#How to animate

[whyx3]

Hello folks! This month’s post is a bit different from usual, as today I’d like to announce "The Animation Smears Book: Uncovering Film's Most Elusive Technique" that I have been producing with Routledge for over a year. It is the first document of it's kind dedicated to preserving the art of abstract motion blur frames. It is essential for any artist and if you ever wanted to know more about animation smear history.

This book was the result of over twelve years of work with dozens of images to help illustrate the research, so I would like to thank everyone here for the continued support as this wouldn't be possible without your help!

https://www.routledge.com/9781032724348

[jeffmumm]

Animating the public domain mouse

Follow my game on Kickstarter!

[tonkable-art]

My resource site gets updated every time I find something useful! Take a look if you want to learn how to draw, animate, write, set up portfolios, etc.

[spookysjumpscaremansion]

how did you do that edit?? the tweening and everything?? what program did u use?? it’s so good!!!

Thank you!! Here’s my general editing/tweening advice (do advise tutorials though, this probably won’t make sense to beginners so start slow)

I use Premium (paid) alight Motion which allows for parent layers, more effects and camera motion but you don’t need these, it’ll just be harder without it.

Ibis paint:

• Insert your picture that you wish the edit

• Seperate each part you will need to edit later and fill in gaps and empty space (e.g. remove head, remove eyelids and eyes for blinking, remove upper and lower arm/leg, etc)

•Download all layers as transparent images

Alight Motion:

• Insert all your layers to tween in order (like head on top of the body/neck and hair on top of the head)

• Go into “Motion and transform” then click the already selected arrow icon to enter your pivot point, this is where things move from (e.g. the heads pivot point would be where it meets the neck so it moves from the neck)

• (Premium) Connect the layers with “Parent layers” (icon at the top right menu) so that if the parent layer moves, so do connected parts (e.g. connect hair to the head so if the head moves so will the hair)

• Now you can move the parts as you like with whatever music you choose to have. Use “motion and transform” to spin parts around (like tilting the head) or moving parts or scaling them up or down

• You can use the effects menu to add to your layers such as Scale Assist to help squash and stretch or bend to bend your layers

• If you’d like to add depth later (such as zooming in or just to achieve a 3D effect), use to Z axis (bigger number = farther away) and adjust it to your desired position, this will be used through the Camera layer and Null layers which treat the frame as a camera which you can zoom in and out and move around for depth

This may or may not have made sense but just start slowly if you’re new, learn basic transitions then get into tweening, practice with simple movements and learn graphs to ensure your animations are smooth! Tutorials are the way, so probably don’t jump to what I do, build up your skills first,

if you do what I do though, it may look like this:

[themasterpostblog]

Pencil/2D Animation Resources Masterpost

5/10/24:

Hello, I broke into my old account so I could make a little masterpost of resources I come across for learning pencil/2D animation. (Free or affordable classes, places to get tools, videos to give insider insight, etc.) I may not be able to get everything included, so if you think of something, you can reach out and suggest things to add! I will be updating this over time, with notes on when it was last recently updated. And maybe I'll end up giving the old blog a refresh too. I likely won't be making new masterposts outside of this one any time soon, nor updating any old ones. It's been SEVERAL years, and the internet is a different place. I would assume most of the old links are out of date by now, unfortunately. I hope that this list is helpful to you as well, and if I'm incorrect in anything I list, I'm learning too! So please be patient with me and feel free to reach out with a correction. It's not finished yet, but Tumblr deletes my posts before I finish them, so I'm starting with posting the skeleton and slowly updating this)

Find a Community to Learn From!

(recommended groups to lurk/join/make connections and ask questions)

What Tools Do I Need?

PDF Guide to Animation Desks, as written by David Nethry

(next line)

Where Do I Get Tools?

(Places where you can buy art supplies, software, etc)

Cartoon Supplies

(Online seller who carries Ingram Bond paper, lightboxes, storyboard pads, blank cels, etc. See also: Lightfoot LTD, which is identical in every way to Cartoon Supplies and for the life of me I'm not sure the difference, though both are equally recommended along side each other.)

Jet Pens

(Ah... I love window-shopping this site. If you love stationary like I do, you'll be on this site for hours adding things to your cart... and inevitably removing them because it's not feasible to spend hundreds on pens and sticky-note pads.)

