World Facts

The word animation comes from the Latin animatus, meaning filled with life. Even before the invention of cinema, people realized that if the human eye sees a series if images that change at a rate of at least 24 frames a second, the brain can be tricked into thinking it is seeing a live moving image. 19th – century optical toys such as zeotropes worked on this principle.
Traditional animation
Individual frames of a story are hand drawn on cels – transparent sheets of plastic. They are then photographed as a sequence against painted backgrounds.
Cut – out
In this type of animation, two – dimensional drawings are placed on a fixed background. These are moved and photographed to create the impression of movement.
CGI
CGI (Computer Generated Imagery) has been used since the 1970s, originally for short films. The 1989 film The Abyss used some CGI visual effects, but the hugely successful Toy Story (1995), from the Disney and Pixar Animation Studio, was the first CGI feature film. Another development known as 3D motion capture has been used in films such as Beowulf (2007), a $150 million budget film with Ray Winstone in the title role, in which the movements of the actors are converted into computer images.