1. Task 2-Investigate the development of animation
Hand drawn (cel) animation
Hand drawn cel animation is what gives films, TV and games a cartoony kind of drawn look. This
used to be done just by drawing on pieces of paper and things but more recently this can be done
using computer programmes to give it a better but still hand drawn look.
This is common for cartoons such as Tom and Jerry and Dragonball Z.
Flick books
Flick books were one of the first and earliest forms of animation.
Flick books are a way to animate things; they use something called persistence of vision.
Persistence of vision is the theory that an afterimage persists for approximately one twenty-fifth of a
second on the retina after an image has been seen. This makes it look like the static images are
moving.
Animated cartoons
Animated cartoons are commonly used as children’s programmes since they have a childish kind of
look to them.
This is becoming a more common way to make children’s films as well such as Shrek. The first
animated film was Snow White and the Seven Dwarves.
Animation process
The first ways of animation processes involved drawing each individual frame of the film which took
a very long time, over 3 years to make snow white.
In more recent times there are computer programmes such as flash which make the animation
process much easier since it has options where you can make two frames and then the programme
will fill in what would happen in between them which cuts the time down by a lot.
Graphic information file format (gif)
The GIF file format is also known as a graphics interchange format, this format supports up to 8 bits
per pixel, this format also supports animations and separate palettes for each frame.
This format is unsuitable for reproducing images and photographs with continuous colours.
The files in this are compressed.
Designed specifically for web use.

2. Dynamic hypertext mark-up language (dhtml)
Dhtml is a tool which can be used to make parts of a website interactive or animated, for example
roll over buttons, images moving across the screen and forms which can be filled in by users.
Extensible hypertext mark-up language (xhtml)
XHTML is a combination of HTML and XML (eXtensibleMarkup Language)
This means that XHTML contains all the elements of HTML but with the added strict syntax of XML.
For example in HTML if you were to say to forget to close a tag, the chances are the site would still
work, however, when using XHTML the site would not work since there is a fault or something
wrong with the coding.
HTML has been designed for displaying data and XHTML is designed for describing data and also for
displaying data.
Some of the main differences between HTML and XHTML are that in XHTML elements must be
properly nested e.g.
Also elements must always be closed and must always be in lowercase.
Java applets
A java applet is a way of accessing different types of online media without having to install the
specific programme required, instead the Java Applet allows you to run the online media (like
animation videos) as you would a normal game or video.