Dripping piece of paper

Here is my feeble attempt to animate a piece of paper dripping on the floor. It is made with Pencil (open source traditional animation program) and Gimpshop (open source image editor).

Jumpman

Well, another combination of Pencil and Moho.

Playing with Pencil and Moho

Well, that was just some test animation I did. The frames are drawn in Pencil and the translation and rotation was done in Moho.

More Pencil animation

This animation was fairly easy to create in the traditional (hand-drawn) animation program Pencil (also see yesterday's post). I only needed to draw four stages of a step, trace those for four stages for the next step, and the rest was paste, copy and drag in the correct position using onion skinning. The mask was drawn on a separate layer, and the animated GIF was created using Gimpshop.

Of course, it helps that I have some experience in animation and inbetweening.

Pencil for traditional animation

Traditional animation is probably the best way to learn how to animate for complete beginners, because you're only limitation is your drawing skill. Of course, you'll need some hardware to do that properly. The next best thing is a software program that lets you draw like traditional animation. Of course, you'll need some hardware as well to do this properly (computer and graphic art tablet).

There are some programs out there, some of them free, some of them rather expensive. A neat little program I found was Pencil, first developed by Patrick Corrieri, and taken over by Pascal Naidon, as an open source program for both 32-bit Windows and Mac OS X 10.3.9 and higher (both programmers are also character animators).

The program is currently still heavily in beta (version 0.4.1b) and has some bugs, but it seems to be pretty stable. It can do what I want to use it for, which is draw individual frames with rather efficient drawing tools. It is based on Trolltech Qt, which is included in the application, so you don't need to install that separately (the install file is all-inclusive).

This isn't about creating animation fast, as with Anime Studio, but doing it proper. You need to sharpen your drawing skill and use the techniques of traditional animation to create a descent looking animation. I'm not there yet, but I feel my skills improving while I'm using this program. It is quite intuitive and therefore simple to use. An ideal tool for developing animation ideas.



I created this animation in more time than I would have needed if I had done it in Moho or Anime Studio, but the learning experience was so good. I can now try to implement some ideas more easily than with Moho or Anime Studio and do some Preston Blair exercises.

Rising Sun

Just now I made this animation of a rising and traveling sun. The idea was to give the a "cartoony pop" when it rises. The traveling was done to give an idea of depth in the scene.

Animated girl

Some days ago, I made this animated girl to demonstrate some animation principles to a newbie animator in the Anime Studio Forum. I thought I was a newbie, but apparently, there are even those who are newer to the art than I.

Scripting z depth

I have done extensive scripting the last couple of days. Short nights and long days. The latest script I made is to order layers in the z direction (depth). Here is some animation I created using this script.

Some fun walk animation

Car driving by

Well, this isn't great animation, but it IS animation nonetheless.



Here is another example.

More baby steps...

A variation on the baby steps of yesterday.

Baby's first steps

This is a piece of walk animation I did.

Bird animation

I've been busy creating scripts for Anime Studio. But a little bit of animation never hurts.

Another cartoon guy

I'm getting pretty good at animating in Flash. Not as good as I want to, but I'm in the right direction. If you hadn't noticed, the image is animated; he yawns every 30 seconds.

Combining Flash and Moho

I wanted to know if it is possible to create some frames in Flash 2.0 and use those as image frames in Moho. Here is a result.

Hand drawn blob

Well, the blob is hand drawn. The eyes are constructed.

Another sprinting stick figure

Here's another attempt of animating a starting sprinter.

Start to run

Well, here is a line test of an animation about running. Perhaps I should develop it in to a weird running animation of a stick figure.

Another attempt at blinking eyes

Here is a better animation example. Thanks to the guys in the Anime Studio Forum for their advice and support.

Blinking

Does it matter how your character blinks its eys: eye slow of fast shutting, slow or fast opening?



A good excuse for animating. This time with Anime Studio Pro 5.5.