Animators?

[Shadowwing]

Hi, any animators out there? I was wondering if anyone know a good animation program to make 2D animation? Also, what about GIF animation...any good free programs for that? I hear that GIF animations can be made in Photoshop or Corel Painter....but not sure. I'm itching to try my hand at animation.

[FlipMcgee]

I hear that GIF animations can be made in Photoshop or Corel Painter....but not sure.

GIF below was animated in Photoshop.

There's an Easytoon tutorial here (http://conceptart.org/forums/showthread.php?t=52221).

If your animation is really short timewise and not too big file size-wise you should be okay saving it out as a gif (otherwise it will either take too long to load or run under a different playback rate depending on the viewer's computer speed). If you want to animate beyond looping cycles and have running times over 10 seconds I recommend outputting to video and using something vector based like Flash.

If you don't mind hardwork, a lot of pre-planning, using a painful non user-friendly UI, and making lower ressed but simple animations ('cuz you're a hardcore animator!), sure, give it a shot animating in Photoshop or Painter. Easytoon is free and perfect for the pixel art look.

[Shadowwing]

Looks cool....too bad it is only in black and white. I did some browsing around and found a product called Toon Boom Studio.

http://www.toonboomstudio.com/

Anyone know if it is any good?

[Amazing Action Ape]

I personally find toon boom a great product to use. Takes a bit to get used to, but fairly easy, feels a bit like a hybrid of premiere/after effects and maya in terms of UI.

It autovectorizes your animations if youd like it too, which makes it easy to close gaps you may have missed in cleanup, in program too.

All in all, I like using it for finished work, i use flipbook for pencil testing though.

[HunterKiller_]

^Toon boom is a popular animation program, it's not freeware however and does require a license, an expensive one at that.

If you've got Photoshop, you can also use Imageready, although it has a learning curve similar to that of Photoshop.

[Art_Addict]

CTP used to be a good program. I haven't used it in years though.
It's by Crater software.
Good program to produce your 2d animations. ( animations done on paper )

link :http://www.cratersoftware.com/

[Flake]

Plastic Animation Paper has a free version.

http://www.plasticanimationpaper.dk/

[briannewman]

well if you want to make a very good animation, one with complicated scenes and structure i recommend 2 pieces of hardware and 3 programs.

: A light table (can be built quite cheaper than bought. this is the original onion skin.)

: A scanner that can scan from about 150-300dpi (depending on the animation the dpi setting might not even matter, but i prefer better quality pictures when animating)

: Photoshoop CS2 (Scan your drawn animations directly into here and color them the way you want, also a good way to check if your images are lined up correctly and sized well)

: Macromedia Flash 8 (scene editor an animation program with MANY options that are good for animating, acts like an animators table. Also has a very nifty AVI extraction option. I find this program to be much simpler for the animating process than any other program out there.)

: Adobe Premiere Pro (for compiling scenes and adding sounds)

I've always wanted to make a tutorial on this subject, because you can come out with studio like results using these 3 programs simultaneously.
Really though, try a method like this if you are serious about animating

[sciboy]

I use paper, gimp and blender at the moment. Experimenting with how well i can hide the fact that I'm basically moving around cut outs.

[Qitsune]

I use either Flash or Newtek Aura (my version is old I'm not even sure they make new ones but there are a lot of very similar programs and if you use the search tool you should be able to find the posts about them that were made on CA) and I animate straight on the puter with my wacom.

[FlipMcgee]

I wish I'm better at 3d animation :sadcheerleader:

[Killer Napkins]

yes yes.. Easytoon is easy and fun....

and how i did it in photoshop was cool..

just make all the frames number ordered in photoshop.. slap them in a folder ... then import the folder as frames in Image Ready..

i dunno if theres an easier way to do it..

whats good freeware programs that allow you to add sound? .. ive tried with Adobe Premeire pro.. but when iimported my frames it made them all like 3 seconds long.. and i had to shrink each frame down.. it was a pain..

edit: oh yeah i jsut downloaded flash.. its been pretty cool so far.. jsut wish it was easier to fix the sound in there cut it up and what not..

[Killer Napkins]

well if you want to make a very good animation, one with complicated scenes and structure i recommend 2 pieces of hardware and 3 programs.

: A light table (can be built quite cheaper than bought. this is the original onion skin.)

: A scanner that can scan from about 150-300dpi (depending on the animation the dpi setting might not even matter, but i prefer better quality pictures when animating)

: Photoshoop CS2 (Scan your drawn animations directly into here and color them the way you want, also a good way to check if your images are lined up correctly and sized well)

: Macromedia Flash 8 (scene editor an animation program with MANY options that are good for animating, acts like an animators table. Also has a very nifty AVI extraction option. I find this program to be much simpler for the animating process than any other program out there.)

