Introduction

The animation and graphics industry is probably one of the most rapidly growing industries in todays times. Whats ironic is that very few people opt for this field as very few realize its existence. The animation and graphics industry has its products all around us, right from the packaging of the biscuit we eat to the advertisement of the same biscuit on TV or in the newspaper its all done by this industry. Even our 1st favorite channel was cartoon network which totally depends on this industry. Even today each and every advertisement, movie, program has a lot of graphics involved in it. No movie or advertisement is possible without at least a little bit of special effects. Its not only the entertainment industry that depends on graphics and animation, almost every industry directly or indirectly depends on it. For example a car manufacturing company would need graphic designers to generate 3D images of models they plan to develop in the future. Besides that every corporate firm depends on this industry for its promotion regardless of the media used. Be it banners, posters, Television, newspapers etc it all happens because of the graphics industry. Lets get a rough idea about how big this industry really is, statistics show that currently there are more than 515 over-the-air and satellite television channels available in India. Hindi television channel have the highest market share and are available throughout the country. In addition to that, numerous regional channels are available for selective regions. The DTH subscriber base has grown to 23.77 million viewers by the end of June quarter from 21.3 million users in the previous quarter, The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) said recently. Each of these channels show various shows every day, besides the shows, a lot of commercials are also shown, each individual show and each individual commercial is directly a product of the graphics industry.

The above statistics were only related to the Television media however the graphics industry operates with various other Medias as well. For e.g. print media, the World Wide Web, large scale banners etc.

About The Animation and Graphic Industry

This industry can broadly be divided into two parts, the animation and the graphic section. One would think of them as two totally different industries that function independently, however both mostly work hand in hand together. For example the L.G logo was made by graphic alone, however when the same logo is shown on TV the smiley winks, this is done because of animation. Besides every animation film has some graphic special effects added to it as well.

Graphic Designing

Graphic design is a creative process most often involving a client and a designer and usually completed in conjunction with producers of form (i.e., printers, programmers, sign makers, etc.) undertaken in order to convey a specific message (or messages) to a targeted audience. The term "graphic design" can also refer to a number of artistic and professional disciplines that focus on visual communication and presentation. The field as a whole is also often referred to as Visual Communication or Communication Design. Various methods are used to create and combine words, symbols, and images to create a visual representation of ideas and messages. A graphic designer may use typography, visual arts and page layout techniques to produce the final result. Graphic design often refers to both the process (designing) by which the communication is created and the products (designs) which are generated.

Common uses of graphic design include identity (logos and branding), web sites, publications (magazines, newspapers, and books), advertisements and product packaging. For example, a product package might include a logo or other artwork, organized text and pure design elements such as shapes and color which unify the piece. Composition is one of the most important features of graphic design, especially when using pre-existing materials or diverse elements.

While Graphic Design as a discipline has a relatively recent history, with the name 'graphic design" first coined by William Addison Dwiggins in 1922, graphic designlike activities span the history of humankind: from the caves of Lascaux, to Rome's Trajan's Column to the illuminated manuscripts of the Middle Ages, to the dazzling neons of Ginza. In both this lengthy history and in the relatively recent explosion of visual communication in the 20th and 21st centuries, there is sometimes a blurring distinction and over-lapping of advertising art, graphic design and fine art. After all, they share many of the same elements, theories, principles, practices and languages, and sometimes the same benefactor or client. In advertising art the ultimate objective is the sale of goods and services. In graphic design, "the essence is to give order to information, form to ideas, expression and feeling to artifacts that document human experience."

In late 19th century Europe, especially in the United Kingdom, the movement began to separate graphic design from fine art.

In 1849, Henry Cole became one of the major forces in design education in Great Britain, informing the government of the importance of design in his Journal of Design and Manufactures. He organized the Great Exhibition as a celebration of modern industrial technology and Victorian design.

From 1891 to 1896, William Morris' Kelmscott Press published books that are some of the most significant of the graphic design products of the Arts and Crafts movement, and made a very lucrative business of creating books of great stylistic refinement and selling them to the wealthy for a premium. Morris proved that a market existed for works of graphic design in their own right and helped pioneer the separation of design from production and from fine art. The work of the Kelmscott Press is characterized by its obsession with historical styles. This historicism was, however, important as it amounted to the first significant reaction to the stale state of nineteenth-century graphic design. Morris' work, along with the rest of the Private Press movement, directly influenced Art Nouveau and is indirectly responsible for developments in early twentieth century graphic design in general.

A graphic design project may involve the stylization and presentation of existing text and either preexisting imagery or images developed by the graphic designer. For example, a newspaper story begins with the journalists and photojournalists and then becomes the graphic designer's job to organize the page into a reasonable layout and determine if any other graphic elements should be required. In a magazine article or advertisement, often the graphic designer or art director will commission photographers or illustrators to create original pieces just to be incorporated into the design layout. Or the designer may utilize stock imagery or photography. Contemporary design practice has been extended to the modern computer, for example in the use of WYSIWYG user interfaces, often referred to as interactive design, or multimedia design.

The name "Graphic Design" first appeared in print in the 1922 essay "New Kind of Printing Calls for New Design" by William Addison Dwiggins, an American book designer in the early 20th century.

Raffe's Graphic Design, published in 1927, is considered to be the first book to use "Graphic Design" in its title.

The signage in the London Underground is a classic design example of the modern era and used a font designed by Edward Johnston in 1916.

In the 1920s, Soviet constructivism applied 'intellectual production' in different spheres of production. The movement saw individualistic art as useless in revolutionary Russia and thus moved towards creating objects for utilitarian purposes. They designed buildings, theater sets, posters, fabrics, clothing, furniture, logos, menus, etc.

Animation

Animation is the rapid display of a sequence of images of 2-D or 3-D artwork or model positions in order to create an illusion of movement. The effect is an optical illusion of motion due to the phenomenon of persistence of vision, and can be created and demonstrated in several ways. The most common method of presenting animation is as a motion picture or video program, although there are other methods.

Animation has become a popular career choice for many over the last few decades. As animation movies are on the rise and with the advancement of technologies, this is a field that combines art, creativity and cutting edge technology in the form of computer graphics and more.

2D animation: 2D animation figures are created and/or edited on the computer using 2D bitmap graphics or created and edited using 2D vector graphics. This includes automated computerized versions of traditional animation techniques such as off, interpolated morphing, onion skinning and interpolated rotoscoping.

2D animation has many applications, including analog computer animation, Flash animation and PowerPoint animation. Cinemagraphs are still photographs in the form of an animated GIF file of which part is animated.

3D animation: 3D animation is digitally modeled and manipulated by an animator. In order to manipulate a mesh, it is given a digital skeletal structure that can be used to control the mesh. This process is called rigging. Various other techniques can be applied, such as mathematical functions (ex. gravity, particle simulations), simulated fur or hair, effects such as fire and water and the use of motion capture to name but a few, these techniques fall under the category of 3D dynamics. Well-made 3D animations can be difficult to distinguish from live action and are commonly used as visual effects for recent movies. Toy Story (1995, USA) is the first feature-length film to be created and rendered entirely using 3D graphics.

A Chinese zoetrope-type device had been invented in 180 AD. The phenakistoscope, praxinoscope, and the common flip book were early popular animation devices invented during the 19th century.

These devices produced the appearance of movement from sequential drawings using technological means, but animation did not really develop much further until the advent of cinematography.

There is no single person who can be considered the "creator" of film animation, as there were several people working on projects which could be considered animation at about the same time.

Georges Mlis was a creator of special-effect films; he was generally one of the first people to use animation with his technique. He discovered a technique by accident which was to stop the camera rolling to change something in the scene, and then continue rolling the film. This idea was later known as stop-motion animation. Mlis discovered this technique accidentally when his camera broke down while shooting a bus driving by. When he had fixed the camera, a hearse happened to be passing by just as Mlis restarted rolling the film, his end result was that he had managed to make a bus transform into a hearse. This was just one of the great contributors to animation in the early years.

The earliest surviving stop-motion advertising film was an English short by Arthur Melbourne-Cooper called Matches: An Appeal (1899). Developed for the Bryant and May Matchsticks company, it involved stop-motion animation of wired-together matches writing a patriotic call to action on a blackboard.

J. Stuart Blackton was possibly the first American film-maker to use the techniques of stop-motion and hand-drawn animation. Introduced to film-making by Edison, he pioneered these concepts at the turn of the 20th century, with his first copyrighted work dated 1900. Several of his films, among them The Enchanted Drawing (1900) and Humorous Phases of Funny Faces (1906) were film versions of Blackton's "lightning artist" routine, and utilized modified versions of Mlis' early stop-motion techniques to make a series of blackboard drawings appear to move and reshape
6

themselves. 'Humorous Phases of Funny Faces' is regularly cited as the first true animated film, and Blackton is considered the first true animator. Another French artist, mile Cohl, began drawing cartoon strips and created a film in 1908 called Fantasmagorie. The film largely consisted of a stick figure moving about and encountering all manner of morphing objects, such as a wine bottle that transforms into a flower. There were also sections of live action where the animators hands would enter the scene. The film was created by drawing each frame on paper and then shooting each frame onto negative film, which gave the picture a blackboard look. This makes Fantasmagorie the first animated film created using what came to be known as traditional (hand-drawn) animation.

Following the successes of Blackton and Cohl, many other artists began experimenting with animation. One such artist was Winsor McCay, a successful newspaper cartoonist, who created detailed animations that required a team of artists and painstaking attention for detail. Each frame was drawn on paper; which invariably required backgrounds and characters to be redrawn and animated. Among McCay's most noted films are Little Nemo (1911), Gertie the Dinosaur (1914) and The Sinking of the Lusitania (1918).

The production of animated short films, typically referred to as "cartoons", became an industry of its own during the 1910s, and cartoon shorts were produced to be shown in movie theaters. The most successful early animation producer was John Randolph Bray, who, along with animator Earl Hurd, patented the cel animation process which dominated the animation industry for the rest of the decade.

El Apstol (Spanish: "The Apostle") was a 1917 Argentine animated film utilizing cutout animation, and the world's first animated feature film.

Different careers in the Industry

3D Modelers FX Artist Multimedia Instructional Designer 3D Tracker Game Artists and Designers Production Designers Art Directors Graphic Programmer Production Support Lead Background Painter Inbetweener Special Effects Designer Character Animators Independent Filmmakers Storyboard Artists Character Riggers Interaction Designer Technical Directors Color Key Artist Layout Artists Texture Artists Compositing Artist Lighting Technicians Tools Programmer Concept Artist Look Development Painter Visual Effects Artist Creative Project Manager Match move Artist Web Developer Film and Video Editor Mathematical Modeler Visual Development Artist Flash Directors Motion Capture Artists Forensic Animators Motion Graphic Artists Animation Computer Science Media Arts Art History Digital Cinema Photography Communication Fine Arts Physics Development Game Design Studio Art Computer Graphics and Motion Picture Technology Game Programming Visual Computing Software Development Interactive Media and Cinema Studies Advertising Graphic Design Industry CAD/Industrial Design In-House Design for Sales or Related Industries Computer Systems Design and Management Instructional Technology Industry Digital Consulting Services Motion Picture and Video Entertainment Public Relations/Marketing Gaming Industry Software Publishers

Let us now look at some of the most prominent careers in detail

3D Modelers/3D Tracker: 3D Modelers/Trackers create 3D models and simulate movement in their environments using animation software. 3D modelers/Trackers work closely with technical directors in implementing ideas and bringing their work to life, simulating motion picture camera perspective in a software environment. For more information, go to CG Jobs- Society of Digital Artists website in the references section, or Computer Arts 3D tracking

Art Directors, Creative Project Managers, and Production Leads: People who work as Art Directors, Creative Project Managers and Production Leads are responsible for maintaining managerial role to oversee a creative team from concept to project finish. Production and Director positions combine both managerial and artistic skills to lead implementation of a given project. Leadership roles require design and technical skills to best understand methods of project implementation, and to help solve problems within a range of animation departments.

Character Animator/Motion Capture Artists: Character Animators design and create animate characters using a variety of methods, including but not limited to animation software, 2Danimations, puppetry or 3D modeling. Character animators bridge the gap from script to the screen, and work with team members to use their characters movements to tell a story.

