Animation in general is a slow process. If you do not think so, read up on how long it used to take them at Walt Disney Studios to make just a few seconds of movie film. The reason that the old TV cartoon shows were so devoid of a lot of action was because of the time it took to produce it.

Most people have made a stick man animation when they were young. It may have been part of a school assignment, or just something to doodle with so they could flip the corners of a notebook and see "movement" or animation. As elementary as that form of animation may have been, it still required some time to complete.

One of the great things that computers achieved was the simplification of video animation. The truly great animators still take a long time creating their designs, but the finished production is much better than could have been hoped for in years past.

For the average person, animation cannot really be attempted without learning some basics about creative software that allows "drawing" by way of manipulating digital media. Creating images that appeared three-dimensional was difficult before the use of computer animation, but it is becoming commonplace now.

Many software manufacturers have designed ways to accomplish animation, building off the technological advances employed by the big movie producers. It is now possible to design a character, place it in one pose, go to a pose that is related, and allow the computer software to fill in the frames from the one pose to the other to make a fluid movement.

Several movements can be pieced together in this fashion producing an animation that is believable when all the files are strung together. In this way, a character can appear to be walking by looping the files repeatedly. A character with a transparent background can be overlain on any scenery desired. This makes it possible to add animation to a real life video.

This technology went from Hollywood to the home in just scant years, and many of the softwares you find are relatively inexpensive or even free. The expensive computers that it once required to run the programs are the ones you can buy at the store now for a moderate cost. Therefore, the capabilities are there for whoever wants to become an animator. One thing that has not changed in the grand scheme is that it still requires talent and time to make any animation, if it is a good one.