Animation is the process where still pictures are turned into moving pictures. This is done by flashing a series of images. Individual drawings are called cells, individual photographs are called frames. Animation is used in cartoons, television, and film.
Where did animation first start?
The very first attempts of animation were Palaeolithic cave paintings where the drawings are drawn in such a motion that you can tell who ever drew them wanted the people to know that it was in a motion and that one drawing after another is actually whats happening and it does show the motion in how they were moving and what they were going to do next. Around 5000 years ago an old earthen bowl was found with 5 images in corresponding order one after another off a goat. the first image being a goat standing in upright position and then 4 more images off the goat jumping, but it could not be called animation because there was no proof of the goat actually moving or no equipment to show the goat being animated or attempt to move.
Another early trace of animation was over 2000 years ago by a chinese man named ding huan, he created a device called a "zoetrope" which was referred to as the pipe which makes fantasies appear. he had pictures painted on paper and placed on a circular panel and when spun around at the right speed it would look like its moving. This was created around 180AD there are more recent devices similar to a zoetrope, the phenakistoscope, praxinoscope and the flip book which were also devices in which the appearance of moment was made through images moving in a certain motion.
A french artist called Emile Cohl started of his career being an artist by drawing cartoon strips in which he created a film in 1908 called "fantasmagorie" the film was based on a stick figure moving in motion and transforming into different objects such as flowers and bottles the film was created by drawing an image frame onto paper and shooting the frames into a negative film base and it gave the animation a blackboard effect sort of illusion.
Stop motion is where you get a real object and manipulate it by taking lots of pictures of it and then use one frame of film at a time to create the illusion of a moving object, where the object cannot actually move.
There are lots of different types of animations, such as flip books or also known as flick books which are a series of images drawn onto a small book and vary from one page to the next page so that when the pictures are are shown in rapid sucession at the right time it looks like its animating itself, people have spent so much time making flip books there are even flip book movies.
The first flip book ever made was in the late 1860s by a man named john linnett, flip books are a type of animation like motion pictures.
Anime is the japenese abbreviation for "animation" the earliest japanese animation dates back to the early 20th century and one of the biggest japanese anime like manga was very popular in japan at the time, and is still very popular and sucesfull to this day all over the world. Dragon ball is a japanese manga series created and illustrated by a man named akira tokiyama, the series is based on a character called "son goku" who is in search of 7 dragon balls which when he finds them will grant him any one wish. The anime series was produced by toei animation and made into two series, dragon ball and dragon ball z which has been very sucesfull worldwide.