Character Riggers/Matchmove Artist: Character Riggers manipulate the geometry of their created character in its interaction with the environment. Character Riggers need a solid knowledge of physics and anatomy to fully understand how their character should react to stimuli within the context of its digital environment.

Color Key Artist/Background Painter/Look Development Painter: People who work as color key artists, background painters, or look development painters are responsible for creating the background paintings and color keys that lighting teams and production teams can use for their projects. These artists help these departments by developing color schemes in animations that will deliver the stylistic goals for their projects, painting/designing animation backgrounds, and working with technical directors to ensure correct light rigging.

Compositing Artist: Compositing Artists work closely with FX Artists and Lighting Directors to develop compositing strategies and achieve an aesthetically balanced overall look. Compositing artists are an important part of creating the final finished animation project, and correcting any errors that other departments may not have anticipated.

Concept Artist: Concept artists design a unique look for a creative project, working closely with other art departments to create a visual style that will be reflected in each part of the project.

Flash Directors: Flash Directors utilize software to create flash animations. Flash animations are utilized in a variety of contexts, ranging everywhere from fine art to website tutorials.

Special Effects Designer/FX Artist/Visual Effects Artists: FX artists create images, elements and special effects to achieve goals of art concept and style. FX artists need to have a strong sense of animation, and how things move to realistically portray them in their work, and can also provide support on the tools/software needed to portray these effects.

Film and Video Editor: Film and Video Editors process, cut and assemble film footage for television, cinema, and other forms of digital media. Usually film and video editors utilize computer editing software in assembling a finished film project.

10

Forensic Animators: These animators help recreate crime scenes or accidents to explain and produce legal evidence. Forensic animators collaborate with other experts depending on the situation they are recreating to produce a realistic outcome backed up by scientific data.

Game Designer: Game Designers utilize technical and artistic skills to conceptualize and create video games. Game Designers take many areas into account when planning games such as skill level, technical limitations, market and sound effects in game. Graphic Artist/Designer: Graphic artists create and apply graphics to communicate ideas in print, online, and other visual mediums. Graphic Designers can apply their skills in a variety of areas, including but not limited to: website design, logo design, signage, document layouts, and advertisements. Graphic artists meet with clients to determine the needs their projects, and then implement these solutions with a focus on design principles. Working conditions are varied, as graphic designers can produce freelance work, work in a small business setting, or be employed by large corporations.

Graphics Programmer: Graphics programmers help implement the visual and technical ideas from other departments by developing the code that will be used to execute graphical interface programming. Graphic programmers must have a strong understanding of programming languages utilized in the industry, and the ability to adapt to new technology to meet industry standards.

Inbetweener: Many animators get their start in the industry by working in the Inbetween department. The Inbetween department is responsible for the continuity of moment between scenes in an animation. Lead Animators draw out the key scenes for an animation, and Inbetweeners are responsible for the characters movements in transitioning between (hence the name Inbetween Department) dramatic key movement scenes.

11

Interaction Designers: Interaction Designers utilize technical skills in marketing and customer outreach. Develops and implements customer marketing campaigns that directly engage the consumer and many times create opportunities for consumers to generate their own content. Interaction designers work with many different departments to implement marketing strategies that best fit their employers targeted audience.

Layout Artists: Layout Artists create the background for animations. Their design and layout skills are based upon the environment of the character and how the character interacts within an environment. Layout artists must also take into account how other objects in the background interact to give the illusion of depth and perspective.

Lighting Technicians: Lighting Technicians use design knowledge of lighting and shadows to create characters and environments that complement project aesthetics. Lighting technicians usually work collaboratively with a lighting department on creating color keys, light rigs, and compositing renderings for their shots.

Mathematical Modeler: People who build mathematical models can apply their skills to a variety of fields to solve complex problems or illustrate processes using math based models. Many times, people who build mathematical models utilize software technology to animate and create 3 Dimensional representations of the processes they are researching.

Motion Graphics Artist: This is a general job description for anyone who works with graphics, video and animation technologies to create the illusion of motion. A motion graphics artist can utilize a variety of programs such as Adobe After Effects, Maya, and 3D studio Max.

Multimedia Instructional Designer: Multimedia Instructional Designers utilize their technical knowledge to teach others using multimedia technologies. Instructional designers are essential in providing new employees or clients with mentoring that will help them utilize the tools and skills that promote the goals of the organization.

12

Storyboard Artists: Storyboard artists plan and create layout for storytelling elements of animation. Storyboard artists are essential to the planning stages of an artistic project, as their storytelling structure dictates the foundation for the rest of the project.

Technical Director: Technical Directors use lighting and design principles to bring animations to life. Technical directors have a strong foundation in programming and animation software, and can work with artists in a team setting to implement creative ideas using animation software. Technical directors focus on principles such as lighting and rigging in animating their projects.

Texture Artists: Texture Artists produce textures to be mapped onto 3-D objects, to complement the visual style of the game. Texture artists are essential in achieving realistic objects, as they can scan or create the textures that will respond to stimuli such as light sources in the 3-D objects environment.

Tools Programmer: Tools programmers create and design the software or tools used in implementing a project. Certain animation projects require the use of specialized software to best meet the stylistic and creative style of an animation; tools programmers edit and create the technical tools that will make the animation process easier for other departments.

Web Developer: This is a general position for anyone who develops a website, either on the internet or a smaller network. Web development can span from coding, developing web applications to maintaining day to day operations through the site.

Visual Development Artists: Visual Development Artists are multi-talented individuals who can use their versatility to help guide the plot elements of an animation. Visual Development Artists work with time-placement continuity in a story, character emotions, and stylistic elements that assist in storytelling.

13

Different fields in this Industry

Considering the amount of different Medias that are used, the graphics and animation industry has a wide scope. Right from simple pamphlets to fully fledged banners, from tiny advertisements to full feature films it all comes under this industry. Advancement in technology is bringing out newer and more effective Medias day by day. This is also increasing the scope on animations and graphics. The different fields can be categorized into two main categories namely digital media which includes web-sites, games, 3Dcartoons and animations, 2D cartoons, film special effects etc. Following are some of the major fields in this industry:-

Digital Media
Digital art is any art in which computers played a role in production or display of the artwork. Such art can be an image, sound, animation, video, CD-ROM, DVD-ROM, videogame, web site, algorithm, performance or gallery installation. Many traditional disciplines are now integrating digital technologies and, as a result, the lines between traditional works of art and new media works created using computers has been blurred. For instance, an artist may combine traditional painting with algorithm art and other digital techniques. Often, the medium itself is considered the artwork. As a result, defining computer art by its end product can thus be difficult. Nevertheless, this type of art is beginning to appear in art museum exhibits. Comic book artists in the past would generally sketch a drawing in pencil before going over the drawing again with India ink, using pens and brushes. Magazine illustrators often worked with India ink, acrylics or oils. Currently, an increasing number of artists are now creating digital artwork. Digital artists do, simply, what centuries of artists have always done by exploring and adopting a culture's new technology toward the making of a personal imagery. In doing so the culture is also reflected in the artwork as is the artist's personal vision. As our culture becomes increasingly digitized, digital artists are leading the way in exploring and defining this new culture. Digital Artists use a medium that is nearly immaterial, that being binary information which describes the color and brightness of
14

each individual pixel on a computer screen. Taken as a whole an image consisting of pure light is the feedback devise that tells an artist what is being made and simultaneously stored on the computer's hard drive. Digital Artists employ many types of user interfaces that correspond to the wide variety of brushes, lenses or other tools that traditional artist use to shape their materials. Rather than manipulating digital code directly as math, these electronic brushes and tools allow an artist to translate hand motions, cutting and pasting, and what were formerly chemical dark room techniques into the mathematical changes that effect the arrangement of screen pixels and create a picture. Digital Art is created and stored in a non-material form on the computer's memory systems and must be made physical, usually in the form of prints on paper or some other form of printmaking substrate. In addition, digital art may be exchanged and appreciated directly on a computer screen in gallery situations or simultaneously in every place on the globe with access to the web. Being immaterial has its advantages and with the advent of high quality digital printing techniques a very traditional long lasting print of this artwork can also be produced and marketed.

Following are some fields within digital art/media

1. Web Designing: - Today almost every business and firm has its own website. Infact its not just organizations but also individuals who have web sites these day. Many models, actors, writers etc have their own web site. A web site is one of the best way to connecting to the public. It convenient for both parties.

Web Sites not only help you connect to others but also help you earn. There are many people and firms who earn sufficient revenue through sites. Advertisers are ready to pay any amount of money for ad space on a web site. Besides this, sites like orkut and facebook has made its owners millionaires. Web sites also help firms provide value added services to its customers. For example banks now provide E-banking facilities which let members perform all the banking functions from home itself. There are many firms who also sell their products on web sites. Sites like Amazon.com perform wholly as online shops and earn all of its revenue from there.

15

This shows how important web sites are in todays times, and thus it also shows how important web developers and designers are in todays time. Web design is the process of designing websites a collection of online content including documents and applications that reside on a web server/servers. As a whole, the process of web design includes planning, post-production, research, advertising, as well as media control that is applied to the pages within the site by the designer or group of designers with a specific purpose. The site itself can be divided into its main page, also known as the home page, which cites the main objective as well as highlights of the site's daily updates; which also contains hyperlinks that functions to direct viewers to a designated page within the site's domain.

Basically web designing is all about making a web site for your client. It includes all the functions right from content writing to final hosting. A web designers job does not end once the web site is online and has begun to function. His job continues even after this. The web site needs to be updated regularly. It also needs to be maintained with respect to its content and links. SEO (search engine optimization) also needs to be carried out on timely basis. Thus a web designers job needs a lot of patience and planning.

The demand for web designers is on a constant rise today. With newer firms coming into the market every day more and more web sites go online every day. Besides this there is strong competition among firms to make their web sites better and more functional every day. More and more people are using the internet every day. People prefer online banking to traditional banking as its more convenient. Thus banks try to add as much functionality to their sites as possible. Every site wants to land on the first page of Google, thus there is a rapid need for search engine optimizers who are also a kind of web designer. In many cases the web site is the first mode of communication used by perspective customers of a firm. For example before opting for a DTH (direct to home) services many of us may have visited the providers web site to compare different schemes etc. Thus for many of us the web site formed the 1st impression in our minds. A Firms web site speaks a lot about the organisation, for example a site with good accessibility and layout creates a positive image in the visitors mind.

16

Web-Designing Pipeline

There are numerous steps in the web site design and development process. From gathering initial information, to the creation of your web site, and finally to maintenance to keep your web site up to date and current.

The exact process will vary slightly from designer to designer, but the basics are generally the same. 1. Information Gathering 2. Planning 3. Design 4. Development 5. Testing and Delivery 6. Maintenance

Phase One: Information Gathering

The first step in designing a successful web site is to gather information. Many things need to be taken into consideration when the look and feel of your site is created.

This first step is actually the most important one, as it involves a solid understanding of the company it is created for. It involves a good understanding of you what your business goals and dreams are, and how the web can be utilized to help you achieve those goals.

It is important that your web designer start off by asking a lot of questions to help them understand your business and your needs in a web site.

17

Certain things to consider are: Purpose What is the purpose of the site? Do you want to provide information, promote a service or sell a product? Goals What do you hope to accomplish by building this web site? Two of the more common goals are either to make money or share information. Target Audience Is there a specific group of people that will help you reach your goals? It is helpful to picture the ideal person you want to visit your web site. Consider their age, sex or interests this will later help determine the best design style for your site.

Content What kind of information will the target audience be looking for on your site? Are they looking for specific information, a particular product or service, online ordering?

Phase Two: Planning

Using the information gathered from phase one, it is time to put together a plan for your web site. This is the point where a site map is developed.

The site map is a list of all main topic areas of the site, as well as sub-topics, if applicable. This serves as a guide as to what content will be on the site, and is essential to developing a consistent, easy to understand navigational system. The enduser of the web site aka your customer must be kept in mind when designing your site. These are, after all, the people who will be learning about your service or buying your product. A good user interface creates an easy to navigate web site, and is the basis for this.

During the planning phase, your web designer will also help you decide what technologies should be implemented. Elements such as interactive forms, ecommerce, flash, etc. are discussed when planning your web site.

