ANIMATION
From Snow White to South Park, Monsters, Inc. to Minecraft, animation captures the imagination like little else. Here's everything you need to know about animation types, techniques and how to get started, including how AI is opening up new ways to create.
Cartoons are animated films, often with an exaggerated visual style and wacky plotlines. They're made using animation techniques but have a distinct history, tracing back to the satirical magazine and newspaper illustrations of the 18th and 19th centuries.
Anime is a style of Japanese animation. It's a diverse medium, but is often characterised by imaginative plotlines, distinctive camera work and beautiful settings — think Pokémon or Studio Ghibli films like Spirited Away.
Animators physically manipulate objects in tiny increments to create the impression of movement. Examples of this low-budget but highly distinctive style include Tim Burton's The Nightmare Before Christmas and the early cutout work of Matt Stone and Trey Parker.
You can see moving 2D figures in zoetrope machines, one of the earliest animation devices, which wowed Victorian audiences with a set of sequenced images inside a rotating, slatted cylinder. Today, 2D animation is commonly associated with moving vector images created using Adobe Animate (formerly Adobe Flash), a mainstay of mid-2000s online cartoons and games.
You'll find CGI animation everywhere from your favourite video games to the latest Pixar release. Like 2D vector animation, CGI artists rig their characters with a set of key movements, a technique closer to puppetry than traditional animation.
Motion graphics bring text, logos and other static designs to life. You'll find them in TV ads, explainer videos and animated logos.
Beyond the main categories above, animators draw on a wider toolkit of traditional animation techniques and effects, refined long before computers and still used today, often alongside digital tools.
Claymation. Claymation artists use stop-motion techniques to capture the movements of miniature clay models. The result is charmingly lo-fi but highly intricate; famous claymation artists include Wallace and Gromit creator Nick Park.
Flip book animation. If you want to see the essence of animation, take a look at a flip book: a series of images that, flicked between pages, gradually create the impression of a moving image.
Morphing. Beloved of sci-fi, horror and fantasy creators, morphing involves transitioning one image into another. It had something of a heyday in 1980s and 1990s music videos and live-action films.
Walk cycle. A walk cycle ties a series of individual motions together to create the impression of walking, then repeats the cycle to avoid re-animating each step. A basic four-motion cycle is relatively simple, but realistic walk cycles require close attention to detail.
Animation lip syncing. Animating a mouth to match its speech can be complicated, but it's essential to creating a realistic character.
Cel shading. Cel shading is used to make 3D computer graphics appear flat, often to mimic a comic book or cel animation aesthetic.
Rotoscoping. Animators trace animated images over motion picture footage, traditionally using a glass-panelled device called a Rotoscope. Today the process has gone digital, but the name has stuck.
Easing (CSS). Easing helps animators create realistic transitions in movement. It's a subtle but important art: when we throw a ball or open a drawer, it rarely moves at a constant speed, and easing makes these everyday actions feel more natural.
Rigging. Widely used in 3D and 2D animation to create moving characters, rigging involves building a skeleton, a surface representation with a set of interconnected, movable parts.
Masking. Masking covers and hides portions of an image against a backdrop, creating the illusion of an object moving in and out of its setting.
Mechanical animation. Engineers often create 3D renderings of complex mechanical goods to demonstrate how products work, from assembly to repair.
Typography. Typography animators animate text for film, TV and marketing. The field can also cover font design.
Adobe Firefly's generative AI tools give animators a faster route from idea to finished clip, without rigging or keyframing a single frame by hand.
Bring a character or scene to life with the AI animation generator. It's a quick way to see an idea in motion before refining it further.
Generate a few different styles for the same character or scene with Text to Image, then pick the one worth animating.
Already have a design, sketch or reference image? Image to Video can bring it to life directly, without redrawing it from scratch.
Export what you generate and bring it straight into Adobe Premiere or After Effects to refine timing, add sound and finish the piece the way you always have.
Whether you're a budding CGI artist or an old-school claymation purist, you'll need solid animation software for beginners to get started, something that covers the fundamentals without overwhelming you on day one.
Adobe Animate is a strong choice for web, TV and gaming creations in 2D and 3D, covering the tricks of the trade from tweening and rigging through to sequencing. Adobe After Effects helps you take your creations further with visual effects, motion graphics and compositing. And if you're working in stop motion, Adobe Premiere is the place to import your images and piece them together, sequencing, editing and animating all in one place.
Animation is a dream job for many of us, but how do you get started? Building a career, or just getting good at animation as a hobby, comes down to developing your craft, building practical experience and creating a strong portfolio.
Dedicating real time to your craft matters: read around theories like the 12 principles of animation, get inspired by well-known and more obscure animators and don't overlook adjacent skills like acting, which can help you create a more fluid, realistic character. Formal education isn't the only route into the industry. The National Careers Service lists university and college courses, apprenticeships, specialist training and working your way up through the industry as possible routes into animation. From there, start creating characters, sequences and short films of your own and build a portfolio that demonstrates your skills and individual style.
Increasingly, it's also worth getting comfortable with AI tools. Adobe research into the future of creative work found that AI skills became more explicit in creative job requirements between September 2025 and April 2026, including in animator roles. Developing AI skills alongside hands-on animation skills may therefore help strengthen your portfolio as the industry evolves.
From there, it's a matter of putting what you've learned to use: start creating characters, sequences and short films of your own, then build a portfolio that shows how you're unique and how you bring stories and objects to life (Adobe Express is a good place to find inspiration and drag your files into a template). Armed with a portfolio, get your name out there by approaching animation and design studios or staying in touch with individual animators for assistant work, then apply. Creative roles can be competitive, so developing your skills, portfolio and industry connections can help strengthen your applications.
Whether you're a studio animator, a creative freelancer or just a hobbyist, the process of creating an animation tends to follow a similar pattern. It starts with a story, however simple, since developing one before production makes your workflow more efficient and your animation more engaging. From there you put that story to the page or screen with a script and some concept art, which between them help you spot issues early and establish a consistent visual style.
Storyboarding comes next, essential to planning the pace, beats and look of your film, and once you've got one, an animatic gives you a rough early impression of how the story will actually look. Only then do you animate: start with a reference video to nail down specific movements, create key frames in your design software to represent the essentials of the movement, and add in-between motions to make them fluid. AI animation generators are increasingly used at this stage too, to generate a first pass quickly before refining by hand. Post-production adds the special effects and lighting your film needs to make it pop from the screen, along with rendering and colour correction to make each shot match the last, and finally, your soundtrack: music, sound effects and dialogue to complement your animation.
Explore how computer animation works, from CGI techniques to the software behind it.
Explore how AI is changing motion graphics, from concepting to final animation.
Generate storyboard frames in seconds and speed up your pre-production process.
Discover the simplest form of animation, and how it still shapes the craft today.
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