A report on Animation and Special effect

Stop motion is an animated filmmaking technique in which objects are physically manipulated in small increments between individually photographed frames so that they will appear to exhibit independent motion or change when the series of frames is played back.

J. Stuart Blackton's The Haunted Hotel (23 February 1907) featured a combination of live-action with practical special effects and stop motion animation of several objects, a puppet and a model of the haunted hotel.

Raymond Frederick Harryhausen (June 29, 1920 – May 7, 2013) was an American-British animator and special effects creator who created a form of stop motion model animation known as "Dynamation".

In the 2001 Disney/Pixar animated film Monsters, Inc. pays homage to Harryhausen in a scene where James P. "Sulley" Sullivan, Mike Wazowski, Boo, Celia Mae and other monsters visit a Japanese and sushi restaurant named Harryhausen's in Monstropolis.

At the turn of the 20th century, the Lumière Brothers sent film documentarians to places westerners had never seen, and Georges Méliès utilized trick photography in film fantasies that prefigured that in King Kong.

Once the film was under way, Cooper turned his attention to the studio's big-budget-out-of-control fantasy, Creation, a project with stop motion animator Willis O'Brien about a group of travelers shipwrecked on an island of dinosaurs.

Visual effects using computer-generated imagery (CGI) have more recently become accessible to the independent filmmaker with the introduction of affordable and relatively easy-to-use animation and compositing software.

Special Effects: Special effects (often abbreviated as SFX, SPFX, F/X or simply FX) are illusions or visual tricks used in the theatre, film, television, video game and simulator industries to simulate the imagined events in a story or virtual world. Special effects are traditionally divided into the categories of mechanical effects and optical effects. With the emergence of digital film-making a distinction between special effects and visual effects has grown, with the latter referring to digital post-production while "special effects" referring to mechanical and optical effects. Mechanical effects (also called practical or physical effects) are usually accomplished during the live-action shooting. This includes the use of mechanized props, scenery, scale models, animatronics, pyrotechnics and atmospheric effects: creating physical wind, rain, fog, snow, clouds, making a car appear to drive by itself and blowing up a building, etc. Mechanical effects are also often incorporated into set design and makeup. For example, prosthetic makeup can be used to make an actor look like a non-human creature. Optical-effects (also called photographic-effects) are techniques in which images or film frames are created photographically, either "in-camera" using multiple exposure, mattes or the Schüfftan process or in post-production using an optical printer. An optical effect might be used to place actors or sets against a different background.

The more general term computer-generated imagery (CGI) encompasses both static scenes and dynamic images, while computer animation only refers to moving images.

The popularity of computer animation (especially in the field of special effects) skyrocketed during the modern era of U.S. animation.

Morphing is a special effect in motion pictures and animations that changes (or morphs) one image or shape into another through a seamless transition.