18

Phase Three: Design Drawing from the information gathered up to this point, its time to determine the look and feel of your site.

Target audience is one of the key factors taken into consideration. A site aimed at teenagers, for example, will look much different than one meant for a financial institution. As part of the design phase, it is also important to incorporate elements such as the company logo or colors to help strengthen the identity of your company on the web site.

Your web designer will create one or more prototype designs for your web site. This is typically a .jpg image of what the final design will look like. Often times you will be sent an email with the mock-ups for your web site, while other designers take it a step further by giving you access to a secure area of their web site meant for customers to view work in progress.

Either way, your designer should allow you to view your project throughout the design and development stages. The most important reason for this is that it gives you the opportunity to express your likes and dislikes on the site design.

In this phase, communication between both you and your designer is crucial to ensure that the final web site will match your needs and taste. It is important that you work closely with your designer, exchanging ideas, until you arrive at the final design for your web site. Then development can begin

19

Phase Four: Development

The developmental stage is the point where the web site itself is created. At this time, your web designer will take all of the individual graphic elements from the prototype and use them to create the actual, functional site. This is typically done by first developing the home page, followed by a shell for the interior pages. The shell serves as a template for the content pages of your site, as it contains the main navigational structure for the web site. Once the shell has been created, your designer will take your content and distribute it throughout the site, in the appropriate areas.

Elements such as interactive contact forms, flash animations or ecommerce shopping carts are implemented and made functional during this phase, as well.

This entire time, your designer should continue to make your in-progress web site available to you for viewing, so that you can suggest any additional changes or corrections you would like to have done.

On the technical front, a successful web site requires an understanding of front-end web development. This involves writing valid XHTML / CSS code that complies to current web standards, maximizing functionality, as well as accessibility for as large an audience as possible.

20

Phase Five: Testing and Delivery

At this point, your web designer will attend to the final details and test your web site. They will test things such as the complete functionality of forms or other scripts, as well last testing for last minute compatibility issues (viewing differences between different web browsers), ensuring that your web site is optimized to be viewed properly in the most recent browser versions.

A good web designer is one who is well versed in current standards for web site design and development. The basic technologies currently used are XHTML and CSS (Cascading Style Sheets). As part of testing, your designer should check to be sure that all of the code written for your web site validates. Valid code means that your site meets the current web development standards this is helpful when checking for issues such as cross-browser compatibility as mentioned above.

Once you give your web designer final approval, it is time to deliver the site. An FTP (File Transfer Protocol) program is used to upload the web site files to your server. Most web designers offer domain name registration and web hosting services as well. Once these accounts have been setup, and your web site uploaded to the server, the site should be put through one last run-through. This is just precautionary, to confirm that all files have been uploaded correctly, and that the site continues to be fully functional.

Phase Six: Maintenance

The development of your web site is not necessarily over, though. One way to bring repeat visitors to your site is to offer new content or products on a regular basis. Most web designers will be more than happy to continue working together with you, to update the information on your web site. Many designers offer maintenance packages at reduced rates, based on how often you anticipate making changes or additions to your web site.

21

If you prefer to be more hands on, and update your own content, there is something called a CMS (Content Management System) that can be implemented to your web site. This is something that would be decided upon during the Planning stage. With a CMS, your designer will utilize online software to develop a database driven site for you.

A web site driven by a CMS gives you the ability to edit the content areas of the web site yourself. You are given access to a back-end administrative area, where you can use an online text editor (similar to a mini version of Microsoft Word). Youll be able to edit existing content this way, or if you are feeling more adventurous, you can even add new pages and content yourself. The possibilities are endless! Its really up to you as far as how comfortable you feel as far as updating your own web site. Some people prefer to have all the control so that they can make updates to their own web site the minute they decide to do so. Others prefer to hand off the web site entirely, as they have enough tasks on-hand that are more important for them to handle directly. Thats where the help of a your web designer comes in, once again, as they can take over the web site maintenance for you one less thing for you to do is always a good thing in these busy times!

Other maintenance type items include SEO (Search Engine Optimization) and SES (Search Engine Submission). This is the optimization of you web site with elements such as title, description and keyword tags which help your web site achieve higher rankings in the search engines. The previously mentioned code validation is something that plays a vital role in SEO, as well.

There are a lot of details involved in optimizing and submitting your web site to the search engines enough to warrant its own post. This is a very important step, because even though you now have a web site, you need to make sure that people can find it!

22

Skills and qualifications needed to be a web-designer

There's no nationally recognized professional web design qualification, although there are various design courses you could take. Clients and employers are more interested in the portfolio and past works rather that his educational qualification. Anyone having the right knowledge about web-designing along with sufficient creativity can go on an become a web designer. However having a certificate from a government recognized institute can provide additional weightage.

Following are the skills needed to be a web-designer

Graphical user interface (GUI) design using HTML/XHTML/CSS, Adobe Fireworks & Flash

Web standards compliance and basic accessibility issues (as they pertain to XHTML) Planning, designing, and implementing web site structure and navigation layout with server side includes and dynamic content

Designing and planning additions to sites Flash presentations Design & layout of e-mail newsletters Design & layout of press releases & white papers Image optimization Knowledgeable with TITLE & META tags and page content for search engine optimization

Understanding of screen resolutions and how to design for them Testing with multiple browsers and operating systems to ensure the best compatibility possible Software knowledge:

Adobe Dreamweaver Adobe Fireworks Adobe Flash Adobe Photoshop Adobe Illustrator (beginner) Adobe Acrobat Various FTP applications
23

2. Animation: - The word animate means to add life to an object. Hence lifeless objects are also known as inanimate objects. Animation involves any process of adding life to images, i.e. to generate moving images. Animation though sounding like a recent term, the art has been in existence for years. Cartoons like Popeye the sailor man, Bugs Bunny, Mickey Mouse, Tom and Jerry etc are more than 80-90 years old. It is quite astonishing to know that even today they win the hearts of children just the way they did 80-90 years back. Infact a recent survey has revealed that even adults prefer these shows as it helps them forget their worries.

Man is said to have attempted animation more than 2500 years back. Archeologists have found vases, pots and other such objects which have a series of images painted on them in such a way that when the vase or pot is spinned the image appears to be moving. Over the years there has been a lot of changes in the process of animation. However through-out all these phases of changes, the demand for animated films has always been high. Traditionally animation was done by manually drawing each still or frame by hand. All these frames would then be displayed at a fast rate to produce the illusion of moving characters. Today most of the work is done by computers, however unlike other tasks where the job gets easy after introduction of computers, here the job has still been complicated to master. However the degree of realism has increased considerably with the introduction of computers. Many a times an animation looks so real that one cant differentiate it from real film. As an animator a lot of planning and organizing is required. Animators need to be very patient and calm as even a tiny mistake needs them to redo a lot of work again. However this hard work pays off handsomely most of the time. Movies like ratatouille, cars, Up in the air, Avatar etc have been a huge success all over the world. Well heard and probably even seen them.

Animation can be broadly divided into 2 parts a. 2D animation b. 3D animation Both are further divided into a number of parts. Let us look at some of them in detail.

24

A. 2D animation: - 2d animation is the creation of moving pictures in a two-dimensional environment, such as through "traditional" cel animation or in computerized animation software. This is done by sequencing consecutive images, or "frames", that simulate motion by each image showing the next in a gradual progression of steps. The eye can be "fooled" into perceiving motion when these consecutive images are shown at a rate of 24 frames per second or faster. It involves any type of animation where the Object can be measured in two dimensions which are height and width. Hence the name 2D meaning 2 dimensions. Example of 2D animations would include cartoons like Popeye, Tom and Jerry etc.

Compared to 3D, 2D is a far older technique having a history of about 70-100 years. However many people prefer the simplicity involved in 2D animations. Cartoons like Tom and Jerry, loony toons, Popeye the sailor man etc are all 2D animations and today theyre considered as classics in the animation field. People may think its easier to make a 2D animation as compared to a 3D one, but in reality its just the other way round. This is because in the case of 3D most of the calculations are done by a computer, while in 3D it mostly done by human effort. Besides this, in 3D animation after modeling (designing) the character he can be rotated in any direction without any problem, while in 2D even a tiny rotation needs a lot of abstract imagination on the animators part.

The demand for 2D animation is falling in recent times because of the rise in 3D. However this fall in demand is very gentle or rather negligent. Commercials cartoons on T.V are still in 2D format even today. Even the most recent cartoons like choota bheem, shinchan, etc are all in 2D form. 2D works are now taking place as a classic form be it in the field of gaming for e.g.:- Mario and road rash or cartoons like Heidithe girls in the Alps. These works are never forgotten and still generate the same entertainment as they did before. There are many full feature animation films like Lionking, Aladdin, The Jungle Book, Tarzan and The Beauty and the Beast which are animated with 2D technology.

25

Production pipe line

The overall process of creating a 2D animation is divided into three parts: preproduction, production, and post-production.

Pre- production: Pre-production involves establishing the plot of the completed animation. Because each shot in animation is so labor-intensive, it's imperative to get shots right during pre-production. Re-animating a shot (because a character uses knowledge not gained until later in the story, for example) is very expensive, especially compared to live-action filming. Most animations are storyboarded, in which the main action in each scene is drawn in a comic book-like form. Storyboards are usually pasted on large foam-core or poster board sheets, which can be quickly read through by the staff. During pre-production, the staff reviews the storyboard for consistency, and parts of the storyboard may be redrawn multiple times.

Production: Each shot in a 2D animation involves multiple single drawings of characters. To demonstrate the concept, think of a still camera that can take many photographs in rapid succession. Imagine aiming that camera at a person and taking many quick photographs as the person walks towards you. Each photograph corresponds to an individual drawing in an animation. Keys are important drawings that convey the extremes of the character's movement--the first drawing is almost always a key--while in-betweens are the remaining, less important drawings in the shot. Typically, each drawing begins with a sketch, in pencil, of the character's pose. This drawing is then cleaned up in pencil, though this is not always do Some companies hand-ink each drawing, writing over the cleaned pencil lines with a pen. Others--especially studios whose artists can draw very clean pencil lines--will scan the pencils directly into the computer, then ink the drawing digitally. The drawing is now considered a "cel." Before computers, the drawing would now be photocopied onto a sheet of clear celluloid or acetate, then hand-painted. This created a "cel," which was placed on top of a background painting and filmed with the click of a film camera. Cels are still highly prized by collectors, though few true cels remain. Many of those on the market are reproductions.

26

Today, the digital cels are colored on a computer. Meanwhile, a background is drawn. The background is imported into an animation program, and each cel is layered onto the background in succession. This is then saved on the computer as a single video file. In practice, the keys are usually drawn by a top animator, and these are then scanned and assembled into a "rough cut" of the shot while the keys are given to a junior animator, who will draw the tweens. The film can then be assembled during production, and junior animators can be directed in small adjustments to improve the flow of each shot and scene. In Asia, this is typically when dialog is recorded, so that the junior animators can match the tweens to the vocal.

Post- production: Even after all the tweens have been colored and added to the animation, the film is far from complete. There's still music and sound effects to be added, as well as visual effects (glows, hazes, etc.). The animation also may need to be edited in the more traditional film sense; shots cut slightly short or held longer, even scenes cut entirely.

It is in this process that all the tiny bits and pieces come together to finally form a full feature film. This process is as complex, complicated and crucial as the production process because it is at this stage where all the animations begin to make sense. Videos are viewed minutely still by still or frame by frame to ensure the best bits get into the final edit.

27

Aladdin an example of 2d animation film

Aladdin is a 1992 animated feature produced by Walt Disney Feature Animation, and released by Walt Disney Pictures on November 25, 1992. The thirty-first animated feature in the Disney animated features canon, relates a version of the story of Aladdin and the magic lamp from The Book of One Thousand and One Nights. It was directed by John Musker and Ron Clements, both of whom had just finished writing and directing The Little Mermaid.

Aladdin was released on November 25, 1992 to positive reviews, and was the most successful film of 1992, earning over $217 million in revenue in the United States, and over $504 million worldwide. The film also won many awards, most of them for its soundtrack. Aladdin's success led to many material inspired by the film such as two direct-to-video sequels, The Return of Jafar and Aladdin and the King of Thieves, an animated television series, toys, video games, spin-offs, and merchandise.

