Animation Software

Animation is a film made up from individual pictures or frames which are then run in sequence to give the illusion that the objects or characters in it are moving. This could be done with pencil, pen, cut-outs, computer images or puppets using stop motion where the puppet or model is moved a little and photographed with each movement. The most basic animation is flip book where something is drawn in a position then on the next page it is drawn slightly moved from the original position. This continues through each page, moving the item gradually until it is complete. The pages are then flipped through giving the animation of the drawing.

An example of animation

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As mentioned above another popular type of animation is stop motion or frame by frame where the animation is made up from photo stills of an object or model. A picture is taken then the model is moved very slightly then another picture is taken and so on. This is still used today in films such as Chicken Run and Wallace and Gromit.

Morph, a character from the 80's was animated using stop motion by the now hugely famous Aardman Animations.

When a beginning and end picture is to be animated the work or process is called Tweening. The term tweening simply means the sequence that is needed 'in between' the two pictures to make them appear to move smoothly from beginning to end.

Animation has now become a huge business in TV and film through it's development on computers. Almost all animation we see nowadays is developed on a computer using animation software of some sort. Stop animation obviously still has to be done by hand but the end result will still be compiled using software on a pc. The biggest breakthrough has been in the film industry where 3D animation has and is always getting more advanced making the end result more realistic. Many different textures can be imitated using 3D software including water or fur on an animal, which has become the most popular type of film choice.

There are plenty of different types of software that will give an impressive result to the home or business user. These work by sketching or drawing on screen then allowing you to animate the picture by using frames and key frames. Some packages can allow the user to animate from one drawing alone by manipulating the image. Impressive 3D animation is even achievable by using software such as Blender, a graphics animation and video production program. Blender allows you to construct characters or anything of a solid appearance by constructing mesh models then wrapping them with textures so they appear realistic.

Another software package Pencil, works by the traditional method of hand drawn animation using vector and bitmap on the computer monitor kind of like tracing paper. This is a much simpler form of animation, suitable for beginners or anyone who may be interested in animation.

Assessment 2 & 3 - Sound Software

There are a number of Sound Software packages available to suit the user’s needs or experience. For the more experienced user, packages can be purchased. These have a lot more features than the free download packages that can be found on the Internet. Some of the most popular retail software packages are Sound Forge, Sony AcidPro and Reason. AcidPro and Reason are aimed more at the music production business and are more complicated using files, loops, percussion and instruments. Some CD burning programs also come with sound manipulation software. Nero has Wave Editor included and is quite easy to use. Most of the free sound software, which can be downloaded like Audacity work in a similar fashion and are relatively easy to operate.


Sound software can be used to manipulate most sounds, for instance recording someone’s voice with a microphone and changing the pitch or tempo of it to give a special effect. This could be used for a voiceover, radio show or podcast. You can also take a long clip of someone speaking and cut a small clip from it or even cut and paste it in a different order so they appear to say something completely different. Cutting small clips from larger speeches or music is useful for using on web sites or even ring tones on mobile phones.


Another reasonably new feature of sound software is transferring music files from audio tape or record. This can be done by using a special adaptor or pre amplifier then connecting a record/cassette player to record directly onto the computer. The software can even be used to eliminate any cracks or background noise by adjusting the sound and compensating the levels. When the sound file is recorded it will be one large mp3 or WAV file, this can then be split up and made into single tracks for a CD or mp3 player. Track titles can be added and will display on many of today’s CD and mp3 players.


Analogue-to-digital converters or ADC can convert analogue sounds to digital so they can be manipulated or made into computer sound formats i.e. mp3. This process can be reversed using a Digital-to-analogue converter or DAC. The quality of the transferred sound file depends on the converter, the more expensive it is the better result will be achieved.


More numbers of channels are used now with sound files, firstly there was Mono which was only one channel and lacked in any atmospheric quality. Mono was followed by Stereo which is still used today for music using two channels. Others include Dolby Digital, Dolby Pro-Logic, DTS and 3.1 which use various channels or speakers and a lone bass speaker ( the .1) or sub woofer. These are becoming more common today on computers to give a realistic or surrounding sound using the individual channels.