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| Animation Nation | | By Gareth Branwyn for Screenager Central |
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Before the digital revolution, animation was a maddeningly slow process of drawing and painting individual frames (called "cells") for each tiny movement, and then using a special machine to physically flip through the cells in front of a camera to create the cartoon. If you've ever rifled through a flipbook, you were basically animating the images the old fashion way. |
Computers have changed the world of animation in a huge way, allowing artists to draw characters on-screen once and then animate their movements with a few button clicks. But it isn't just Hollywood animators that get to have all the fun. Affordable programs (even free ones!) can be used on your home computer to create awesome animation of a quality that only Disney could have dreamt of making decades ago. If you're the creative sort and want to try your hand at computer animation, here are some resources and ideas to get you started.
Animation studios, even low-budget ones, have tricked out computer systems of a type that you and I can probably never afford. But for basic animation, the kind we'll be talking about here, can be done by just about any current home PC. Besides a computer, the only other things you'll need are an animation program and a cool idea for your cartoon. Let's look at some programs.
GIF Animators
 The Computer Age's answer to conventional cell animation is GIF animation. As you likely already know, GIF (which stands for Graphics Interface Format) is one of the most common formats for online images. The site on which you're reading this article uses GIF in many of its Web graphics. When you see an animated banner advertisement on a Web site, it's often done in GIF as well. Animated GIFs, like the old mechanical animating method, are just a sequence of static images that get loaded to the screen so quickly, they look like they're in fluid motion. You can use this same technology to create cool cartoons.
If you want to just get your feet wet with GIF animation (for free), head on over to GIFWorks. It's a Web-based graphics studio that lets you take any existing GIF (either static or animated), on your computer or one from a Net address you type in, import it into GIFWorks, and start manipulating it. You can make copies of the images/animations, change their colors, add special effects, animated text and more. When you have something that you like, you can save it to your hard drive. To find plenty of animated GIFs to play around with, check out GIFWork's sister site Animation Factory.
 The next step beyond GIFWorks is to use a dedicated desktop GIF animation program, such as Ulead's popular GIF Animator 5. This program lets you import images that you've created in any drawing or painting program, put them in the sequence you want, and then animate them. The program is easy to use and also allows you to add special video-like effects, animated text, and more. You can even create stop-motion movie animation by taking frame-by-frame pictures on a digital camera, importing, and animating them. There's an article on the Ulead site about a 5th grade class that made claymation movies with GIF Animator. Just think, if 5th graders can do this, what you could do! You can try GIF Animator 5 for 15 days for free. It costs $49.95 to buy.
3D Animation
GIF animation is fun for beginners, and for those who just want to add some spice to a Web site, but if you have designs on being the next Walt Disney, 3D animation is what you'll need to learn. As the name implies, this animation process takes three-dimensional-looking images (called "models") and sets them in motion. The revolutionary thing about 3D animation is that the animator doesn't have to draw and paint the model over and over again for each frame. He or she just models it once and then manipulates the model, as if it were clay, to re-pose it. And the animator doesn't even have to animate each frame - the computer does a bunch of the work. The animator simply jumps from the first frame in the animation sequence a desired number of frames ahead, moves the model into a new position, and then asks the computer to create all of the in-between frames from the first one to the current frame. If the movement looks natural, the animator moves on. If the computer didn't do a good job guessing at the positions for the frames it generated, the animator helps it along by manually posing some of the in-between frames. The frames in an animation sequence that the artist poses are called "key frames," the process of the computer generating the likely-needed frames from one key frame to the next is called "tweening" (as in "in-between"). All this can start to sound (and get) very confusing very fast. 3D modeling and animating can take some time to learn, but the results are well worth the effort. Luckily, most of the popular 3D animation programs have trial versions and great beginner-to-advanced tutorials on their Web sites. Here are some programs worth taking a look at:
3D Impact Pro This program is sort of a cross between a GIF animator and a regular 3D animation program. It was designed for adding 3D animations, especially animated text and logos, to Web sites, but its impressive tools can be used to create simple 3D animations of any kind. The program is free to try and $80 to buy.
 3D Canvas You won't find too many free 3D modeling and animation programs. The high-end ones can be outrageously expensive. 3D Canvas costs you only the time it takes to download and to learn. Not only is this program great for the price, but the Web site has a series of excellent tutorials that take you from the most basic animation techniques to the more sophisticated. 3D Canvas artists also share their 3D models online. Looking at someone else's models and animations is a great way to learn how to do it yourself.
Professional 3D animation tools If you tried your hand at GIF animation and 3D Impact Pro and 3D Canvas, and you've been infected by the computer animation bug, it's time to check out what the pros use. Several of the popular 3D animation programs used in the film and game industries are Animation:Master and Cinema 4D. Each 3D program has its strengths and weaknesses, but these two have one particular strength: the price. Pro 3D packages can cost thousands of dollars. Cinema 4D does retail for an allowance-decimating $600, but they offer a deep discount to students (at $295). They also have a demo version you can download. If it looks like something you want to devote yourself to, just show your parents the Shrek 2 box office numbers and tell them its an investment in your future. Animation:Master is the cheapest program of its kind, at $299. Again, not cheap-cheap, but worth it if you want to get serious about this type of art-making.
One way of getting these expensive 3D programs for much cheaper is to buy the previous version on an auction site like eBay. Especially when new versions come out, previous versions (both new and used) drop dramatically in price. For a relative newcomer to 3D, you won't miss the fancy new features and your parents are less likely to go into convulsions when you ask them to fork over the dough.
It's All About Telling Stories
 As the saying goes, it's not about the expensive special effects in a film, it's about good story-telling. The same is true in cartoon animation. If you have a really cool, clever idea for an animated short, it almost doesn't matter whether you use a simple GIF animator or a pro-level program like Cinema 4D to realize it. As long as the tools you use get the full impact of your story across, that's all that matters. Just look at a popular animated cartoon like Homestar Runner. The low-budget, homemade look of the series is actually a huge part of its appeal.
To help an animator tell his or her story, they carefully plan out the action using "storyboards." These are scene-by-scene sketches (either done in a drawing pad or in a computer drawing/painting program) that allow you to better choreograph the action. To make animations that others want to watch, make sure you put as much time into dreaming up a great idea and plotting out the story as you do in animating it.
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