2d Animation Software For Beginners

[Gano Richardson]

Ill cover some of the basic concepts of animation, vocabulary, principles, software, hardware, books, courses as well as some of the options for people who want to get into the animation industry, but are overwhelmed or intimidated.

Normally in live action filmmaking, the term 'shot' refers to the images between camera edits, while a scene is all the shots and dialogue that take place at a particular location for a continuous block of time.

In animation, however, we often use the term 'scene' and 'shot' interchangeably. When we talk about a scene/shot, we often refer to one specific continuous piece of animation in between camera cuts.

In hand drawn animation, keyframes (or just keys) are the major important poses that define the scene. Breakdowns come between keys and define what the motion from key to key will be. In-betweens are all the frames that come in between to smooth out the motion.

In 3D, a keyframe is any position on the timeline where the animator has defined the position of the character. In-betweens are all the frames that the computer interprets or automatically generates to move the character from key to key.

Timing means the total number of frames that will be used for a movement. Spacing is the amount of change that comes between each frame. Decreasing the spacing, makes an object slower, while increasing the spacing makes it look faster.

In paper animation this is done by having multiple drawings on a light table, but in modern animation programs there's often a feature called onion skinning. It lets you see semi-transparent representations of the frames behind or ahead of the current frame you're working on.

The 12 principles were a set of core concepts that were developed in the 1930's by animators at Walt Disney Studios as they were transitioning from doing shorts to feature films. It was a gradual process of discovery and refinement as the animators tried to push their work to a new higher standard.

Straight-ahead means creating each new frame in sequence from beginning to end. Pose-to-pose means creating the key poses for each action first, and then filling in the in-between poses.

There are many different types of animation, some of which you're probably already familiar with, so let's do a quick rundown of the different types of animation and what the differences and similarities are.

An animator uses a digital puppet (called a character rig) to position the character, and then use a system of motion paths (or splines) to define the movement of the character between those poses.

3D animation is a technically intensive process, which often involves many separate specialists to model the character, rig it with bones and controls, animate it, and then texture and light it for the final output.

The first type of 2D animation might be called traditional animation or cel animation. I prefer the term hand-drawn animation because that define its most important aspect - the fact that it is drawn by hand.

This is the classic type of animation you're probably most familiar with. In the old days, animators drew characters frame by frame, and then those drawings were transferred onto clear acetate sheets called cels for painting. That's where the term cel animation comes from.

Through the 1990s almost all animation studios stopped using cels and started scanning drawings into the computer for digital coloring, and now many hand-drawn animators skip paper altogether and draw directly into the computer using a tablet or Wacom Cintiq monitors.

So hand-drawn animation could be done entirely analog or entirely digitally, or some mix of the two. The important thing is that hand drawn animators still create their animation frame by frame using the same techniques and principles as in those old days of paper and cels.

Nowadays there are new ways to create 2D animation using a 2D digital puppet. These are 2D characters which are built with a system of bones and controls that can be manipulated in a way similar to a 3D character rig.

The difference between 2D rigged characters and hand-drawn characters can get a bit blurry. Programs like Toon Boom Harmony and Adobe Animate CC let you seamlessly mix and match hand-drawn animation with 2D puppet techniques, sometimes even within the same character.

Stop motion has several variants, but they all involve manipulating real world objects. These objects are moved slightly, and photographed one frame at a time. When shown in sequence, these frames create the illusion of movement.

Another variation of stop motion is paper cut-out animation. In this style, characters are built out of paper shapes. They might be pinned together at the joints to make a posable figure, or pieces might be set in place so that they can be swapped out. They are then moved and photographed frame by frame, just like a stop motion puppet. That's how South Park was originally animated.

If a mistake is made on one frame, it's very difficult to fix it without having to start all over again. You can't just redraw that frame like you can in 2D animation. This makes this type of animation particularly intense and it requires a lot of patience.

For a more in-depth look at the 5 types of animation, check out our complete guide on the 5 types of animation, including detailed history of each type, and the best schools, software and courses.

First, I'll go cover the basic steps of the animation filmmaking pipeline (all the moving parts it takes to create an animated movie), and then I'll breakdown the process of actually animating a shot from start to finish.

In animation, the story often evolves and changes during production, since you're not restricted to whatever shots you got on set, so the more work you put into developing your story, the more you reduce wasted time during production.

Storyboarding allows you to look at your film as a whole and spot story and pacing issues. Making one also provides you with something you can show other people for feedback. Most people react better to a storyboard than a script.

We bring all the boards into an editing program and edit them with the correct timing, add some temporary music and sound effects (just enough to convey the different story beats), and when we're done we have the first version of our film ready to watch.

For 3D animation we'll create the models for the characters, environments, sets, and the props. We'll use the concept art and model sheets as our reference. These models will then have to be rigged with a 3D skeleton with controls, so that we can animate them in our scene.

because animation takes a very long time, this is the last chance we can have to make any serious story changes in our film. It will be a huge waste if we had to make story changes after the animation phase.

This step applies mostly to 3D animation, though 2D animation goes through similar post-production steps similar to this, and stop-motion animation spends a long time doing compositing and miscellaneous effects on top of their shots as well.

Once our images are composited and ready, we bring them back into our editing program and replace our previs shots with our new composited shots, just like we replaced the animatic shots with the previz.

This is a beginner's guide, so 3D software might be advanced for some of you, but I think it's important to be familiar with what's out there so you know what the industry uses and what you should consider pursuing if you plan to make this your career.

Having said all of that, Blender is a free program, so you're welcome to jump in and play around with it (with the help of our Blender course), and Maya offers an educational license for free, so if you're just learning you'll be able to get started without investing any money just yet.

The industry standard for computer animation. If you want to do animation professionally, this is the program you should focus on. 3D animation, modeling, simulation, and rendering software with an integrated, powerful toolset. Use it for animation, environments, motion graphics, virtual reality, and character creation.

A free, open-source, 3D program, Blender provides a broad spectrum of modeling, texturing, lighting, animation and video post-processing functionality in one package. Through its open architecture, Blender provides cross-platform interoperability, extensibility, an incredibly small footprint, and a tightly integrated workflow.

Animate CC and After Effects are great choices for playing around with 2D animation in both a hand-drawn form or by creating puppets, while Character Animator doesn't require any drawing at all, and uses your face as the driver for the animation. And if you wanna go pro, Toon Boom Harmony and TVPaint will be your best options.

Probably the most popular 2D animation software out there. Animate has a long lineage of animation making, dating back to the early days of internet video publishing. Its intuitive interface and relatively cheap price point make it a great pick for getting started with 2D animation.

Harmony is a more advanced 2D software ideal for both frame-by-frame animation and rig-based animation. It has advanced rigging systems, effects and camera tools. It is vector based, but the more advanced version also has the option for bitmap drawing.

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