Animaton provides a level of visual aesthetic that is engaging and can tell a story or convey a message effectively. 2D Animation and Character animation is more associated with animated sequences where the animation of illustrated elements is the key focus. 2D Animation & Character Animation is then rendered as video, which can then be syned to audio elements and music.

The end result is a video or short film that can be displayed as a digital movie file and either uploaded to social media, Youtube or displayed on screens.

Character Animation is created using very high end and complex professional industry standard character animation software. This software is used extensively in many popular and well-known animated television programmes.

This software is very expensive, very specialist and has a very steep learning curve with a relatively small base of users globally compared to general animation software. The benefits of this software though is that characters are illustrated within the software and are then 'rigged' with a jointed skeleton to then work in similar manner to puppets.

I don't use this software for all animation, it is only for instances where I need a rigged character do I use this software, due to the extended software process.

Characters can still be made move in general animation software and motion graphics packages, however when true detail to movement is required, with joints that bend realistically and naturally or where elements such as facial expressions are required to move in a more natural way it is then that I use this specialist software.

I utilise a range of different animation software packages for different animation applications. Motion Graphics being the most simplest form of animation, this is for the movement of objects around a canvas such as text and imagery. Motion Graphics is fairly basic animation but is effective for basic content. Visit the Motion Graphics page for more information of this.

For web-based animation I use specialist animation packages that render animations as HTML5 animation (or other similar formats). The benefits of HTML5 animation is that it doesn't need to render sequences as video but instead renders animations that can be embedded within a web page as part of the content and can be responsively scaled to any size in addition to having interactive elements when required. Visit the Web Animation page for more information.

Finally is 3D Animation, this naturally is created using 3D software and is rendered as video. Visit the 3D Animation page for more information.

As a final note, all these types of animation 2D Animation, Character Animation, Motion Graphics and 3D Animation can be combined. As an example, Motion Graphics would be used for titles with a 3D Animation, so not all are mutually exclusive of each other.