Composer Alan Menken and songwriters Howard Ashman and Tim Rice were praised for creating a soundtrack that is "consistently good, rivaling the best of Disney's other animated musicals from the '90s."

28

Production of the film Aladdin

In 1988, Howard Ashman suggested Disney make an animated musical version of Aladdin. After writing a storyline and songs with partner Alan Menken, Ashman delivered it to directors John Musker and Ron Clements. In 1991, the script was delivered to studio chief Jeffrey Katzenberg, who thought the script "didn't engage", and only approved it after rewrites from Clements, Musker and the screenwriter duo Ted Elliott and Terry Rossio. Among the changes, the character of Aladdin's mother was removed, Princess Jasmine became a stronger character, Aladdin's personality was reworked to be "a little rougher, like a young Harrison Ford," and the parrot Iago, originally conceived as a "British" calm and serious character, after the filmmakers saw Gilbert Gottfried in Beverly Hills Cop II was turned into a comic role, voiced by Gottfried. The concept of calm, serious British bird would later be worked into The Lion King's Zazu.

Most characters' designs were based on the work of caricaturist Al Hirschfeld. Aladdin was drawn originally based on actor Michael J. Fox but during production it was decided that he wasn't "appealing enough" and they decided to make him resemble actor Tom Cruise instead. Computer animation was used to develop some features of the movie, such as the tiger entrance of the Cave of Wonders, the magic carpet, the scene where Aladdin tries to escape the collapsing cave, the full view of Agrabah, and the clouds in "A Whole New World".

The weakest-looking aspect of Aladdin is its computer-generated animation. With the integration of CG within a 2D world still in its infancy in 1992, it often sticks out like a sore thumb.
29

Watching this film will give animation buffs the opportunity to study and admire the fine animation work. The film mixed a variety of animation and art styles to come up with a unique look. Though some influence from Richard Williams The Thief and the Cobbler (made from 1968 to the early 1990s) is apparently present, the crew of Aladdin borrowed motifs from Tex Avery cartoons, Al Hirschfeld drawings, and Arabian design. The colors, used in the film are rich and almost three-dimensional. The film has the traditional touches many people associate with classic Disney animation. The first element is story, the story of a young boy who wants to become somebody. The sidekick characters are another element of Disney animation, and there are many in this film and most of them are strong characterizations. The strengths of this film are many and overshadow any minor gripes one might have. Musker and Clements direction is solid. The animation and voice casting is nearly perfect. Its fun entertainment. The film is also an interesting time capsule on Robin Williams. Of course, theres also the top-notch artwork and music. Theres not much doom and gloom to be found in Aladdin, as the colorful, smooth style of animation really adds a layer of detail to the story. Character animation is pitchperfect, and the backgrounds are even better. Combined with the trademark Disney style of orchestral music, Aladdin is a well-rounded effort that holds up well.

Image detail and contrast are superb, and really bring the colorful world of Aladdin to life. Only a few minor nitpicks kept this presentation from being perfect, namely a few instances of very mild edge enhancement and a few traces of interlacing. Otherwise, this visual presentation is up to the high standard of Disneys Platinum Collection.

30

3D Animation

3D animation is the creation of moving pictures in a three-dimensional digital environment. This is done by sequencing consecutive images, or "frames", that simulate motion by each image showing the next in a gradual progression of steps, filmed by a virtual "camera" and then output to video by a rendering engine. The eye can be "fooled" into perceiving motion when these consecutive images are shown at a rate of 24 frames per second or faster.

Producing animation by using computer technology, without doubt, is closely related with the computer technology technique and a series of capabilities of this technique. Computer gives the opportunity to the animator to use time, technique and creativeness at a higher level and enables high quality products to be emerged.

It involves any type of animation where the object can be measured in three dimensions which are height, width and breadth. Hence the name 3D meaning three Dimensions. Examples of 3D animations would include shriek, cars, bolt, Up in the sky etc. The degree of realism in 3D games and Movies is rising at an even steeper rate. Many a times it is difficult to distinguish between real models and 3D ones.

Though stated earlier that creating 2D is more taxing than 3D, it never means creating 3D models is easy. It involves a lot of planning and patience. Though one is working in a 3D environment the monitor can always show only a 2D image, this makes it even tougher to design in 3D.It is like clay modeling but with just a finger and one side at a time.

3D demand is on a steep rise, most of the animations of today are made in 3D environment. 90% of full feature films realized these days are in 3D. More over 9597% games are also made in 3D. Examples of 3D movies would include Up, Cars, Madagascar, Fly me to the Moon, Megamind, Cloudy chance of meat-balls etc. while examples of 3D games would include counter-strike, GTA series, Hitman series, crysis etc.

31

Production pipeline

In the process of 3-d computer animation production, it is inevitable to realize some series of steps related to production technique and methods based on both technique and expression style. The information about these steps is as follows.

Design Producing the models (modeling) Determining the surface qualities of models. Scene arrangement Transformation Rendering the objects Assembling and special effects Transferring to video, CD, or film.

First of all, an idea must be formed to produce an animation. And design enables the transfer of the idea. The design process of animation production is a kind of planning process in which the subject of animation, the message to be sent to target population, the method to be followed in presenting the information, time and expression characteristics are all taken into consideration and planned as a whole. The event takes its first form with the scenario. Scenario can be thought as the story of the planned design. Besides this description, the drafts of characters, models, images and sound which are going to be used in the animation are formed in mind. The event that is going to be told, the message that is going to be given, relations, atmosphere, manner and behaviors all form the text in this step.

3-d computer animation production begins with the modeling of the characters that are made in the computers virtual space where width, length and depth are entered with numerical values. In the first step, a three-dimensional skeleton of the model which seems to be made of wires is made. On the surface of this skeleton color, texture and material features are defined. These features are the simulations of the objects surface characteristics in real life. Animator produces very realistic images by defining the materials to objects like transparent like glass and light permeable, bright like chromium and reflecting light,
32

dull like plastic and absorbing light. After the surface qualities of the models are done, the scene where the events will occur can be built. A placement is arranged on stage according to the positions of characters, objects and accessories, and their movements that will be performed in a planned time which is determined by shooting script and storyboard. Light sources and cameras are also placed in this section.

Then the animation is added to the models. Till the process all the objects in were still like statues. It is at this stage that movement is added to the objects and characters. The key frames of the objects or the characters that are being planned to be moved are placed on the time line. On these specific points, the movements are applied according to the flow of scenario and the effect that the characters must follow. Each individual object has a different set of key-frames for example a characters hand would have a different set while the legs would have yet a different set. Key frames are simply frames where the movement is supposed to start and stop. The computer then added the movement to the frames in between to create a smooth transition between the two.

The last step is the rendering step, once the scene is designed three dimensionally. By this operation, the defined surface characteristics, by the help of light sources, can be viewed on the computer screen. Here the 3D models are converted from the the animation software related format to a proper video format.

Producing 3-d computer animation comes to an end by playing all the frames in a sequence. Using sound, music, effects can take the animation to its goal so easily. After the editing of animation, it is transferred to any medium like film, video, CD, etc.

Animation is being used very wide-spread in many fields today which have many steps from design to production.

33

Shrek: A 3d animation film

It is a wondrous, comical animated adventure that satirizes fairy tales and wears its heart on its sleeve without ever winking too far to remind us that it is all a joke. It wastes no time in making big impressions. The opening credits for the movie are absolutely incredible. The opening credits interact with Shreks environment and are pulled off so well that it is easily the best animated opening credits ever created. The second computer-generated animated film from DreamWorks Shrek is a dazzling display of creative artistry and sheer imagination. With animated characters never looking so flesh-and-blood before ,the movie is nonstop candy for the eyes, with a palette of bright colors jumping off the screen, and a round-up of central characters who are not only likable, but also memorable and enchanting. The film is an ideal viewing experience for both children and grown-ups alike.

Commercially successful on release in 2001, it helped establish DreamWorks as a prime competitor to Pixar in the field of feature film animation, particularly in computer animation. The film's success also made DreamWorks Animation create three sequels: Shrek 2, Shrek the Third, and Shrek Forever After. There was also a Christmas special called Shrek the Halls and a Halloween special called Scared Shrekless.
34

Production process of the film: Shrek

The production moves from story and concept artwork into 3-D modeling and eventually render. DreamWorks Animation uses the popular Linux Maya commercial package for 3-D modeling. Layout positions the characters in the scenes and determines overall lighting. Models are rigged with internal skeletons by the Character TDs, and then given to the scene animators. Because of the complexity, Shrek 3 animators were assigned in pairs to each of the hundreds of scenes. In the past, it was one animator per scene. Lighting and any special effects are added, such as cloth or flames. Then, the scene is rendered frame by frame on a 3,000+ CPU Linux renderfarm.

Storyboard: A Story Artist's Rendition of the Scene.Each frame is assigned to a different node of the renderfarm by grid software so that many frames can be output simultaneously. The frames are edited into a movie using Avid software. Early in the process, hand-drawn storyboard images are scanned, and a scratch audio track is edited together creating a rough video representation of the movie. As each sequence is completed, it replaces the rough storyboard footage, building the fully rendered movie scene by scene.

35

Layout: the Layout Artist's Blocking of the Camera Moves and Character Poses

Animation: at this stage, the animators create the character's performance for the scene.

Lighting: Final Version of the Scene with Lighting and Textures Added to the Frame

36

The issues with maintaining a large Linux-based pipeline are the same as maintaining a large pipeline on any operating system. They unified the studio on one standard pipeline a while ago, and now they have all productions at all times using the same pipeline. They stress, push and develop the pipeline in different ways on each production.

There was much specific technical advancement on the movie, including advancements in hair, clothing, costuming and crowds as well as bringing the secondary character animation (crowds) to a whole new level of performance. Long hair may be the biggest technology advance in Shrek. In all of animation in the past long hair is very little. It took months to do the hero-hair flick on Shrek 2. Hair is everywhere in Shrek 3. How hair glides across a shoulder looks easy but is very complicated to model. The way the hair moves had to become much more automated. There isn't time for animators to position each hair by hand. With clothing they have more interactions, including ripping of the cloth. Fast motion is always difficult to do.

Technically and creatively there were three major challenges; the human characters, the complex environment and then the traditional visual effects things like fire and water and the elements. For human characters, some of the challenges were rendering skin. Computers are really good at rendering things like plastic and metal, as they love hard surfaces, but to date they havent been as successful dealing with translucent softer surfaces and we didnt find real applicable computer graphics research for rendering skin that we would use.

37

Qualification and skills needed to be an animator

Just like web designing there is no specified educational qualification for animators. Its all about your skill and creativity. However doing a course in a reputed institute is quite necessary in the case of animation as very few firms can afford to trust an animator with no experience. Besides it is almost impossible to work on free lance basis as an animator. When looking for an animator employers look for the following qualities in an individual. Artistic Ability Creative thinking, an understanding of composition and the ability to draw are the foundation of an animation career. Whether you're creating storyboards or putting the finishing touches on a series of computer generated images, you'll need to have a good grasp on basic artistic skills. Storytelling Ability You need to be a good storyteller. This includes having a good sense of timing and pacing, and knowing how to get your characters to express themselves in a believable way. As an animator, you'll be responsible for portraying characters' emotionswhich means you need to understand character development, even if you're not the one onscreen. Technical Skill / Software Knowledge With the increased use of computer generated imagery (CGI) technology in the film industryin both live action films and animated moviesanimation careers are becoming increasingly technical. You'll need training in various software programs that are standard in the industry. In some animation jobs you may also find math and physics helpful, Teamwork You not only need the ability to work with clients, but you'll also need to thrive in a team environment. Animation projects involve many people, but the end product needs to be consistent as if produced by one person. This may involve following or giving direction, working to meet deadlines and communicating clearly and effectively with other team members and clients. Miscellaneous knowledge- It includes knowledge about geometry, physics, mathematics etc. in order to be able to create a realistic scene it is necessary to know how the real world functions. For eg, to create a realistic reflective surface the animator needs to know how light it reflected and how it behaves in the real world.

