Welcome to the world of animated entertainment, where possibilities are endless and anything the imagination can conjure up, can become reality on the screen.

Since the earliest times, the most effective way of communicating, of conveying a message, has been to tell a story. The film industry has taken the art of story telling to a completely different plane, and no filming has been more successful in crossing every barrier, be it age, culture or language, than computer animation.

The rapid advancement of technology has made animation available to the masses and has therefore made animation one of the fastest growing industries in the world. This expansion has led to longer broadcasting hours on television stations across the World, not to mention the growing popularity of the Internet.

In the past, animated films were aimed at children aged nine and below. In recent years however animated films have been produced for teenagers, adults and the whole family. Three animated movies nominated for the first ever "Best Animated Feature" Academy Award are computer animated (Shrek, Jimmy Neutron: Boy Genius and Monsters Inc.). The highest grossing movies of the past several years have all been computer animated (Shrek, Toy Story 2 and Monsters, Inc.).

Making changes to a scene is much easier when the scene is computer animated. In general, computer animated movies are easier to make and allow more immediate control over all aspects of the production. Merchandising in the form of T-shirts, caps, backpacks and toys with the main characters splashed all over them, have also been a major source of revenue for companies involved in cgi animation.

Animated movies are increasingly being used in the production of pc games and are even more popular as T.V games; this in turn broadens the market quite significantly. The Universal appeal of this film genre is evident in the numbers. Last year the global film industry produced four cgi animated feature films, and every single one of them was ranked among the Worlds top ten box office performers.