: Adobe Premiere Pro (for compiling scenes and adding sounds)

I've always wanted to make a tutorial on this subject, because you can come out with studio like results using these 3 programs simultaneously.
Really though, try a method like this if you are serious about animating


ahh man.. you should make a tutorial!!! PLEASEE hahah .. ive been trying to find something out there.. and i have all thsoe programs.. i jsut know squat about premiere .. and jsut started trying to mess aroudn with flash...

[Ian Mack]

Wow seriously. Would love to see a tuturial. I'm learning Freehand right now and it seems like it has alot of potential for creating characters.

[Goodbye..fromthevoid]

I like animetions! ALOTS!! they Are the funnyest things, when you se.e them and they are goodz >:|

Awsum Shoes are DBZ (THEY ARE AWSUM!) SAILOR MOON (THEY ARE SO HOT!!!) FAMILY GUY AND SIMPSONS (THEY ARE A LITTLE STUPID BUT STEAL FUNNYER THAN CRAP!!!) AND VARIOUS CZHEZ SURREALIST ANIMETARS SUCH AS JAN SVANKMAJER (HIS SHORTS MAKE MANY INTERESTING POINTS ABOUT HUMAN NATURE AND EVEN POLITICAL SUBJECTS WHILE USING EXCELLENT SURREALIST IMAGERY TO CREATE VERY POWERFUL IMAGES HIS INTERPRETATIONS OF ALICE AND FAUST WERE VERY WELL DONE I FELT CONSPIRATORS OF PLEASURE & GREEDY GUTS (RENAMED LITTLE OTIK FOR AMERICAN DISTRIBUTION) WASNZT UP TO HIS HIGH STANDARDS BUT STILL WORTHY OF VIEWING THOUGH I LIKE DBZ A LITTLE BETTER) FAMILY GUY AND ALL OF ADULT SWIM IS HELAREOS!!!!!!!!!

I use Legoes for My Animetonions,;/. - because you can do anything you want 2 with them! I set u p the lego pecees so it is cool then I look at them and use my phootografficc memorey to remember it and play it in seqeentail order ! ! The movie I been makin in My Head is now 7 hours and 44 minutes, and, I want too burn it to DVD when I am done!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[Ryn]

^ You sure like trolling, huh?

[CaptainInsano]

I use paper, gimp and blender at the moment. Experimenting with how well i can hide the fact that I'm basically moving around cut outs.

Animating cut-outs is EXTREMELY easy to do in 3D. South Park, for instance, is done completely in Maya.

[FlipMcgee]

Heh, heh. Thought you'd show some animation sketches too Mike.

Cool article of yours in IFX 12. How'd you get your stuff to be printed good like that (the full page finished piece of your tutorial)? You use cmyk or you just hand off the rgb file to the editors?

[John]

When it comes to Premiere, digital video editing is pretty complicated. I guess you can avoid a lot of it by concentrating on flash animation for starters. Just saying.

[Farvus]

I found really promising and simple open source program for hand drawn animation. It's still in beta stage and it doesn't work perfectly (tablet support didn't work on my computer).

Homepage - http://www.les-stooges.org/pascal/pencil/
Sourceforge page - http://sourceforge.net/projects/pencil-planner/

[FlipMcgee]

Video of interest: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n0LgexKDI4g&NR


A brief discussion by Dan Tierney one of the many talented folks that have become part of the Happy Trails Animation TEAM.

[sbn..]

I use paper, gimp and blender at the moment. Experimenting with how well i can hide the fact that I'm basically moving around cut outs.

My advice would be not to try to hide your technique. Revel in it instead! Cut-out animation is an effective and efficient way to get your ideas across, and some great animation has been done in this medium - Terry Gilliam's work for Monty Python, Run Wrake's rabbit (http://www.atomfilms.com/film/rabbit.jsp), David Firth's Salad Fingers (http://www.fat-pie.com/salad.htm), many Flash animations.

BTW, Blender is an excellent program if you take the time to learn it. It can even do post-processing and compositing now!

[Qitsune]

I'm not sure how there guys do their stuff but they are the craze of the moment over here. A mix of live action, dolls and sculpey all meshed into one.

http://www.tetesaclaques.tv/

I'd eventually like to merge video and animation, maybe rotoscope some sequences.

[Anid Maro]

I'm not sure if this would be of interest here, but for those into pixel art there is Graphics Gale (http://www.humanbalance.net/gale/us/). The full version costs ~$20 and allows animation in *.avi and *.gif formats. Shareware gives animation in *.avi only.

[Zwickel]

Flash, it's great!