Dickblick

(I've found they have good prices on name brands, but I haven't purchased from them yet. Often, I'm too overwhelmed by all the choices.)

Improve Your Art/Learn the Basics!

(anatomy classes, starter tools, etc)

Aaron Blaise (Co-Director of Brother Bear)'s Online Classes

He runs very good deals on the classes occasional, but you can also do a year's access to all classes and keep what you download, which is very useful! They're short, quick lessons, and tend to veer into more "helpful tips" than teaching, from what I've personally noticed, but it's well worth the price if you get them at a good deal!

Inside Look at the Industry -- aka: the Special Features:

(behind the scenes stuff, etc)

Books are more useful than you might think!

(Richard Williams Animator's Survival Toolkit, etc) (check out gently used copies of these books on Thriftbooks for a good deal!)

Nifty Free Resources

(Things like height charts, references, color wheels, blog posts, videos, etc)

What Artists Can Learn From Aladdin's Incredible Color by J. Holt [VIDEO]

(spacing for formatting)

The Art of Color Theory: Guide for Animators, Designers, and Artists (Animator Artist Life)

(space for formatting)

Free software!

GIMP

(A classic, GIMP is an old friend of mine. The first software I downloaded for art, I used to use it almost entirely to create animated GIFs for the Warrior Cat forums. Ah, how time has passed. Nowadays I can't even remember how to animate a GIF on there, but such is life. I still use it to this day for digital art, even having Corel Painter. Before GIMP, I animated the old fashioned way -- MS paint and Windows Movie Maker. With determination, I scripted and animated a handful of Warrior Cat characters frame by frame. Each frame of Hollyleaf or whoever it was blinking was the likely source of death for our old computer, may she rest in peace.)

Storyboarder

(Storyboarder is a free software with which you can use to create professional and clean storyboards. It also provides printable storyboard templates so you can do you work traditionally and re-upload it easily into the software! It also works with Wacom tablets. Check it out! It's actually super cool.)

Pencil 2D

(A free, open source software. Simplistic design, switch between raster and vector, and best of all, again, it's free. I haven't used this one much yet, but I've seen it positively talked about by many! I'll update with more research when I have the chance.)

Krita

(I haven't used this one yet, so I can't speak on it either! But it's going on the list so I can come back and research it later. My poor laptop is not going to handle this many downloads lol.)

OpenToonz

(I also haven't tried this, but see above, haha.)

Blender - Grease Pencil

(Blender is well known for 3D animation, but they added a 2D feature called Grease Pencil as well.)

WriterDuet

(Free for up to 3 projects, very simple, but upgrades to a $10 a month plan, which is... eh, I'll keep my Scrivener for now. I used to write scripts in Microsoft Word or the Notepad on PC back in the day, I don't think I personally need the fancy features.)

Trelby

(A free screenwriting software, very basic and simple, good for beginners.)

Keep an eye out for

(Humblebundle occasionally does software deals -- a good art bundle at a discount can give you an easy start!)

[aurnadri]

what if i learned animation what then

[0hitsjustkat]

wip

[car4mell1zze]

Cooking up something

[traditionalanimation]

Learn from Master Animator & Director Don Bluth for a full year LIVE online! Classes start January, 2024. Enroll Today! http://www.donbluthuniversity.com

[kodzucloud]

i need to get back into art and learn how to animate- im loosing my mind yall…its too late to be up rn

[jeffmumm]

👻 Boo! My course teaching absolute beginners how to animate is now available DRM free and is currently on sale for 50% off! 🎃 https://guineapigparkour.itch.io/learning-2d-animation-the-absolute-beginners-entry

[astriiformes]

I know that realistically you can only fit so many movies into a list of approximately 100, but I cannot take that "How many of tumblr's favorite movies have you seen?" list that's been going around seriously because there are some truly egregious omissions.

Some of it is very clearly recency bias, which makes me wonder if the op truly wasn't on here in 2013 or so, but you're telling me you made a list of "tumblr's favorite movies" that doesn't include Pacific Rim or Mad Max: Fury Road? Because, like, I was there, Gandalf.

[haedyllic]

i promised you 🦋

(crossposting from x, bsky, & ig)

[spicymochi]

sleepy toothless

[antennatoheaven]

[ink-the-artist]

SHES MAD AS HELL❗️‼️