Animations are usually gifs. They're short, relatively simple things, most of the time, showing a character in motion. They may or may not loop; that's up to you.
There are three different criteria we use to judge animations.
Simple Animations usually consist of one or two actions, generally a blinking and/or bouncing animation, a snow or rainfall, smiles or ear flicks, etc. They usually only have 2-5 frames.
Rewards +10 EXP and +200 PT.
Complex Animations consist of multiple animation bits, many frames, and much more movement. It generally means it has more than two movements happening at once. Includes walk cycles and anything where you have to redraw whole frames. If it has a background, the background is usually simple and stationary.
Rewards +50 EXP and +1000 PT.
Short Scenes will have backgrounds and multiple animation bits intertwined to show a scene of the subject interacting with the world. How many frames is up to you, but this usually involves more than one moving element or character.
Rewards +100 EXP and +2000 PT.
Long Scenes often have sound, and many frames and moving elements or characters, and generally last more than 2-5 seconds. It's generally a legitimate scene rather than a short gif.
Rewards +200 EXP and +5000 PT.
Because animations tend to be large, most of the time you won't be able to upload them directly to the site. In that case, you'll need to upload a still frame to the gallery, and link the animated version in the description.
We do give a bonus for smoother animation that has a greater amount of frames (ie 20 frames where each one had to be redrawn rather than duplicated and slightly adjusted). If you ever wish to provide a frame breakdown to try and get this bonus credit, feel free to link it in the gallery image description or the submission comments!
There are four levels of smoothness:
Animatics: Still frames stitched together - No bonus.
General: General animation, stuttery, not very smooth - 1.5x base rewards.
Smooth: A smooth animation, that's clean with no stutters - 2.5x base rewards.
Video: Extremely clean animation of professional quality - 3.5x base rewards.
-As of this time, 3D is not included in these considerations.