Abstract

New modes of Animation Content delivery are in a state of transition and flux. New tools, systems and platforms emerge and evolve at a staggering rate affecting how Animation Designers imagine, communicate and visualize content development. Game engines such as Gamebryo offering multi format content integration provide user friendly front-end interfaces accessible to digital artists and animation designers. Open source software alternatives and their resulting support communities abound from image editors such as the GIMP, music and sound in modeling in PureData, 3D CGI content generation in Blender, and game engine type platforms such as Unity and openSim. Pioneering systems of virtual interaction such as Active Worlds paved the way for Second Life which integrated user-generated content, a user-friendly web 2 interface, and social networking on a a grand MMORPG scale. These integrated modes of social interaction be they in secondLife Sims or open source software support wikis not only allow discourse to flourish but provide a platform to install tactile albeit virtual artifacts.