Animation for Beginners

Animation is an art. No. Animation is a fun art. We can also say that animation is a technique whereby you give life to characters or objects, but the truth is, animation is much more than that... it's miracle! When we talk about animation, we should look at our start by looking at our eyes. Nothing miraculous there? Of course, there is... but, the ability to generate a sense of animation is part of our ability to see or more specifically how we see. Seeing is a science!

Imagine you have a mountain of photographs, now imagine that you begin to see them, one by one, as fast as possible. Every time you focus on a photo, your eyes capture the information and send it to your brain. Your brain in turn, converts it into the signal that you see. I see a house, I see a boat, I see my uncle!, and so on. You might think that seeing just means opening your eyes, but each time you "look" at anything it takes a great exchange of information between your eyes and your brain, to turn that into the image that you receive. This process is not easy to perceive because it comes at an extremely small space of time, fractions of a second.

Now, let's see what happens when you take the mountain of photographs and you begin to quickly view them one by one: for each image that you place before your eyes, your brain begins to make an interpretation of it, however, since each image you are replacing a new one, if you do at the right speed, your brain is unable to interpret the whole picture and yet must begin to interpret the next image. When the flow of photos is large enough and passes at high speed, your brain begins to mix the information from an image, with the following and the next, creating the sensation of movement, that's when the magic happens and we can talk about animation.

It is estimated that the human eye is capable of distinguishing up to 24 images only if you try to see one after another for a second. If the number of images is equal or greater than 24, then the eye begins to see that the elements begin to acquire motion. Wait a minute. Does this mean that a film is nothing but a huge pile of pictures that pass before my eyes at breakneck speed? The short answer is: Yes! However, we must bear in mind that a movie is something a little more complex, as is audio-visual content, which means that also includes sound and a lot of technical details that leave pending for later.

Wait a minute! Does this mean that a film is nothing but a huge pile of pictures that pass before my eyes at breakneck speed? The short answer is: Yes! However, we must bear in mind that a movie is something a little more complex, as is audio-visual content, which means that also includes sound and a lot of technical details that leave pending for later.

In the world of animation, each image that compose an animation is known as "frame", so, the speed with which projects a film is measured in frames per second (FPS) . The more frames you have an animation, the illusion of movement will be much better and the less you have, the sense of flow will erode.

Currently, we have a wide variety of animation techniques, with which we can create content as we see in film and video. Here are some techniques:

Okay, now that we have a little more clearly the concept of animation, we'll see what is Tupi! Well, our definition is pretty basic: it is free software for the design and creation of 2D animation. A project developed by animators, for animators and now, in this new stage lives in constant evolution.
Want to learn how to use it? What are we waiting for? Let's start!