Programming Animation
Traditional 2D animation is still alive and kicking, Although Adobe Flash, the standard for the last 15 years is now being phased out, there is still a demand for old school frame-by-frame animation. Retro 1980’s style 8-bit graphics have made a big comeback on mobile devices. (You can tell I still enjoy pixel-pushing). In the past, when animating something that involved randomness, like an explosion or fire it was a lot of work. Extra attention was required to ensure the animation didn’t repeat itself too much. Explosions with smoke and projectiles can be very complicated to draw. Each rock needs a trajectory with gravity that obeys physics. Often animation houses had one person that specialized in drawing such effects. 2D sprites can be animated realistically with code, but it requires a solid understanding of physics formulas and such. There must be some way for an animator to do this without getting all mathy: Enter the 2D physics engine. There are many open source (free) physics engines out there right now. Basically, they do all the heavy lifting for you when it comes to animating realistic physics situations. Angry Birds is probably the most well known 2d game demonstrating this. Some of the most popular are Box2D, LibGDX and Cocos2D. You can read all over the internet on how easy these are to use. Let me say this: they are NOT easy to use. These engines require a full understanding of the languages to which they are based on (C++, Java, Objective C) and there is little to no documentation on how to use them. If you are an artist and need the easiest physics engine to use, I suggest checking out GameMaker software. It’s not as powerful but it’s totally easy to use and you can make full blown games without having to code! Another fantastic physics engine is Unity, it’s a complete game development platform really but it’s easy to pick up. It offers both 2D & 3D, and does require some basic C# experience, but hey- you’re an artist that’s programming right? Unity 5 is free, but It requires you to purchase it for commercial use. When you animate a tower of blocks falling to the ground, and you're asked to change it, no problem! Just finesse the physics settings and try it again. Ask a traditional animator to do that!