In interactive media, animation makes an important contribution to the user's experience. It contributes to the apparent responsiveness of the system and to the user's feeling of agency (their ability to act meaningfully within the artefact), to the engagement of the user and their feeling of reward.

In its visual qualities and its pace, animation plays a significant part in creating the atmosphere or tone of the multimedia artefact. Animation in multimedia has its own particular concerns and issues, some of which differ from those of animation within the filmic tradition of cinema and television display. In this chapter ideas about animation in interactive multimedia are explored first through a brief review of what animation contributes to interactivity, and then through a detailed discussion of particular issues, ideas and processes.

The design and realisation of animated elements of a multimedia artefact involve many of the same aesthetic and technical issues as those discussed elsewhere in this book, but bring with them, also, issues that are particular to multimedia. Some of those issues are to do with different delivery means. Designing for a CD-ROM, for example, can be very different to designing for the networked distribution of the World Wide Web. These different delivery modes affect not only what can be made successfully, but also the strategies and processes used for making and for the ideas development and evaluation stages of any multimedia work.

Other issues are to do with the very nature of interactive media. These issues are unique to the new media of interactive narrative, and animation has a particularly important role to play in the forms and structures it takes.

After reading this chapter you should understand:

• How animation is a key element of interactive media

• The main forms of animation used in, and as, interactive multimedia

• Some of the ways animated elements are used in multimedia and on the web

• Some of the technical issues that affect animation in multimedia and on the web