Thread: How do I create a cartoon. What is the process, what software and materials are needed?

I don't have any experience with animation software and I would like to know what software would someone recommend for me to use? I don't have any experience creating cartoons neither? I would like to know what is the full step by step process in creating a cartoon?

My first suggestion would be to learn to draw first...save you rmoney on software..all the great animators including those Pixar guys are illustrators and artists first..


I hear flash is a good animation tool.

you dont need any special tools. just a pencil. think of something funny and intigrate that into your cartoon. hope i helped!

Step by step eh? Well talent, skill and imagination aside I've had to do this more than a few times, and will share what I know of the process in a nutshell. If there are terms here that I use and you need more information on - that's going to be more questions as I intend to be brief. This is a basic description - there are certainly more "advanced" techniques but I'm going to try and get you running "out of the box".

Now, the first thing you need is a story or script. You have to figure out how to start, where to go and how to end. You can't just start drawing a make it up as you go along.

Storyboarding helps at this point, it gives you an idea of how the project will look and how the action will flow from one scene to the next. Often you storyboard something and realize that you have too much focus on one event or you need an event as a "transition". Some people don't bother with storyboarding because it's time consuming but if I can help it, I work a storyboard up.

Preproduction should be drawing the characters - design them and make sure they have the look they need. It's also a good time to develop sets the characters will be in. If your characters are dark you don't want to put them are super dark backgrounds - they will get lost.

Production is the actual drawing. A traditional animation is 30 frames per second. This means if you cartoon is 5 minutes long you'll need 9000 frames of animation. Here's where software can help. You draw one background then draw your character on frame one - hold that drawing for a couple of frames then move them slightly and continue the process. Practice with stick figures and a "flip book" to truly get the feel of this process.

Once you have your thousands of images you feed them through a program like WMM and line them up 1-2-3-4-5-ect. Play the end result to make sure it flows right. If some action is too slow, you drop frames to speed it up or duplicate frames to slow it down a bit. Once you have your finished movie you can then go back and add music and the like.

I'm no cartoonist but I've also considered cartooning and this is what I've found.

http://www.sci.fi/~animato/cartoon/cartoon.html

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x0fN3DYfIF0

The first is a very basic way of doing cartoons from an actuall cartoonist from the 1970's. Obviously things have a changed a lot with computers but the basic premise will never change entirely.

The second clip is a film from Disney on how they made their cartoons back in the 30's. They revolutionized cartooning and are still on the cutting edge.

As for programs. Flash can be used. In college some friends of mine used a program called Director for making videos and claymation. It functions on a frame by frame basis.
http://www.adobe.com/products/director/

I also found this and it looks really good but not sure about the pricing. You judge for yourself.
http://www.toonboom.com/

I have spent the last four months reintroducing myself to line art which was something practiced in 80's high. I recommend the best program with simple to use interface, XARA.

http://www.xara.com

I include a link to my FLICKr photo album of the last four months and it begins with my most recent work to the first drawing four months ago. You can see there with this program and softward that all kinds of things are achieved. Really, start with this before losing a decade to mastering Illustrator or Corel Draw, though Corel products do compliment XARA.

By the way, Corel and Xara are pc only.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/bluedecker97vx/sets/72157594426767270/

Please friend, don't be silly. You just can't fly an aeroplane without proper training and knowledge. There are plenty of softwares like Flash, Director, Image ready, Maya etc for making animations, but you have to learn it first. Cartoon drawing is similarly an art form which either come as in-born talent or you have to learn it first.