how animation works

The very basics of animation are the same on all media. The first step is to show an image. All following steps include minor changes to the previous image. When shown one after the other relatively quickly, the image can appear to be animated.

Animation is a series of many, many pictures shown in rapid sequence to simulate movement. For example, Mickey Mouse appears to be moving because a picture is drawn of each tiny movement he "makes" in the scene. Hope that helps.

Visual Processing and Film 

Whether you're talking animation or live action photography filming, the basic science of moving pictures is the same. When a person views a moving object in real life, the human brain retains the image of a moving object for longer than that image is actually present. This creates an opportunity to convince the brain's image processing centers that a series of fast, still images are actually moving pictures. While live action filming takes a series of still, chronological images of moving objects to be played back in sequence, animation synthesizes this process through the creation of individual frames by artists. The human brain will perceive motion when watching a series of moving images presented at a speed as slow as 10 frames per second, but the motion will appear jerky. A rate of 16 images per second creates an impression of a moving image virtually indistinguishable from live motion.

Traditional Animation

Traditional animation is created when an animator, or group of animators, makes a series of still images which are photographed and used to create film, or played in a sequence using a computer program. Each individual drawing represents a fraction of a section of the progress of a moving image. The art of animation drawing is therefore highly complex because it requires not only the skill of drawing, but the skill of observing and capturing very gradual changes in movement and lining up each drawing accurately with the last. The process of hand animation is usually streamlined through the use of animation cells. An animation cell is a sheet of clear plastic which is laid over a finished drawing. The finished drawing contains the background of the animated scene and any objects that won't be moving during the scene, while a series of cells are painted with the progressive images of the characters and moving objects. This saves time by requiring the animator(s) to only draw multiple images of the few moving objects rather than the entire scene. It also keeps the background consistent.