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What is animation?

We all love watching cartoons. Cartoons are another name for animations.

It's great fun to see drawings come to life on the screen.

An animation is a type of film made from lots of images joined together so it looks like they are moving.

Image is another word for picture.

What's the difference between animation and a live-action film?

Many animations use drawings and paintings for the characters and backgrounds. Others use clay models and toys instead of real people and things.

Today lots of animations are created using computers.

What's your favourite animation?

A video or live-action film, shows real people moving around in the real world. Often they have actors who are performing for the camera.

Do you have a favourite film?

Why does animation look like it's moving?

When we look at an animation, we see it as one moving picture. But it's actually our brain playing tricks!

Really, we are looking at lots of single images one after the other. Each image is a little bit different to the one before. One second of animation might have up to 25 images.

When we watch the pictures very quickly it looks like they are really moving.

Let's look at some individual images from a jumping mouse animation

How can we make our own animation?

We can use computers to help us make our own animations.

Computers are very good at doing things quickly. They are very good at helping us make pictures that have the same shapes and colours.

We can use an animation program on a computer to help us make our own animations.

We could also use an animation app on a digital device like a tablet.

The animation program or app will have digital painting tools. We can use the tools to make lots of pictures of something moving step-by-step.

Each picture needs be a tiny bit different to the one before it.

We can then use the computer to join all the images together.

The computer can show the images one after another very quickly which will make it look like they are moving.

We can then save our animation and share it with our friends.

Glossary

Here are the meanings to some important words.

Animation - A type of film made from lots of images joined together so it looks like they are moving.
Image - Another word for picture.
Digital painting - A digital tool or app used to make images using brushes, shapes and colours.
Computer - A device that can follow instructions stored in its memory.
Program - A list of instructions a computer can understand.
App - A program or tool used on digital devices like tablet or smart phone.
Screen - A device that shows pictures, text, videos and animations.
Tablet - A type of computer that has a touch screen and no keyboard.

Activities