One of the more exciting syntactical features released with HTML5 is the "<canvas>" element. The <canvas> element creates a drawing surface. In many ways, it is the programmer's equivalent of the painter's canvas, providing a blank rectangle on a Web page that can be scaled to any size. JavaScript then operates like paint, allowing you to draw or animate anything on the canvas. The most challenging aspect of creating an HTML5 canvas animation is not understanding the <canvas> element itself, but knowing how to "paint" JavaScript animations on top of it.