ABSTRACT
From hand-drawn cell animation to flipbooks to claymation to the most advanced computer-generated 3-D models, animation is a medium with few limits. Here is a wonderful summation of the magic of animation (and of film in general):
The power of animation lies in the fact that, like all film, it plays with an optical illusion known as “persistence of vision”. The human eye retains an image for a fraction of a second after it has been seen. If, in that brief timespace, one image can be substituted for another, slightly different image, then the illusion of movement is created. What we are really seeing when we look at a cinema screen is not a “moving picture” at all, but a series of still pictures—24 every second—shown in such rapid succession that our eyes are deceived. 1
