ABSTRACT

Graphic artists and information designers often represent data through animations, defined as the technique of presenting successive drawings, photographs, or models to create an illusion of movement when showing a film as a sequence. This chapter discusses the representational and aesthetic possibilities, advantages, and constraints that animation as a tool provides for data representation. It also discusses what is and will be possible in scientific data and conceptual representations when using animation software. The chapter focuses on the possibility of extending software tools from the entertainment industry into active research tools for science and questions and considers the aesthetic implications thereof. Animation techniques range from cartoons and time-lapse to stop-motion and 3D animation. The selective process that the animator needs to go through when planning the animation storyboard is very much connected to the level of complexity of the data.