Frame Rate Theory
The animation frame is the cameras still photograph in traditional animation. So for each photograph the camera takes it will be called a frame. The amount of time that a sequence of frames is played back in 1 second is called the “Frame Rate or FPS (Frame Per Second)”. This is the basis of frame theory and is very important to comprehend.
The standard frame-rates in the world are 24fps, 25fps, and 30fps. Things get really advanced outside of these standards so I will stay within the realm of 24fps to both make the math easier to understand and to re-enforce the principles of animation.
There is also a frame rate of 12fps which we will work in a lot throughout this course. You may have noticed that 12×2=24 and you are absolutely right. What this means is instead of animating at 24 frames per second play back we would be animating at 12 frames per second. This will simulate the look of classic animated films which were under heavy production time constraints to produce animations so they would take 2 photographs for each pose of the character or drawing. In modern times we have softwares that allow us to play animations back at 12 frames per second so instead of taking 2 photographs we can just take one and save us some time.
Performance becomes more precise with higher frame rates so it is important to know that if you are animating on 24fps and taking single frames you will need to have smaller movements and more of them.
The Time Lapse and Pixelation exercises coming up will allow you to play with frame rates and get a better understanding for what they are and how they work.