How Teenagers Animate with Photoshop and Cartoon Animator
About Jop Govers
Salutations to my fellow animators and animation followers all over the world! My identify is Jop, and three years in the past, I launched into a journey to grasp the craft of animation. My software of alternative is Cartoon Animator, particularly its newest version, CTA5. When you have an opportunity to take a look at its options, you’ll discover that it’s chock-full of superior options, which I’ve additionally explored in my brief animation.
Storyboarding with Photoshop
All of it begins with an concept, which I jot down utilizing key phrases and sketches on my iPad. As soon as my ideas are captured, I create all my panels in Photoshop. This protects me plenty of time and permits me to visualise what visuals or motion sequences work finest for my story. My storyboards are normally unfastened and sketchy, typically that includes stick figures as a substitute of detailed characters. So long as they serve the aim of creating the story, they don’t need to be good. The preliminary steps of making an animation aren’t very completely different from these of a painter or sculptor, that’s beginning out with the broad strokes earlier than splitting hairs.
Creating Background Artwork
To set the stage for my story, I envisioned a desolate desert panorama, a spot the place you wouldn’t need your automotive to interrupt down. Beginning with a fundamental horizon line in my preliminary sketch, I steadily added layers to create a way of depth and dimension. With Cartoon Animator 5, I used to be in a position to layer the mountains and floor planes to present the scene extra visible curiosity and improve the dynamic digicam actions in my animation.
To populate the scene, I drew numerous reusable props corresponding to unfastened rocks, cacti, and skulls, which I scattered strategically in several backgrounds all through the story. Not solely did these props save me time, however additionally they helped keep visible consistency and continuity between scenes.
2D Character Design
To rig my characters, I used Reallusion’s PSD templates, that are extremely user-friendly and intuitive. All I needed to do was swap out the default 2D character design and sprites with my very own creations. Should you’re simply beginning out with animation, I like to recommend learning current examples of how the rigging templates work and the way characters transfer their joints and facial options. Reallusion’s web site has loads of examples, and you may as well discover useful videos and courses on platforms like YouTube. Whereas it might require a while funding, it should positively repay in the long run, because it did for me after I was a newbie at rigging.
Create Animated 2D Character
Cartoon Animator 5 has an incredible function referred to as the 360 Head and Facial Animation Set Up. Should you arrange your character correctly in a PSD Editor beforehand, it turns into easy to make use of in CTA5 with these instruments.
2D character animation
I then started outlining the actions by keyframing important actions and facial expressions. The one exception was using a 3D stroll cycle, which makes 2D character animation in CTA5 a breeze. Right here I relaxation straightforward and let the brand new options in CTA5 carry my 2D character to life.
Compositing in After Results
For compositing, I relied on After Effects. I make the most of numerous blurs with completely different mixing modes to realize a extra cinematic look, and in addition apply fundamental colour correction strategies corresponding to saturation and colour filters.
Video Modifying and Sound Design
My modifying course of started by combining my voice-over with the storyboard panels. As I accomplished my animation scenes, I changed the storyboard panels with the ultimate animation clips. I need to give a particular shout-out to my proficient mates at Studio Ghibletz who helped me with their superb voice-over and writing for my challenge.
Wrapping Up
I extremely advocate CTA 5 for all customers, for freshmen and execs alike as it’s an easy-to-learn and intuitive-to-use animation software. CTA 5 features a bunch of user-friendly options and toolsets which give me the flexibility to unleash my creativity with out compromise. Like no different software I attempted previously, CTA actually allowed me to kick-start my dream to grow to be an animator. I due to this fact am, for positive, an incredible fan and can carry on utilizing it for a lot of tasks to come back.
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