38

Special Effects

The illusions used in the film, television, theatre, or entertainment industries to simulate the imagined events in a story are traditionally called special effects (often abbreviated as SFX, SPFX, or simply FX).Special effects are traditionally divided into the categories of optical effects and mechanical effects. With the emergence of digital film-making tools a greater distinction between special effects and visual effects has been recognized, with "visual effects" referring to digital post-production and "special effects" referring to on-set mechanical effects and in-camera optical effects.

Optical effects (also called photographic effects), are techniques in which images or film frames are created photographically, either "in-camera" using multiple exposure, mattes, or the Schfftan process, or in post-production processes using an optical printer. An optical effect might be used to place actors or sets against a different background.

Mechanical effects (also called practical or physical effects), are usually accomplished during the live-action shooting. This includes the use of mechanized props, scenery, scale models, pyrotechnics and Atmospheric Effects: creating physical wind, rain, fog, snow, clouds etc. Making a car appear to drive by itself, or blowing up a building are examples of mechanical effects. Mechanical effects are often incorporated into set design and makeup. For example, a set may be built with breakaway doors or walls to enhance a fight scene, or prosthetic makeup can be used to make an actor look like a monster.

Since the 1990s, computer generated imagery (CGI) has come to the forefront of special effects technologies. CGI gives film-makers greater control, and allows many effects to be accomplished more safely and convincingly and even, as technology marches on, at lower costs. As a result, many optical and mechanical effects techniques have been superseded by CGI. Today even a tiny advertisement on television has atleast some amount of special effects added to it.

39

Pipeline process of Special effects

A special effect can be accomplished in a number of ways depending on what kind of effect is needed. The process is generally a mixture of 2D and 3D. Basically special effects are the fusion of animation with real world graphics.

In olden times special effects was created by physically manipulating the film (negative). Artists would manually paint on them, or a number of films were combined to generate a new fused image. However in todays time its all done digitally. That is today all special effects are digital visual effects.

The word digital in the term digital visual effects means that the process primarily uses computer hardware and software to create its effects. Computer-generated effects make imaginary characters like Godzilla possible, and they also create almost every effect that used to be done using models. The advantages of CG (computer generated) effects are their realism, flexibility and relatively low cost (compared to the alternatives).

The team of graphic artists works with the movie's director both during filming (production) and then extensively after filming (post-production) to create the effects. Involvement during production helps the director make creative decisions so that the effects can be integrated into the film more easily, and also allows them to add different markers and other features to each scene to make post-production work easier. For example, in certain scenes the camera might be fitted with encoders that will allow for easier integration of the effects that is created. During post-production, the director works extensively with the artists to make sure that the effects in each shot have exactly the right look for the film.

40

Following are some of the procedures carried out but special effect artists in the process of establishing an effect. Its not necessary for all of these procedures to be used for every project. Every project is different and thus these techniques can be used in any order as per needs.

Scanning and printing This process used equipment to scan film at extremely high resolution (up to 12,750,000 dots per frame), store it, manipulate it digitally and then write it back out to film at the same resolution.

3-D Character modeling and animation - The artists can create and realistically animate characters and then integrate them into scenes -- everything from Godzilla to a platoon of British soldiers can be added to a film. Artists can also create ships, water, background scenery, clouds, flags, buildings, vehicles, explosions and so on. These CG elements are totally realistic and are seamlessly integrated either into CG backdrops or filmed scenes.

3-D camera tracking - In order to lay 3-D characters into a filmed scene, there must be a model of how the camera moves and zooms when the scene was shot. This model can be created by adding encoders to the camera, or it can be created after the fact. In either case, artists create a 3-D model of the scene and how the camera moves within it.

Rotoscoping - Rotoscoping is the process of outlining and "lifting" elements of a filmed scene off the frame so that other elements can be added to the frame either in front of or behind the rotoscoped elements.

Painting - Painting involves the creation of imaginary scenery. It also involves what was once called "airbrushing" -- the process of adding or removing things from a scene.

2-D compositing - Compositing is the process of adding all of the different layers of a shot together to create the final shot.

41

The Patriot(2000) - A movie rich in special effects

The Patriot is a 2000 Historical war film directed by Roland Emmerich, written by Robert Rodat, and starring Mel Gibson, Chris Cooper, and Heath Ledger. It was produced by the Mutual Film Company and Centropolis Entertainment and was distributed by Columbia Pictures. The film mainly takes place in South Carolina (and was entirely filmed there) and depicts the story of an American swept into the American Revolutionary War when his family is threatened. The protagonist, Benjamin Martin, is loosely based on real Continental Army officer Francis Marion, Andrew Pickens and other Revolutionary War figures. The Patriot was nominated for three Academy Awards: Best Sound, Best Cinematography, and Best Original Music Score.

Though there are many movies like 2012, Jurassic park, 300 etc which have made much more use of special effects than this movie, the process used in this is far more easier to understand. Let us now see how a certain war scene was made in this movie. The scene were going to study involves a surprising number of techniques to completely change the landscape from a wooded field to a seaside town!
42

This is the original shot without effects The shot arrives as a piece of film, and the first step is to scan this film into digital form so it can be manipulated. Scanning is done frame by frame (movie film is shot at 24 frames per second), and then each frame is stored as an individual full-color image with a resolution of 2,048 by 1,556 pixels. The section of video shown in the two previous videos is 20 seconds long, or about 480 frames.

First, a variety of things might be done to the original shot to clean it up, correct the color and so on. Since the camera pans across the scene in this shot, the next step is to build a 3-D model of the camera so that all of the visual effects the team will create will mesh with the original scene exactly.

One of the first steps taken to add visual effects to the scene is the rotoscoping. An artist sits at a computer and, frame by frame, outlines the portion of the original shot that will be used in the final version. The breastworks, a portion of the field and several of the running soldiers will all be used, but the explosion seen on the left and everything else will be removed. The artist will outline these elements and essentially "lift" them out of the frame.

Another camera crew has created an ocean shot -- in this case the ocean is not far from the CFX studio in Hollywood! Once the ocean shot is cleaned up and colorcorrected, it and the rotoscoped scene can be integrated:

43

This is how the scene looks with the added ocean

Another artist in the paint department has been working on a matte painting of the town. This is a high-resolution digital image created using a painting/illustration package.

The painted image

The scene with the added town.

In this shot there are a number of boats encircling the town and firing on it. The boats are all computer generated. Each one is modeled and then added to the shot:

44

The scene with the boats added to it The cannon fire for the boats is its own stand-alone effect that is created separately and then added to the shot.

The scene with boats and canon fire

A variety of other effects are added to the shot, including things like smoke over the town, people in the town, a large explosion on the right, etc.

45

The final step in the process is compositing all of the different components of the shot (the rotoscoped foreground, the water, the town, people in the town, the boats, the cannon fire, the smoke, the explosion, birds flying overhead and so on) layer by layer to create the final shot as it will appear in the movie. Once digitally composited, the shot is written back to film so that it can be spliced into the movie.

The small images used here don't really do justice to the shot -- when you see "The Patriot" on a huge screen in a theater, you can see the incredible detail that has been added to make this shot look totally realistic.

As you might imagine, creating a scene like this is time-consuming. Even though the shot only appears on screen for 20 seconds, hundreds of hours go into the visual effects to create a rich, convincing visual image. It is an amazing process that involves an entire team of people, and this process may be repeated several hundred times in a single film! In "The Patriot," 150 shots in the film involve visual effects like these.

While this was the case in just a 20second clip one can imagine the amount of time and energy going into movies like 2012, Titanic, Godzilla, Jurassic park etc.

46

Qualification and skills needed to be a VFX artist

Animation and visual-effects programs are offered at a number of universities, but a degree or certificate isn't required. More important is an eye for artistic detail, such as light, shadow and texture, says Mark Tobin, managing director of The Moving Picture Co.'s Los Angeles office. "You can teach the technical knowledge, but you can't teach a great eye," Mr. Tobin says. "The key is getting your foot in the door." Newcomers usually enter the industry through internships and apprenticeships sometimes unpaid. Expertise in software such as Autodesk Maya and Adobe Photoshop helps. A strong reel (a short video showing clips) is critical. Since it's a tight-knit industry, networking is also key.

Employment in the industry is cyclical and tied to film studio budgets and appetites for films with extensive special effects. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, employment for artists and related workers is expected to increase 12% through 2018on pace with other occupations.

47

Game Development

Game development is the software development process by which a video game is developed. Development is undertaken by a game developer, which may range from a single person to a large business. Mainstream games are normally funded by a publisher and take several years to develop.

Indie games can take less time and can be produced cheaply by individuals and small developers. The indie game industry has seen a rise in recent years with the growth of new online distribution systems and the mobile game market.

The first video games were developed in 1960s, but required mainframe computers and were not available to general public. Commercial game development began in 1970s with the advent of first generation video game consoles and home computers. Due to low costs and low capabilities of computers, a lone programmer could develop a full game. However, approaching 21st century, ever-increasing computer processing power and user expectations made it impossible for a single developer to produce a mainstream game. The average price of game production slowly rose from US$1M 4M in 2000 to over 5M in 2006 to over 20M in 2010.

Mainstream games are generally developed in phases. First, in pre-production, pitches, prototypes, and game design documents are written. If the idea is approved and the developer receives funding, a full-scale development begins. This usually involves a 20100 man team of various responsibilities, such as designers, artists, programmers, testers, etc. The games go through development, alpha, and beta stages until finally being released. Modern games are advertised, marketed, and showcased at trade show demos. Even so, many games do not turn a profit.

48

Pipeline of Game Development

Making a game today is as good as making a fully fledged film. Because is included developing sounds, story lines, dialogues, employs voice artists etc. Hence it is probably one of the most complex processes in graphics. This field combines both coding (programming) and graphics. It also needs a great deal of knowledge in the field of audio editing.

Development of a commercial game usually includes the following stages.

Pre-production Pre-production or design phase is a planning phase of the project focused on idea and concept development and production of initial design documents. The goal of concept development is to produce clear and easy to understand documentation, which describes all the tasks, schedules and estimates for the development team. The suite of documents produced in this phase is called production plan. This phase is usually not funded by a publisher, however good publishers may require developers to produce plans during pre-production. The concept documentation can be separated into three stages or documentshigh concept, pitch and concept; however, there is no industry standard naming convention, for example, both Bethke and Bates refer to pitch document as "game proposal", yet Moore, Novak refers to concept document as "game proposal".

The late stage of pre-production may be also be referred to as proof of concept, or technical review when more detailed game documents are produced.

Publishers have started to expect broader game proposals even featuring playable prototypes.

49

a. High concept:-High concept is a few sentences long description of a game.

b. Pitch: - A pitch, concept document, proposal document, or game proposal is a short summary document intended to present the game's selling points and detail why the game would be profitable to develop. Verbal pitches may be made to management within the developer company, and then presented to publishers. A written document may need to be shown to publishers before funding is approved. A game proposal may undergo one to several green-light meetings with publisher executives who determine if the game is to be developed. The presentation of the project is often given by the game designers. Demos may be created for the pitch; however may be unnecessary for established developers with good track records. If the developer acts as its own publisher, or both companies are subsidiaries of a single company, then only the upper management needs to give approval.

c. Concept: - Concept document, game proposal, or game plan is a more detailed document than the pitch document. This includes all the information produced about the game. This includes the high concept, game's genre, game play description, features, setting, story, target audience, hardware platforms, estimated schedule, marketing analysis, team requirements, and risk analysis. Before an approved design is completed, a skeleton crew of programmers and artists usually begins work. Programmers may develop quick-and-dirty prototypes showcasing one or more features that stakeholders would like to see incorporated in the final product. Artists may develop concept art and asset sketches as a springboard for developing real game assets. Producers may work part-time on the game at this point, scaling up for full time commitment as development progresses. Game producers work during preproduction is related to planning the schedule, budget and estimating tasks with the team. The producer aims to create a solid production plan so that no delays are experienced at the start of the production.

d. Prototype: - Writing prototypes of game play ideas and features are an important activity that allows programmers and game designers to experiment with different algorithms and usability scenarios for a game. A great deal of prototyping may take place during pre-production before the design document is complete and may, in fact, help determine what features the design specifies. Prototyping may also take place
50

during active development to test new ideas as the game emerges. Prototypes are often meant only to act as a proof of concept or to test ideas, by adding, modifying or removing some of the features. Most algorithms and features debuted in a prototype may be ported to the game once they have been completed. Often prototypes need to be developed quickly with very little time for up-front design. Therefore usually very prolific programmers are called upon to quickly code these testbed tools. RAD tools may be used to aid in the quick development of these programs. A successful development model is iterative prototyping, where design is refined based on current progress.

