Kaoani comes from the Japanesekao(顔, face) and ani(アニ, animation). Kaoanis are little animated smilies that usually bounce up and down to look like they are floating. Kaoani originate in Japan and are also known as puffs, anime blobs, anikaos or anime emoticons.
Japan is an island country in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies off the eastern coast of the Asian continent and stretches from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and the Philippine Sea in the south.
An emoticon, short for "emotion icon", also known simply as an emote, is a pictorial representation of a facial expression using characters—usually punctuation marks, numbers, and letters—to express a person's feelings or mood, or as a time-saving method. The first ASCII emoticons, :-) and :-(, were written by Scott Fahlman in 1982, but emoticons actually originated on the PLATO IV computer system in 1972.
Kaoani can take the form of animals, foodstuffs such as rice balls, colorful blobs, cartoon characters, etc. Many are animated to be performing a certain task, such as dancing, laughing, or cheering.
O-nigiri, also known as o-musubi, nigirimeshi, rice ball, is a Japanese food made from white rice formed into triangular or cylindrical shapes and often wrapped in nori (seaweed). Traditionally, an onigiri is filled with pickled ume (umeboshi), salted salmon, katsuobushi, kombu, tarako, or any other salty or sour ingredient as a natural preservative. Most Japanese convenience stores stock their onigiri with various fillings and flavors. There are even specialized shops which only sell onigiri to take out. Due to the popularity of this trend in Japan, onigiri has become a popular staple in Japanese restaurants worldwide.
The file format for kaoanis is usually GIF, since it supports animations. However, it is also possible to make them in the APNG format, which is an animated PNG image. Kaoanis are mostly used on internet forums, MySpace profiles, blogs and instant messaging software to show moods or as avatars.
The Graphics Interchange Format, is a bitmap image format that was developed by a team at the online services provider CompuServe led by American computer scientist Steve Wilhite on June 15, 1987. It has since come into widespread usage on the World Wide Web due to its wide support and portability between many applications and operating systems.
Animation is a method in which pictures are manipulated to appear as moving images. In traditional animation, images are drawn or painted by hand on transparent celluloid sheets to be photographed and exhibited on film. Today, most animations are made with computer-generated imagery (CGI). Computer animation can be very detailed 3D animation, while 2D computer animation can be used for stylistic reasons, low bandwidth or faster real-time renderings. Other common animation methods apply a stop motion technique to two and three-dimensional objects like paper cutouts, puppets or clay figures.
The Animated Portable Network Graphics (APNG) file format is an extension to the Portable Network Graphics (PNG) specification. It allows for animated PNG files that work similarly to animated GIF files, while supporting 24-bit images and 8-bit transparency not available for GIFs. It also retains backward compatibility with non-animated PNG files.
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Related Research Articles
Anime is hand-drawn and computer animation originating from or associated with Japan.
Original video animation, abbreviated as OVA and sometimes as OAV, are Japanese animated films and miniseries made specially for release in home video formats without prior showings on television or in theatres, though the first part of an OVA series may be broadcast for promotional purposes. OVA titles were originally made available on VHS, later becoming more popular on LaserDisc and eventually DVD. Starting in 2008, the term OAD began to refer to DVD releases published bundled with their source-material manga.
An animated series is a set of animated works with a common series title, usually related to one another. These episodes should typically share the same main characters, some different secondary characters and a basic theme. Series can have either a finite number of episodes like a miniseries, a definite end, or be open-ended, without a predetermined number of episodes. They can be broadcast on television, shown in movie theatres, released direct-to-video or on the internet. Like animated films, animated series can be of a wide variety of genres and can also have different target audiences, from children to adults.
The history of anime can be traced back to the start of the 20th century, with the earliest verifiable films dating from 1917.
Toei Animation Co., Ltd. is a Japanese animation studio primarily owned by Toei Company.
Hiroyuki Imaishi is a Japanese key animator and anime director and one of the co-founders of Studio Trigger. His style is marked by fast and frantic animation combined with elaborate storyboarding and punchy direction. Prior to founding Trigger, he was an animator and director at Gainax.
Rintaro is the pseudonym of Shigeyuki Hayashi, a well-known director of anime. He works frequently with the animation studio Madhouse, though he is a freelance director not employed directly by any one studio. He began working in the animation industry—at age 17—as an in-between animator on the 1958 film Hakujaden. His works have won and been nominated for multiple awards, including a nomination for Best Film (Metropolis) at the 2001 Festival de Cine de Sitges.
