Creating an animated cartoon seems like a pretty overwhelming endeavour, doesn’t it? Well, you may be surprised to hear that it’s not really all that hard. With the nature of the internet these days, internet cartoons are a dime a dozen and many artists can create them in less than a week if they’re motivated enough. You also have options for there are several pieces of software out there that can help you in creating cartoons.
Adobe Flash to be the best option software . You can do almost anything in it, from animating cartoons to creating interactive media. With Flash, while your skills evolve, the software is expansive and robust enough to never feel limited. Other softwares, like Anime Studio, while good for animation, aren’t good for much else past that. And now with the new version of Adobe Flash, its animation tools meet and in many cases succeed that of rival softwares.
Here are four basic techniques to be used in animation.
These are:
• Drawn animation
• Cut-out animation
• Model animation or stop motion animation
• Computer Animation or computer generated imagery (CGI)
#1. Drawn animation.
Drawn animation, also termed as traditional animation and classical animation, is the oldest and historically the most prevalent form of animation. In a traditionally-animated cartoon, each frame is drawn by hand. This encloses any form, where one drawing is put back by another in a progression. Each drawing is somewhat unusual from the one which is placed before.
Animated films are made up of thousands of drawings, depicted on screen very rapidly one after the other. It works in the same manner as the flip book does.
#2. Cut-out animation
The world’s earliest known animated feature film was cutout animations, made in Argentina by Quirino Cristiani. By using flat characters, such as—strings, stiff fabric, props and backgrounds cut from materials such as paper; and by using buttons, matchsticks or even photographs, you can create cut-out animation. It embraces any figure of animation where cut-out forms be in motion or substitute by the other cut-outs.
#3. Model animation or stop motion animation
Model animation is a form of stop motion animation designed to merge with live action footage to create the illusion of a real-world fantasy sequence.
By using materials, such as—clay, wire that can be bent or formed into another shape, you can create model animation. This engrosses the filming of puppets or any other form of three-dimensional models. Before moving slightly and screening, it is placed, filmed and than these shots are placed jointly as a section of the film and will give the hallucination of moving models.
#4. Computer animation or Computer Generated Imagery (CGI)
Computer animation is the skill of building the moving images by means of computers. This refers to the portrayal of three-dimensional models and locations on the computer. Images can be scanned into the computer via digital photography or made within the computer itself.
To produce the delusion of movement, an image is presented on the computer screen which is swiftly put back by the new image that is alike to the preceding image, but shifted to some extent. Computer animation is basically a digital successor to the art of stop motion animation of 3D models and frame-by-frame animation of 2D illustrations.
In a method known as—Tweening or Morphing, the variations in appearance between the key frames are automatically considered by the computer and finally Animation is rendered at the end.
How do you get started in making these cartoons? The good news is with places like YouTube and Google Video being so popular, you can find some great video tutorials on how to draw, animate and much more. Video tutorials are great for stuff like this because you can follow along with the lesson, pause the video, rewind it if you missed something, or replay it entirely if you need to watch it again. And if you want to really get into some elaborate lessons, many sites out there offer them at modest fees. Google is your friend, use it and use it often. If you have a question on the software you are using, just type that question into Google and you’re bound to find a solution to your problem.
