Welcome !

Animation is "not the art of making pictures that move but the art of movements that are drawn" (Norman McLaren). Currently, on the world wide web, a renaissance of animation is taking place. Due to user-friendly software such as Flash and easily available players and plug-ins users have access to an abundance of animated films. Within a very short period of time a large number of portals, galleries and online-cinemas were launched in which users may watch/download festival premiered shorts (animation on the web) or other animated content that has been produced exclusively for the net (webanimation). The quality of the animation depends on the bandwidth and the hardware of the user. This "lack" challenges the creativity of the animator and frequently results in an extremely limited animation style.

Due to the novelty of the field, there is no academic research on animation on the net yet. We try to provide a first scanning of the field and eventually hope to separate the wheat from the chaff.

This page contains a detailed link-list, several reviews of portals but also theoretical questions on the history, aesthetics and types of animation as well as a forum. Up to now our focus has been on fictional types of animation such as webtoons and shorts. Therefore, this area has been covered more systematically than other important related topics such as cartoons, online-games, art projects and so forth. The same accounts for animated intros, flash-based navigation and niches such as demos.

This web-project has grown out of a course on animation on the internet at the Institute for Communication and Media Studies, University of Leipzig, Germany.

Unfortunately at this stage the page is only in German. However, we hope to soon provide you with an English version. All comments, criticism and questions are most welcome!