The Art of Animation. Example 1: 3D animation

s an example instructive in many ways, consider one animation genre which can be rightfully called "a collection of extremes." This type of animated imagery is one of the most sophisticated from purely technical viewpoint - yet, thanks to the wealth of entry-level software tools, it's very accessible and popular. Also, of all animation varieties, it is perhaps the most impressive at a first glance; paradoxically, it is nevertheless rather reservedly used by professional designers, and outright disliked by many of them. I'm referring to 3D animation algorithmically generated by a specialized program from a description of the objects' shape, coordinates, lighting conditions, etc.

Both by its ubiquity and by its design merits, 3D graphics is well deserving an article of its own, and I hope to devote a separate treatise to it in the future (it is interesting, by the way, that 3D animation is the only graphic genre that has an expert column of its own on this site). Now, I only want to share some general observations on the topic of 3D animation, trying to assess its creative contribution to modern design while applying the analysis principles we've outlined above.

The impact of computer-generated 3D graphic, be it static or animated, stems from its extreme congeniality with our subliminal patterns of visual perception. What our brain is required to do when manipulating the perceived image of a real-world object is very similar to what it does when viewing a computer-generated 3D scene. In both cases, we focus our attention on the distribution of shadows, highlights, reflections, perspective distortions, etc. in order to figure out the spatial form of the object and its position in three-dimensional space. By imitating these visual features, 3D graphics switches our brain into one of its most habitual "modes of operation" and pleasantly stimulates it by feeding plentiful and easily "decoded" imagery.

Animation greatly intensifies this impression, adding the time factor (in fact, time can be considered a fourth dimension added to the three-dimensional space) and thus challenging our brain to a stimulating competition "against the clock" - that is, against the moving object. Motion in the case of Web-specific 3D is usually very simple - most frequently it's rotation, sometimes with some displacements, and only rarely it involves any transformations or "morphing."