based. The animator uses these to tell the story. It’s not easy to make these animations. Claymation is a time-consuming process that requires skill, dexterity, and hard work.

Due to the amount of effort needed to make this, clay animation movies are shorter in length than 2D and 3D animation movies. Wallace and Grommit is a famous Claymation series, as is the children’s classic – Bob The Builder.

Typography

This style of animation is an interesting combination of motion and text. When a movie displays its list of titles, it’s this animation that is being used. It’s as important in mainstream cinema as it is in independent flicks. If one enjoys the art behind different fonts, then they must watch an animation called ‘This History of Typography’ by Barrett-Forrest.

Another way to learn more about different fonts is to download new software which specifically has a database of different font faces and types, and study them.

Mechanical Animation

If one wants to show the assembly, configuration, and working methods of different mechanical products and their parts, mechanical animation is used. This allows companies to explain how their machines function in a way that’s easy to understand. The result has to be a high-quality and error-free depiction of the product’s parts and processes to be effective.

These are the types of animation that animators use to create worlds and more. Do you want to learn the techniques and tools required to create your own? Then learn from the best professors in the business, so that you become an animating whiz-kid. DICE-VFS (School Of Entertainment Arts) offers world-class industry resources and career preparation for students based on the curriculum of the famous Vancouver Film School.

Create the world of your dreams at one of the best animation schools!