Arduino enthusiast Andy Brown has documented a clever method of creating animations on character LCD modules driven by Arduino. He accomplishes this by using easing functions:
Computer animation of motion involves making an object appear to move from A to B over some time period T. The simple way to do this is to change the object’s position at fixed intervals over time so that it appears to move from A to B as the clock ticks from 0 to T. This is known as linear motion and while it works it appears unnatural because in the natural world objects accelerate and decelerate as they move away from and towards their resting positions.
You can see a great demonstration of this effect in the following video:
Andy has also provided all the raw and Arduino code to make this possible in your own environment, so to get started visit the project page here. And we're on twitter and Google+, so follow us for news and product updates as well.
When making your own Arduino projects with a character LCD - save time and move forward with the Freetronics LCD & Keypad shield which contains a bright 16x2 character LCD and five buttons that can be read from only one analog input pin: