Summary:
Covering everything from the most traditional animation tricks and techniques developed in the worlds of film and television to the latest software tools designed to make animating easier, Animation on the Web provides all you need to make dynamic, eye-opening animated Web sites. This book teaches how (and how not) to use the widening array of available animation technologies such as animated GIFs, Shockwave, Java-based animation, and DHTML to bring your site to life.
-- Covers all the hottest, latest Web animation software and techniques.
-- Goes from basic animation techniques to the finer points of file formats in implementing animation on a Web site.
-- Gets Web designers quickly up to speed on adding animation to their sites.

Table of Contents:
Animation on the Web
Table of Contents

The Web Audience
How to Surf This Book
Icons and Symbols Used in This Book

Web Animation Solutions
Animated Advertising
Animated Text
Animated Pictures
Animated Logos
Character Animation
3-D Animation
Streaming Video: RealVideo
Interactive Animation
Java
DHTML
Case Study: Personal Home Page
Case Study: Advertising Campaign
Case Study: Manufacturer's Web Site
Case Study: Corporate Intranet
Case Study: Entertainment Web Site

Animation Basics
Quicker Than the Eye
Animation Numbers 101
Frame-by-Frame vs. Real-Time Animation
Basic Animation Techniques

Principles of Animation
Principles of Traditional Animation Applied to 3-D Computer Animation-John Lasseter
Principles of Animation Applied to the Web
Timing Problems Online
Anticipation of the Web
Staging on the Web
Follow-Through and Overlapping
Action on the Web
The Laws of Motion Applied to
Wile E. Coyote
Slow In and Slow Out on the Web
Arcs on the Web

2-D Animation
2-D Versus 3-D
Classic Animation
Storyboard
Soundtrack
Backgrounds
Drawing
Pencil Test or Line Test
Ink and Paint
Final Compositing
Beyond Cel Animation
Animating the Elements of Graphic Design
Digital Video Editing
Case Study: Interview with Andrew Keeler

2-D Tools
Cel Animation
Low-End Cel Animation
Keyframe Animation and Compositing
Painting
Illustration
Utilities

3-D Animation
The 3-D World
The 3-D Process

3-D Tools
Modelers and Renderers
Low-Cost Animation Systems
Video Animation Systems
3-D Hardware

Animation in a GIF
Characteristics of GIF89a
GIF Optimization Techniques
GIFBuilder and GIF Construction Set

QuickTime
The QuickTime Media Layer
QuickTime 3.0 Basics
Using QuickTime in HTML
Creating QuickTime Animation
QuickTime Tools
Making Video for the Web
10 g QuickTime VR and VRML
QuickTime VR
Photo VR Tools
Photo VR Hardware
QuickTime VR in 3-D
3-D Object Movies
VRML

Shockwave, Director, and Flash
Why Use Shockwave?
Director
Saving Director Movies as Shockwave
Creating a Shockwave Animation
Flash

Real Media
The RealSystem
RealSystem vs. QuickTime
RealFlash Optimization Kit
RealServer Metafiles
RealPublisher and RealEncoder
Using RealServers
13 g mBed Interactor
Animation in Interactor
Animate a Sprite on a Path

Java and DHTML
Java Basics
Java Tools
DHTML Basics
DHTML Tools
The Web Site: Animation on the Web on the Web