DIY: more about 2D animation

At Animation and Video you can find an article with videos demonstrating "Six D.I.Y. Video Animation Tools."  Two of them are most interesting--GoAnimate and Moovly.

GoAnimate emphasizes creating videos for business presentations online and is fairly pricy, beginning at $39/month with more expensive plans available.  Here's one of their introductory videos:

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You can sign up for free at Moovly, also an online application.  Here are some of your creative options:

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Moovly creative options

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The interesting features in Moovly are being able to manipulate the timeline, as in a full-blown animation program and to add images, sound, and snippets from other videos.  Here's one their introductory videos:

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Moovly has a channel on YouTube. Searching on the term Moovly at YouTube you'll find a lot of users who are working with it.

That aside, if you really want to do animation, nothing beats a full-blown animation program like Toon Boom Studio (currently on sale for $149) or Animate.  KTooN is open source and has good reviews at Sourceforge, where it's available for download.  There's a list of 2D animation software at Wikipedia, but I suspect it's fairly old.

Animator Adam Phillips does some interesting work and offers tutorials on his site Bitey.com.

 -- Marge

DIY: animate

According to the dictionary animate means bringing to life; animation brings artwork to life.  It can be 2D, 3D, Gif, or any combination -- the possibilities are many.  According to the LA Times, Fred Seibert, producer of YouTube's Cartoon Hangover, foresees 'next golden age of animation' on Internet.  Here's a short piece from Seibert's channel:

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DIY.org has a page on animation that introduces different methods and offers some challenges for developing skills.  It could be a good way to get started. There's a free online app at PowToon for creating simple animations with a nice library of text effects, images, characters, and such.  You have to sign up to use it.  It's a lot like putting a video together in a video editor.  Here's my test video:

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To do animated motion, such as what you see in animated films (mostly 2D), you need a good animation application. Most of them are fairly expensive.  Toon Boom is a leader in the market. Below is a rather long tutorial that gives you a good idea of how to handle such an application when creating a character walking.  Note that the ability to observe and apply your observations to your craft is important as well.

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This list at about.com gives links to sources of free animation software.  Some are 30-day trials, some are 3D.  Pencil is an open source, free application well worth a try.

-- Marge