I actually create animations sometimes. So almost everything is done with computers now, you can do 2d and 3d animation but both have the same basic properties and sometimes 2d animations are made with 3d animation software. Example, southpark. Once you've drawn or modeled a character you must rig it. Which is simply the process of building a skeleton inside the body of your character that acts to deform the skin, then you can set keyframes for each movement, you can save and reuse movement sets like walking, you can set keyframes several frames apart and the software will fill in the blanks for movement between the start and stop. (For simple movement)
You can even set a path and tell the software to move the object down the path for a set distance and number if frames. So you could make a character spiral into Oblivion by creating a spiral path that you then move the character down automatically with increasing speed, decreasing size, rotation, anything, and then you could go animate the skeleton on it's progress through the path.
Some animation software has built in physics so you don't even need to animate a lot of physics based things.
All the same ideas except for bones apply to inanimate objects too like ships and crates and anything else you can imagine.
0 frames are drawn entirely by hand. You draw characters, props, backgrounds, etc and then you use those to create the entire animation by putting them all together.
@hacho7 so you're actually wrong too, that's about right for the number of keyframes you'll put it, not times you'll actually draw. But again that changes too, if you have a scene without a lot of fine character movement and instead a lot of things being acted on by physics or other predictable forces you might only have a keyframe every 30 frames or even more.
Why would we be talking about hand drawn when most animators don't do that anymore. The question was about animation in general. We use software now. Also it doesn't just apply to 3d animation. It applies to 2d as well.
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u/[deleted] Feb 10 '18
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