Production

Production is the main stage of development, when assets and source code for the game are produced.

Mainstream production is usually defined as the period of time when the project is fully staffed. Programmers write new source code, artists develop game assets, such as, sprites or 3D models. Sound engineers develop sound effects and composers develop music for the game. Level designers create levels, and writers write dialogue for cutscenes and NPCs. Game designers continue to develop the game's design throughout production.

a. Design: - Game design is a collaborative process of designing the content and rules of a game, requiring artistic and technical competence as well as writing skills.

b.Programming:- All the while, the game designer implements and modifies the game design to reflect the current vision of the game. Features and levels are often removed or added. The art treatment may evolve and the back-story may change. A new platform may be targeted as well as a new demographic. All these changes need to be documented and dispersed to the rest of the team. Most changes occur as updates to the design document.

51

c. Level creation: - From a time standpoint, the game's first level takes the longest to develop. As level designers and artists use the tools for level building, they request features and changes to the in-house tools that allow for quicker and higher quality development. Newly introduced features may cause old levels to become obsolete, so the levels developed early on may be repeatedly developed and discarded. Because of the dynamic environment of game development, the design of early levels may also change over time. It is not uncommon to spend upwards of twelve months on one level of a game developed over the course of three years. Later levels can be developed much more quickly as the feature set is more complete and the game vision is clearer and more stable.

d.Game art design: -Game art design, a subset of game development, is a process of creating 2D and 3D game art for a video game. A game artist is a visual artist who creates video game art, such as concept art, item sprites, character models, etc. e. Audio production: - Game audio may be separated into three categoriessound effects, music, and voice-over. Sound effect production is the production of sounds by either tweaking a sample to a desired effect or replicating it with real objects. Sound effects are important and impact the game's delivery. Music may be synthesized or performed live. There are several ways in which music is presented in a game. Music may be ambient, especially for slow periods of game, where the music aims to reinforce the aesthetic mood and game setting. Music may be triggered by in-game events. For example, in such games as Pac-man or Mario, player picking up powerups triggered respective musical scores. Action music, such as chase, battle or hunting sequences is fast-paced, hard-changing score. Menu music, similar to credits music, creates aural impact while relatively little action is taking place. A game title with 20 hours of single-player game play may feature around 60 minutes of music. Voiceovers and voice acting creates character game play interactivity. Voice acting adds personality to the game's characters.

52

f. Testing: - At the end of the project quality assurance plays a significant role. Testers start work once anything is playable. This may be one level or subset of the game software that can be used to any reasonable extent. Early on, testing a game occupies a relatively small amount of time. Testers may work on several games at once. As development draws to a close, a single game usually employs many testers full time (and often with overtime). They strive to test new features and regression test existing ones. Testing is vital for modern, complex games as single changes may lead to catastrophic consequences. At this time features and levels are being finished at the highest rate and there is more new material to be tested than during any other time in the project. Testers need to carry out regression testing to make sure that features that have been in place for months still operate correctly. Regression testing is one of the vital tasks required for effective software development. As new features are added, subtle changes to the codebase can produce unexpected changes in different portions of the game. This task is often overlooked, for several reasons. Sometimes, when a feature is implemented and tested, it is considered "working" for the rest of the project and little attention is given to repeat testing. Also, features that are added late in development are prioritized and existing features often receive insufficient testing time. Proper regression testing is also increasingly expensive as the number of features increases and is often not scheduled correctly. Despite the dangers of overlooking regression testing, some game developers and publishers fail to test the full feature suite of the game and ship a game with bugs. This can result in customers dissatisfaction and failure to meet sales goals. When this does happen, most developers and publishers quickly release patches that fix the bugs and make the game fully playable again.

g.Milestones: - Commercial game development projects may be required to meet milestones set by publisher. Milestones mark major events during game development and are used to track game's progress. Such milestones may be, for example, first playable, alpha, or beta game versions. Project milestones depend on the developer schedules. There is no industry standard for defining milestones, and such vary depending on publisher, year, or project. Some common milestones for two-year development cycle are as follows.

53

First playable: The first playable is the game version containing representative game play and assets; this is the first version with functional major game play elements. It is often based on the prototype created in pre-production. Alpha and first playable are sometimes used to refer to a single milestone, however large projects require first playable before feature complete alpha. First playable occurs 12 to 18 months before code release.

Alpha: Alpha is the stage when key game play functionality is implemented, and assets are partially finished. A game in alpha is feature complete, that is, game is playable and contains all the major features. These features may be further revised based on testing and feedback. Additional small, new features may be added, similarly planned, but unimplemented features may be dropped. Programmers focus mainly on finishing the codebase, rather than implementing additions. Alpha occurs eight to ten months before code release.

Code freeze: Code freeze is the stage when new code is no longer added to the game and only bugs are being corrected. Code freeze occurs three to four months before code release.

Beta: Beta is feature and asset complete version of the game, when only bugs are being fixed. This version contains no bugs that prevent the game from being shippable. No changes are made to the game features, assets, or code. Beta occurs two to three months before code release.

Code release: Code release is the stage when all bugs are fixed and game is ready to be shipped or submitted for console manufacturer review. This version is tested against QA test plan. First code release candidate is usually ready three to four weeks before code release.

Gold master: Gold master is the final game's build that is used as a master for production of the game.

54

Crunch time: Overtime is expected in the games industry. Particularly, crunch time or crunch mode is unpaid overtime requested by many companies to meet project deadlines and milestones that negatively affect game developers. A team missing a deadline risks the danger of having the project cancelled or employees being laid off. Although many companies are reducing the amount of crunch time, it is still prominent in smaller companies. Many companies offer time-off, called comp time or extra paid time-off after product ships to compensate for crunch time's negative effects. Some companies offer bonuses and financial rewards for successful milestone reach. Sometimes on-site crunch meals are offered and delivered to the team during crunch time. The International Game Developers Association (IGDA) surveyed nearly 1,000 game developers in 2004 and produced a report to highlight the many problems caused by bad practice.

Post-production

After the game goes gold and ships, some developers will give team members comp time (perhaps up to a week or two) to compensate for the overtime put in to complete the game, though this compensation is not standard.

Maintenance:- Once a game ships, the maintenance phase for the video game begins. Games developed for video game consoles have had almost no maintenance period in the past. The shipped game would forever house as many bugs and features as when released. This was the norm for consoles since all consoles had identical or nearly identical hardware. In this case, maintenance would only occur in the case of a port, sequel, or enhanced remake that reuses a large portion of the engine and assets. In recent times popularity of online console games has grown, and online capable video game consoles and online services such as Xbox Live for the Xbox have developed. Developers can maintain their software through downloadable patches. These changes would not have been possible in the past without the widespread availability of the Internet. The PC development is different. Game developers try to account for majority of configurations and hardware.

55

Making of Dungeon Siege II.

Preproduction

Every game begins with a story. Often story ideas come from game designers themselves or are pitched by outsiders, but increasingly they are based on other forms of entertainment like popular movies. Other common sources are sequels or spin offs of existing games and simulations of real-world events.

Once the basic game concept is decided upon, writers and artists work together on a storyboard. A storyboard consists of rough sketches and technical instructions sequentially organized to depict each scene of the game. It is a visual representation of the story and a reference for the writers, artists and designers just as it would be for a film. But while a film has a single storyline, a video game can have thousands of outcomes. Therefore various levels, or "worlds," of the game must be sketched out.

56

Creating the Characters

As the storyboard is made, designers begin to create the characters. Rough sketches of major characters are drawn and redrawn until they are perfect. It's important for the artists to refine the characters as much as possible at this stage because it will be costly to make changes later.

Once the character design is finalized, it's time to transform the sketches into controllable 3D characters. According to Steve Thompson, art director for Gas Powered Games, it takes about five days to design and program a character.

The sketches are first scanned into the computer. Then, a digital exoskeleton is created to define the character's shape and to give the computer the control points necessary to animate the figure. The more detailed this exoskeleton is, the more realistic the motion of the character will be. Next, layers of "skin" are added, followed by layers of color and texture.

Putting It All in Motion

At this point, the character is basically a digital marionette. The game programmers bring this figure to life by instructing the computer to move the character. Several techniques can be used to do this, depending on the type of game and motion desired. In some games (not Dungeon Siege II), the motions of a human actor are captured using a special suit of sensors to represent the control points of the character's skeleton. These movements then can be mapped onto the character's skeleton to produce ultra-realistic motion.

The Game World

One of the most important aspects of modern game creation is the environment. Subtle touches like reflections in shiny surfaces and varied cloud patterns often go unnoticed by players, but they help create a much more immersive environment. And often such details can propel the story forward: for example, a twig snapping under a character's foot can signal approaching danger.
57

As the power of home computers rapidly increases, game developers are able to create ever more realistic and complex environments. Levels of detail that were unimaginable only a few years ago are now commonplace. It's hard to imagine the game worlds that await us in the future.

The majority of 3-D objects created for computer games are made up of polygons. A polygon is an area defined by lines. Each polygon has a set of vertices to define its shape, and it needs information that tells it what to look like. The most commonly used method to transmit this information is "texture mapping."

You can think of texture mapping much like wrapping a present. Each side of the box being wrapped is a blank polygon and the "paper" is an image of the texture to be applied. Most video game consoles and computers contain a special chip and dedicated memory that store the special images used for texture mapping and apply them to each polygon on the fly. This allows games to have incredibly detailed 3-D environments that you can interact with in real time.

Code

Unseen to the user, but making all of the game elements work together, is the code. Code is the set of computer language instructions that controls every aspect of the game. Most games are written with custom code based on the C programming language. A 3-D code engine is almost always used to generate the incredibly complex code necessary for all of the polygons, shadows and textures the user sees on the screen.

Another important aspect of the code is the artificial intelligence component. This is the logic of the game, and it also establishes the physics of the game world, detecting the interactions and collisions between objects and controlling their movement.

58

Postproduction

Once the game is complete, it enters the postproduction phase. This phase includes extensive testing, review, marketing and finally, distribution.

Testing

The job of the testers is to play the game repeatedly to find all the mistakes, or "bugs." Problems are prioritized in many ways, from "fatal" bugs which must be resolved immediately, to minor issues which may or may not affect the game's release. When a problem is discovered, a detailed report is sent back to the developers and the error is corrected.

The first version sent to testers is called the "alpha" version, and it is tested to detect any major flaws in the game while they are still relatively easy to fix. Once all of the major flaws are addressed, a "beta" version is released, often to a larger group of testers that sometimes includes the public. The beta version is exhaustively tested, fixed and re-released until the developers are satisfied that the game is ready for primetime.

Usually during this testing phase, a copy of the game is sent to the Entertainment Software Rating Board to be given a rating. These ratings are intended to give consumers an idea of the content of the game and its appropriateness for different age groups.

Marketing

Games are big business. According to the Entertainment Software Association, a blockbuster game like Grand Theft Auto: Vice City can cost between $3 million $5 million to develop, with an addition $10 million for promotion and marketing.

All of this is done so that buyers will be willing to spend $15 to $60 (or more) to be immersed in the imaginary world that that game designers worked so hard to bring to life.
59

Qualification and skills needed to be a game developer Game development is probably the most complex sector in the whole graphics industry. It needs much more than mere creativity with respects to graphics. It demands high amount of knowledge in programming and physics as well. The games of today have a very high degree of realism, so much that at times its hard to distinguish real from fake even in games. This realism not only comes from graphics but also from the programming part. For example when a car jumps and lands back on the road, its suspension bounces to show the impact. This suspension effect is a result of programming where the programmer determines who hard it should bounce. Hence the knowledge in physics. A video game designer must have a strong set of skills, including programming, video graphics and hardware essentials. Video games are essentially sophisticated computer software that runs a routine while also accepting commands and data from controllers. Software contains the basic language that brings games to life. To work in the world of video game design, a game designer must be knowledgeable about computer programming and writing software. Computer animation and graphics also play a huge role in video games, and game designers must have at least some skills in these areas. Graphics is what the player actually sees on the screen, while animation refers to bringing items within a game -- such as characters and background -- to life by putting them in motion. Many players tend to judge the quality of a video game based on realism and creative application of the graphics and animation. If the software program is the "brains" of the game, graphics and animation are its "body."Video game designers also need a thorough knowledge of the workings of various game consoles like Playstation 3, Nintendo Wii and Microsoft Xbox. Each brand operates in its own way using its own operating characteristics. A video game designer must be aware of these characteristics to ensure their software is compatible with the console for which it's meant. This means game designers must have some familiarity with operating systems, chip design and other factors that determine how a console operates.

