So what are the latest trends and concepts that you need to keep pace with in 3D animation? One of the most exciting trends that you need to keep pace with is the concept of Phenadistoscope. This is not a very familiar term. What you need to know about this term without getting intimidated is that the term simply refers to what was simply a matter of drawings that were designed to move simultaneously.

What you also need to know is that the concept is still the same today just that new methods have been invented to reproduce the results in better ways. The methods have changed but the result is the same. You also need to know that the methods of Phenadistoscope have been obsolete since the beginning of the 21st century. These methods gave way to the new methods that have been designed to achieve the same result in radically different ways.

You are right to guess what this new method is- the computer. The computer has revolutionized a lot of ways in which things get done these days. The major developments that came with the computer entail that the drawings can now be scanned and transferred into computer or better still created on the computer. The computer has the capability of the rendering the images that represent movement at a very fast rate.

These images are generated from the concepts of 2D or 3D artwork. What happens after that is that the images will be then put in a particular order that the computer is then able to simulate what we can term as an illusion of movement. What has transformed the animation and graphic design landscape is the ability that has come with the computer to view the created objects or images from all angles.

Modern applications are designed to generate typical drawings that that can even be styled as hand drawn images.

This is enabled by what is known as cel-shading. There are some advanced effects that you get with some of these applications and these can be used to achieve skin and facial expression effects and even ‘cloth’ effects. This normally goes with an effect called morph. What this means is that the images in the frames and the vertex will move to a different position. There are many techniques that are emerging and if you are keen to get hands-on with the developments you will do well to run researches and find out what is happening in the flourishing 3D animation industry.