Making Animated Movies

[VideoTechMan]

I had a question....it was regarding a thread I read sometime ago about making your own movies...posting them and everything. If someone can point me in the right direction I would appreciate it. Also, does anyone know anything about animation, like making your own animated movie (not on a large scale....more like a simple clip or something). If anyone has any info or knows where they can guide me, I would appreciate it. Thanks!

VTM

[housepig]

what kind of animation are you thinking of? 2D (traditional Bugs Bunny - style) or 3D?

is this like a short film, or more like an ident clip or logo (like in the beginning of a movie, the animations that identify the studio)?

[SquirrelDip]

Although I've never done this myself, I'm also interested in giving this a try...

What I've been looking into is more the "South Park" style of animation and reading up on working in Macromedia Flash.

Any other comments on this method (Pros/Cons) would be appreciated.

[redwudz]

I tried a quick Google search for 'animation software' and there seems to be quite a few sites. You might try that for a start.

[spectroelectro]

There are 2 basic forms of video animation: drawn art animation, which requires "tweening" software, and 3D animation, which requires a modelling program and a separate animation program which gets fed the models and textures &c.
PovRay is the best freeware 3D animation program. It requires a separate modelling program to generate the objects you animate. It works very well but has a high learning curve and works mainly in text mode, with a circa 1970 interface, counterintuitive at best. On the other hand, PovRay can do almost everything the $20,000 programs can do, and PovRay costs nothing.
Hand-drawn "tweening" software is grotesquely expensive, starting at around $1500 and going up from there. In this type of software you draw keyframes and the software interpolates gradually between 'em. This is basically an automated version of what Disney used to hire armies of artists to do.
Both forms of animation will take a great deal of time to produce, but hte results can be spectacular.
I couldnt' recommend Adobe After Effects' "animation," since that's basically just 2-D postcards moving around in space, or Macromedia Director, since you can't get objects to morph while moving.

[K(c)offee]

I would say macromedia flash would be a good way to make animation. Not the best but its a good price compared to the stuff mentioned earlier and you can try a free trial version. www.macromedia.com I dont know how easy it is to do. I have only used it for more still animation. No movement. But its really good software and pretty easy to learn with alot of more advanced stuff you can do with it if you need to. And there was a program i saw once that made flash movies but was more for animation... if I find it ill post a link to it. Never tired it.

[housepig]

spectro -

you might want to take a look at Blender - it's a freeware 3D program, with some animation tools built into it - I don't think it's text-driven like POV.

(I'm just dipping my toes in the water on 3D, though, so I don't know a huge amount about it in comparison to other apps. but it's got a dedicated enough fan base that they bought it from the company that developed it and made it open source / freeware, all through user donations).

you could also do the tweening with Flash, couldn't you? basically, that's what it's doing - you give it the key frames, it interpolates between them. that might be a more practical solution than a dedicated animation software - even an old version of Flash, like Flash 4, is still pretty powerful for traditional animation...

[The village idiot]

If you are doing old school drawn art animation or clay-mation you need no special tweening software. You simply take a still for each frame that will be in the sequence. Just like the way it was done with film. Then use some kind of editor or other processor to put the sequence of still frames into motion video. Many editors can do this, as well as TMPGEnc and maybe Vdub. Instead of using a video camera to make said animation, I might suggest using a digital still camera, then if you wanted to, you could create the animation in High Definition formats.

And before someone says it, yes that's a lot of still frames, being you would need 30 for every second of moving video for NTSC. If you are shooting for DVD as output, you might be able to use 24 FPS, for a savings of 6 frames per second, and possibly several minutes while takings the stills per running second of video.

[VideoTechMan]

This is pretty interesting information. I know I am just reading into animation myself, so I will lookup some of the sites that ya'll have suggested for more research. I do have the Adobe After Effects Production Bundle, and not sure what kind of animation it can do, but I will grab the ol book and have a look at it. I was thinking more of the 3D type animation, somewhat like the graphics like in the movie Toy Story and movies similar to that type animation. 2D wouldnt be bad for cartoon-like animation, if you can create a character and make it do what you want it to do.....I have no doubt that it may take a deep learning curve, but its one of the things you have to do I guess if you want really good results in what you want.

And you know something housepig? Doing an animated logo that I had came up with several years ago but never figured how to get it animated seems really fun. If I can get it worked on, I could use that as my original production label logo, should I get into making my own movies.

VTM

[redwudz]

If you are interested in 3D animation, check out 'Poser' from http://www.curiouslabs.com/. I have an old version and it is very popular with quite a few support sites. If you remember the 'dancing baby' animation, this was done with Poser. Expensive though, about $200US. Another type of animation is like the talking Taco Bell chicuaua (or however it's spelled). You can do this with Photoshop and the 'Goo' plugin. Animation is time consuming though. One frame at a time. I just never had the patience.