Kyoto Animation Co., Ltd., abbreviated KyoAni (京アニ), is a Japanese animation studio and a light novel publisher located in Uji, Kyoto Prefecture, Japan. It was established in 1981 by former Mushi Pro staff. Presided by Hideaki Hatta, the company is also affiliated with the studio Animation Do. Since 2009, the company began to publish light novels in their KA Esuma Bunko imprint. As of 2015, Kyoto Animation has headed production for 21 anime series and several films. Kyoto Animation's animators are salaried employees rather than freelance animators paid per frame. Therefore, Kyoto Animation animators are able to focus more on the quality of each frame rather than the quantity of frames they produce.
Anime-influenced animation, or American anime, refers to non-Japanese works of animation that are similar to or inspired by anime.
Kappa Mikey is an American animated comedy television series created by Larry Schwarz. The show is Nicktoons Network's first original half-hour series, bought during the same period as other Animation Collective series such as Three Delivery and Speed Racer: The Next Generation, as well as Flash shows from other studios, such as Edgar & Ellen and The Secret Show, though the latter was made from BBC. The series premiered on February 25, 2006 and ended on September 20, 2008. The series is MTV's first global acquisition, and was available on iTunes until 2009.
An animation studio is a company producing animated media. The broadest such companies conceive of products to produce, own the physical equipment for production, employ operators for that equipment, and hold a major stake in the sales or rentals of the media produced. They also own rights over merchandising and creative rights for characters created/held by the company, much like authors holding copyrights. In some early cases, they also held patent rights over methods of animation used in certain studios that were used for boosting productivity. Overall, they are business concerns and can function as such in legal terms.
Marvel Animation, Inc. is an American animation production company. The Marvel Entertainment subsidiary was incorporated on January 25, 2008 to direct Marvel's efforts in animation and home entertainment markets. The incorporated Marvel Animation included then ongoing animation efforts by Marvel Studios with Lionsgate and Nickelodeon. Marvel Animation operates under the Marvel Television division of Marvel Entertainment, LLC, a subsidiary of The Walt Disney Company.
Moho is a proprietary vector-based 2D animation software distributed by Smith Micro Software. Moho,, was originally distributed by LostMarble, and then by e frontier. Smith Micro Software changed the name to Anime Studio and distributed the software since November 2007. The software comes in two different versions, Moho Debut and Moho Pro. The first being restricted in terms of length and image size, as well as not containing all of the functions of the Pro version. Moho is available for Windows and macOS in English, German, Japanese and Spanish. Moho Pro no longer supports the Linux platform.
The Animation Kobe is an event established by Kobe in 1996 to promote anime and other visual media. The Animation Kobe Awards (アニメーション神戸賞) are given annually by Kobe and the Organising Committee to creators and creations.
The Association of Japanese Animation (AJA; is an industry group consisting of 52 affiliate animation production companies.
Anime from Akira to Princess Mononoke: Experiencing Contemporary Japanese Animation is a scholarly book which uses techniques of literary criticism on anime by Susan J. Napier published in 2001 by Palgrave Macmillan. It discusses themes of shōjo, hentai, mecha, magical girlfriend and magical girl anime using select titles. It also discusses some aspects of the English-speaking anime fandom. The book has been translated into Japanese, and had four editions, before a revised fifth edition was published in 2005 as Anime from Akira to Howl's Moving Castle: Experiencing Contemporary Japanese Animation.
The Japanese Animation Creators Association (JAniCA) is a non-profit organization dedicated to improving working conditions for workers in the anime industry. The group was formed in June 2007.
Orange Co., Ltd. is a Japanese animation studio based in Musashino, Tokyo that specializes in the production of 3DCG animation. The studio is known for its exaggerated 3D and directing style, which differs from the traditional movement often found in CG works.
AXsiZ Co., Ltd. is a Japanese animation studio established on July 7, 2011. It is best known for co-animating series with Studio Gokumi such as Pandora in the Crimson Shell: Ghost Urn, Seiren, and Ms. Koizumi Loves Ramen Noodles, as well as animating Wagamama High Spec as its first own work.