Many colleges, technical schools and universities offer classes, certificates and advanced degrees in areas such as computer programming, computer engineering, software development, computer animation and computer graphics. Acquiring accredited training in these areas will show a prospective employer you are serious about your chosen field.
60

Print Media
Printing is a process for reproducing text and image, typically with ink on paper using a printing press. It is often carried out as a large-scale industrial process, and is an essential part of publishing and transaction printing.

It is one of the oldest forms of publicity, which is used even today. Printing is done on a lot of media, for example newspapers, brochures, banners, boards and even on objects like t-shirts, key chains, etc. In olden times the graphic designing of what is to be printed was done on specific material based on where the printing would occur. However with the rise in technology today all the designing happens on the computer and is then transferred for printing through printers.

Some of the more common printing technologies are: Blueprint: - And related chemical technologies. Daisy wheel: - Where pre-formed characters are applied individually. Dot-matrix: - Which produces arbitrary patterns of dots with an array of printing studs. Line printing: - Where pre-formed characters are applied to the paper by lines. Heat transfer: - Like early fax machines or modern receipt printers that apply heat to special paper, which turns black to form the printed image. Inkjet including bubble jet: - Where ink is sprayed onto the paper to create the desired image. Electro photography: - Where toner is attracted to a charged image and then developed. Laser: - A type of xerography where the charged image is written pixel by pixel by a laser. Solid ink printer: - Where cubes of ink are melted to make ink or liquid toner. Gravure: - Is an intaglio printing technique, where the image to be printed is made up of
small depressions in the surface of the printing plate.

Offset printing: - Is a widely used printing technique where the inked image is transferred (or "offset") from a plate to a rubber blanket, then to the printing surface.
61

Types of Print Media:

Newspapers: Newspapers are the most popular forms of print media. The advertiser in this case can choose from a daily newspaper to a weekly tabloid. Different types of newspaper cater to various audiences and one can select the particular category accordingly. Advertisers then design press advertisements where in the size is decided as per the budget of the client. Newspapers are the most popular and easily recognizable form of print media. Newspapers can be published daily or weekly and cover local and international news stories. A newspaper is usually divided into different segments, news, opinions, advertisements, announcements, sports news, cartoons and television listings. A newspaper is a useful means for the dissemination of information, which is why it has remained popular despite the advancement in technology which gives people the option of reading their news online. The most important story is usually featured on the front page, under a headline with a byline stating the name of the reporter who wrote the story. Different types of newspapers cater to different readers. For instance, some daily papers focus on the stock exchange, some focus on current affairs while others focus on sensational news stories. The newspapers with the most circulation usually generate the most revenue because advertisers are willing to advertise in them since they know they will get more value for their money.

Magazines: Magazines also offer advertisers an opportunity to incorporate various new techniques and ideas. Magazines are one such form of print media that give a more specific target group to the client. The client can make a choice of the particular magazine as per the product. A magazine is a publication which is published on a set schedule: weekly, fortnightly, monthly or quarterly. A magazine is usually funded by advertisers, outright purchase at magazine stands, from vendors and other distribution outlets, and through subscription by readers. Magazines usually have a niche audience since they focus on a specific interest; a magazine focusing on horses would target those who have interests in horses, and magazines focusing on housekeeping or women's health usually target women of a certain demographic. Magazines can be available in specific regions or cities, in the whole nation or even internationally.

62

Newsletters: Newsletters also form an important part of print media. These target a specific group of audience and give information on the product. A newsletter is a publication which usually deals with one topic which its subscribers find useful and which is distributed on a regular basis. Clubs, societies, churches, businesses and associations regularly produce newsletters to provide information to their members, employees and customers. Some newsletters are used as a means for making money because they are sold directly to subscribers.

Brochures: Brochures give detailed information about the product. These are mainly distributed at events or even at the main outlet when a consumer needs to read in detail about the product. A brochure (also referred to as a pamphlet) is a type of leaflet. Brochures are most commonly found at places that tourists frequently visit, such as museums, major shops, and tourist information. Brochure racks or stands may suggest visits to amusement parks and other points of interest. Another type of brochure is interpersonal brochures, which are brochures based on other people. Then there are pamphlets that you can find in health clinics and hospitals that give help and advice to do with your health. Booklet brochures are made of multiple sheets most often saddle stitched (stapled on the creased edge) or "perfect bound" like a paperback book, and result in eight panels or more. Brochures are often printed using four color process on thick gloss paper to give an initial impression of quality. Businesses may turn out small quantities of brochures on a computer printer or on a digital printer, but offset printing turns out higher quantities for less cost. Compared with a flyer or a handbill, a brochure usually uses higher-quality paper, more color, and is folded.

Posters: Posters are forms of outdoor advertising. The message in a poster has to be brief and eye-catching as it targets a person on the move. A poster is any piece of printed paper designed to be attached to a wall or vertical surface. Typically posters include both textual and graphic elements, although a poster may be either wholly graphical or wholly text. Posters are designed to be both eye-catching and informative.

63

Importance Of Graphics In The Corporate World

Design is not an expense it is an investment Graphic design is not just the difference between beautiful and boring. It is the difference between customers choosing you and choosing your competitors. A powerful tool for business, graphic design is really not an expense. It is an investment not only in looking good, but in the success of your business. Your image is the only thing potential buyers can connect with. Make sure the impression you are making is the right one. Proper design has the power to: 1. Improve your image and strengthen your brand 2. Make your business stand out from your competitors' 3. Sell your messages to customers more convincingly

Graphics in any form be it in the form of web sites, advertisements, logos, trademarks or even simply things like the packaging is always the 1st impression on a perspective customer. Human behavior is such that people tend to believe more of what they see. We tend to judge a products quality and reliability according to the quality of the advertisement, website or even packaging material.

This is the reason firms functioning in every field pay a lot of attention to every aspect dealing with graphics in the firm. It is the graphics industry that creates an interface between the people and the firm. It is like the front face of the firm.

Let us now look at a few functions of corporate firms that are handled by the graphic industry. Well also see how each function affects the firm directly and indirectly.

64

1. Advertisements

Advertising is a favorable representation of product to make consumer, customers and general public aware of product. It let the potential buyers, general public and end users to be aware and familiar with the brands and their goods and services. Before going on the importance of advertising, we would have an introduction to advertising first. Advertising can be define as a paid form of non professional but encouraging, complimenting and positively favorable presentation of goods and services to a group of people by an identified sponsor. In simplest words advertising is introduction, to consumers and general public, of services and goods. Many people think that advertising a product means to sell it. But real aim of advertising is to make general public and potential buyers aware of goods, products and services available under a brand. In most cases products are seen or noticed by the public for the first time in advertisements. Hence in most cases this is like the 1st impression of the products. This 1st impression goes a long way in the minds of the people. For E.G even today most people remember maggi Noodles as a two-minute noodle because the initial ads emphasized more on this aspect.

Besides this people tend to judge a product according to the advertisement. For E.g. vicco turmeric cream ads are simple and plain, they feature small time actors with simple dialogues, hence people think of the product as a simple one with not much features too. On the other hand Olay cosmetic ads are produced on large budgets with high profile celebrities, thus when we see the ad we think of Olay as a good brand as well.

For any product to flourish in the market, advertising about it is necessary. While some firms prefer to make and publish the ads themselves, many are opting to consult advertising agencies. Advertising agencies are third party firms that specialize in all the functions of making and advertisement. In simple terms an advertising agency is a branch of the advertising agency itself.

65

Let us now look at the importance of an advertising agency.

Many of the firms have their own department of advertising whose aim to advertise the companys merchandise and services to the potential buyers and make general consumers aware of different aspects of their brand.

While, on the other hand, many organizations depends upon advertising agencies for promoting their brands and services with are available under their roof for the consumers disposal. Organizations are supposed to pay a certain amount to those agencies for the promotion of their brand name.

Advertising agencies have expert consultants and executives to make proper strategies to promote your brands. They are always there to suggest, help and make most of your advertising cost by promoting your brand on right place by appropriate means at suitable time for apt duration.

Advertising, in fact, is proper promotion of the products not selling of item. By means of it organizations can give proper information about their brands to the costumers and consumers. Good advertising helps to increases sale and assist salesman to sale goods and services. It facilitates general people to buy advertised brands. Potential buyers are more interested in buying those brands which are advertised in an attractive manner. Advertising can form a connection between company and customers. It wont be wrong in calling advertising a mean communication between companies and their customers. Advertising does not give a proper awareness of brands but a nice introduction of companies as well. Attractive advertising increases the demand of public which directly boost sales of brand.

66

2. Web-site

The web-site is one of the most popular interfaces between customers and the firm. Traditionally there was little scope of interaction between the firm and the people. People had to spend their own money to make phone calls in order to complain. While feedbacks and suggestions had to be mailed by post. People had to visit a number of stores to purchase products. However now all this can be done from home or anywhere in the world where a computer and internet connection is available. From purchasing a product to lodging a complaint about it, everything can be done over the internet. We may have read a lot of articles about how the internet has revolutionized the way commercial buying and selling takes place. However theyll be very few articles about how web sites made it easy for us to use the internet in the first place. Initially commands had to be typed in text and sent over the internet and information would return in the same text form. Imagine having to do that even today. Hardly anyone would prefer using the internet in that case. It is web sites that made it easy for everyone to use the internet. Buying and selling had become easy not only because of the internet but also because of the changing trends in web site layouts. Now just hovering over an image of a product will open a fly-out showing all the necessary details on the product. Web-designers are responsible for making these web pages. They have to keep them self in the viewers place n create a web site that would be convenient for the final viewer. Just like advertisements people tend to just the firm based on the quality of the web-site the visit. For E.G a person visiting a web-site which takes time to load and does not respond in time is likely to leave the site even though the products are of good quality. On the other hand when he visits a site that gives him a pleasant surfing experience, hes more likely to invest in that firm. This is the main reason why some site flourish so well while others eventually wither off.

67

Let us now look at a few benefits a firm can have by owning a web site.

There are approximately 970 million Internet users, 15% of the world's population. Thus it is a most efficient way to get potential customers from all over the world through internet marketing.

Websites have no boundaries as far as place or region or country is concern. It is international. If you have a website, then you have something international that overcomes the limits between countries and continents.

Through website designing you will get identity, global presence and good business channel once you make entry in the www (World Wide Web) and promote the website through web marketing.

There are competitions in every business. This is like going for a business exhibition on internet. You cannot stop competition in any business but at least make your identity so that your potential customers are given a chance of comparing and subsequently buying your products or engaging your services with the help of professional business website.

If you own small company and you want to explore globally than website is the only effective media to connect people by creative web design India with web promotion. If you have a SEO friendly website, potential customers are inclined to know more about you. Then you can explain to them why your products are great or how excellent and reliable your services are and, also satisfying them by showing your work profiles.

Having a website means your business is open and reachable round the clock and throughout the year. Your web site is your online shop and it is open for 24/7. Website transmits your message in a few seconds.

In website, content can be changed very easily. You can get good ranking in search pages by writing SEO friendly copy writing in your website. Professionally design Websites can easily fit on CDs and their content can be presented as the companys virtual business card or as the companys portfolio. There are various types of website designing such as Static Web site Design, Flash Web Site Design, Dynamic Website Design, Hybrid Websites Design, SEO Website. The type of website depends on the type of your business.

Static websites are generally text base. Static websites are more search engine friendly websites for internet marketing India.

68

Flash web sites are for entertainment, game, animation or visual effects. Flash sites are very useful to represent your product or service in innovative way. Flash site gives unique and novel look to your web site.

Dynamic websites can be used for various applications, whereby from login pages, company employees can login to update and report data directly in and from the projects database. You can opt to go for a dynamic website which will automatically change your content based on changes to your business, like stock items, stock status, prices, important messages, news, articles, services and more.

Hybrid website is mixer of static and flash sites. Hybrid site is useful when you wish to make search engine friendly website with text, visual and flash animation. Today, many businesses depend on their website. They gained vast exposure and have increased their sales revenue by developing professional website design and search engine friendly website.

To get maximum benefit of website you need to design web site by professional Web Design Company and have web optimization by professional SEO Company.

69

3. Packaging

Packaging is a very important marketing strategy to glamorize your product in order to attract the consumers attention. Sometimes packaging is so important that it cost more than the product itself in order to lure the consumers to buy it. Packaging should definitely be included in the 4 major Ps of marketing (product, place, promotion and price).

Most consumers judge a product by its packaging before buying. So it is logical to say attractive packaging is crucial in order to get the first time buyers to buy your products. Without attractive packaging, who would buy it in order to try it? Your first step to enter the market is crushed if the packaging is ugly. Having attractive packaging doesnt mean you should neglect quality either. In fact, you need to make high quality products in order to have repeated sales. Converting first time buyers into loyal customers should be the main goal of your business and packaging is the door to it.

Packaging is one of those crucial steps that is often neglected in business. Ask yourself this question, would you buy a plain looking item or something excitingly packaged that makes anyone drool?

70

4.

Product design

Product Design combines ergonomics with product and business knowledge to generate ideas and concepts and convert them into physical and usable objects or services. The discipline covers the entire range of activities from concept, manufacturing, testing to product launch. Product Designers conceptualize and evaluate ideas and themes they find profitable. They make these ideas tangible through products using a systematic approach. A product designer plays diverse roles. The designer has to be a marketing manager, product manager, industrial designer and design engineer and should be able to use the rules of good design with a view to create good products. The latest digital technology provides designers a number of options to communicate, visualize and analyze ideas.

The designer should be creative and have analytical ability. Many industrial designers use systematic design methodologies to satisfy their creative ability. Some of the commonly used methods include sketching, research, comparative product research, prototyping, model making and testing. The products are designed keeping in mind the needs of the user and utility of the product. The product must directly relate to and be compatible with human characteristics, needs and interests.

The product should be user friendly, efficient and should look good.

The product must be good in design, value function and appearance. It must be useful to both user and manufacturer. Product designers are equipped and skilled to visualize a concept and bring it to reality. They have a good knowledge of engineering and are well versed with the concepts of industrial design,

The product designer must have a good idea of the concept and should be able to refine the concept as he goes along. The designer should be able to work on creating the product after looking into all aspects of the product. The designer should be able to put all the activities relating to the launch of the product in a schedule and be able to work within the schedule with a minimum cost and budget overrun.

71

Life of a graphic designer

Graphic arts refer to the artistic interpretation and creation of design through artistic expression. In other words, graphic art is the art of visualizing ideas. Graphic artists use their creativity and talent to design, display, advertise, package and promote. Graphic design is seen everywhere in the world around us from books and magazines, food products, cars, household appliances, clothing, computers, and everything in between.

A graphic artist is also often referred to as a graphic designer. He or she uses a diverse range of media to create designs and visually convey a message or an idea to the public. Since the aim of a graphic designer is to enhance the image and salability of a product, the work profile could encompass designs for websites, logos, stationery, print material, advertisements, films and videos, posters, brochures, and other promotional materials. Responsibilities could also include overseeing layouts during printing of magazines, books and newspapers, designing sets for theatre and film and even furniture design. Many graphic designers still use traditional tools such as pencil, ink and paper but more and more now rely on computer aided technology and the latest design software to enhance their work.

Graphic artists are required to hold a Graphic Arts degree or a diploma in Graphic Design, Visual Art or Commercial Art. In addition to this, hands-on experience is necessary along with a portfolio full of ideas and work. A graphic artist needs to be independent and self motivated and possess the imagination and creativity to deal with a range of subjects and products. A close attention to detail and an instinct for color, shape and form is essential. A good graphic artist would be one with an exposure to a wide range of media and communication techniques. He or she will be fluent in handling all sorts of tools, techniques, drawings and models. Graphic designers need to evaluate their customers needs and must be adept at all sorts of sales and marketing strategies. Therefore, a comprehensive knowledge of theory and methodology is required to excel in this type of career.

72

Today, good Graphic Design Programs mix creativity with technology and business skills. Course material should include (among others) Web page design, Flash, Typography, JavaScript, Web Animation, Photoshop, Illustrator, Pre-press Operations, Internet Management, Marketing, Computer Fundamentals, and Desktop Publishing.

Graphic designers have the choice to work alone or as a part of a large design team. They could opt for consultancy services or freelance work if they do not want to be tied down to a particular design studio or advertising agency. Media opportunities for graphic artists could be found in print, packaging, movie, video, television or radio. Graphic artists can be employed by magazines or newspapers, books, advertising agencies and graphic design firms as well as non-profit organizations, governmental agencies, companies and for specific events.

A career in design could lead to various positions in the field of graphic arts such as Art director, Directors - state, motion picture, television, radio, Visual artists, Animators, Children book illustrators, Commercial and industrial designer, Fashion designer, Interior designer, Set designer, Painters and illustrators, Cartoonist, comic book artists, Camera operator, television, video or motion picture operators, Desktop publisher, Composing room supervisor and Online producer.

And as the years go by, jobs for graphic designers are only expected to rise and individuals with experience in animation and Web design will have the best opportunity to qualify for the newer job positions being created in the fields of technology. A career in graphic design is assuredly fast growing and one that is becoming more and more competitive with every passing day. People now recognize the earning potential of such a career and the flexibility and independence offered by the choices within this field. Whether you work full-time in a small studio or large agency or freelance full-time on your own terms, the bottom line is that graphic arts is a great choice for people who need to express themselves creatively and earn well at the same time.

73

Freelancing
Many graphic designers work on freelance basis, which means theyre not employed by any company. They work independently and take orders from clients. It is a good option as youre not working under anyone had theres 100percent freedom and flexibility. However there are cons as well. Following are a few pros as well as cons in freelancing.

Ultimate Flexibility of Time

When it comes to freelancing, people generally have the idea that freelancers get to do what they want, whenever they want it. With nobody to monitor them, its understandable why people think of freelancing that way. In fact, it is in all likelihood that this is the idea that leads most people to take up freelancing. Other than deadlines to follow, there are usually no other time limitation as to how you wish to get your work done. Instead of following a rigid 8-to-5 working schedule, you can now work during any time of the day. What this means is that late sleepers who function best during the wee hours of the night can finally avoid the drag-yourself-out-of-bed syndrome. And what does this translate to? Greater job satisfaction and higher productivity. Besides, whats really benefit is no more calls and complicated sick leave application to do while youre really sick. You no longer need to suffer from your bad cold under the office temperature which is strictly 18 degrees Celsius. You wont get scolded or looked down by cold-blooded manager simply because you are ill. Youll thank yourself for being freelancer while resting on the bed.

Your Own Working Environment Hows the world without co-workers? You can customize your working environment to any style you like (heck, we even got showcase for you to refer)! You can do any entertainment you like, says, playing rock music with the volume turn way up or stop for a break any time to catch your favorite sitcom. You have the entire house for

74

yourself instead of a cramped cubicle! No other office work can afford such control over your working condition. The other goodness is you can avoid the damned office politics. When there are workers around you competing for promotions, its inevitable that we will get ourselves tangled with politics. But if youre working alone, the only one youre competing with is yourself and the market for freelancers. As the proximity of competition for the latter is too far to be felt directly, such stress would somehow affect you to a lesser extent.

Better Income Control You can save a lot of income by working from home, cant you? Commuting time and cost for work are no longer applicable to you, except those times when you might need to meet clients. You can also cut back on child care services since you are now able to stay home with your children. Instead of depending on work appraisals by your superiors for promotions and increments of pay, your income is now only at the mercy of your own efforts. How hard you work will determine how much you can earn. Rather than having your advancement being encumbered in office politics, you can now determine your own income. Youre your own boss, dont you remember it?

The Price of Freedom: Self-discipline Nothing is absolutely good in this world, so its not surprising that such freedom comes with a price. Setting income expectations is an essential initial step, but getting it is another thing. Youll need higher than average level of self-discipline and motivation to keep your business going, and more if you want it to flourish. A lack of supervision by a boss can result in such circumstances when you just take your freedom for granted. After you got used to the idea of being free and powerful over your work, you get complacent. This is when you start getting sloppy in your work and miss deadlines. As this is indeed a recurring issue with most freelancers

75

Solitude & Independence When youre running a one-man show, you need to be proactive and resourceful. Sometimes the client might require you to do beyond what youre familiar with, which means you have to know where and how to acquire the necessary skills. The problem is that you dont have co-workers or an experienced mentor to consult with, but the issue can be possibly solved by online forum. Another issue with going solo as a freelancer is that you feel isolated if youre working alone day in, day out. This is also why motivation is hard to sustain as a freelancer, unless you look forward to working quietly by yourself every day. It will be good to maintain good social support outside of your work. A short-term alternative is you can do a self review and appreciate the advantages of freelancing when you are feeling very alone. You have to be serious in tackling the issue of loneliness as it is mostly the root of depression that drags down your life satisfaction like theres no tomorrow.

Unity of Work & Life Confucius once said that Choose a job you love, and you will never have to work a day in your life. With all due respect to his wisdom, I still think it might be a bad idea to combine work with life. Even if you have the passion for what youre doing, there will still be trying times when you feel dreadful about certain aspects of your work. Well, the bad news is freelancers life is mostly a mix of work and personal life. With your home as your office, and your office as your home, any problem you face in either your personal life or work life might affect another significantly. Just imagine that the moment you wake up, youre already at work! Either you get your work and personal life balanced, or you ensure that the satisfaction from work can boost your personal life or vice versa.

76

Future to come
According to a recent report by Pricewaterhouse Coopers International Limited, an international business consulting service provider, the Indian animation industry is poised to grow by, about 23% in the next four years! This means that the value of the industry that was estimated at 18.5 billion in 2009 will be a whopping 54 billion by 2014.

This income has mainly come about as a result of the growing reputation of India as a quality place to outsource animation work to. Production for films including the Lord of the Rings, the Harry Potter series, The Chronicles of Narnia, and Spiderman 3 have taken place here during the last few years.

Cartoons that were strictly in the domain of Cartoon Network are now a regular feature of many channels including POGO, Hungama TV, Nickelodeon, Disney XD and Disney Channel. From merely being a country that helps Hollywood studios make animated films, we are now witnessing several Desi production houses evince interest in making such films.

Some of the films that will be made during the coming years include Walt Disney's Zokkomon and Krayon Pictures' Delhi Safari, amid others. What also works in the favour of the growth of the animation industry is the anticipated phenomenal growth of an allied industry - the gaming industry - that is expected to grow by about 36 per cent in the next four years.

All in all, the growth of the industry means that the time is perhaps the ripest it has been in recent years for students interested in dabbling with the virtual world.

The primary growth of the industry results from the increased volumes of outsourced work that the country's animation studios have received. The industry is short of people with quality skills. This fact shows how promising and opportunistic this field is going to be.

77

Professionals feel that the Government has to form a body like the UGC (University Grants Commission) to standardize animation courses in the country like the US , this is because a number of small time institutes are coming into existence in order to take advantage of the growing demand of this field. It will also help provide the Indian animation industry that needs about 25,000 skilled employees in the coming year to get only the best skilled candidates.

Professionals from the field also suggest that a student interested in making a career in this industry take up courses in animation or game development after finishing Class 12. It is a creatively fulfilling industry. The animation industry is like any other industry. As long as a candidate is genuinely interested, willing to learn continually and have a desire to contribute creatively, a job here is easy to find.

Opportunities for students are abundant in the industry as things are definitely looking upbeat. Courses in this industry can cost anywhere between 10,000 and 3 lakhs based on the duration of the course and any possible affiliations that the institute may have with foreign universities.

The animation industry may not seem too accommodating initially, if one is prepared to spend time and gather experience, it will reap rich dividends.

78