Animation and Video Life

What's the Best Animation Tool? There is an ongoing debate in animation circles about what animation tools are considered 'Professional' and capable of producing 'Professional Quality' animation? Can only tools with the status of 'Industry Standard' be considered professional and by extension be the only tools that can produce professional quality animation? Is it the target market of an animation tool that makes it professional? Is it the skill of the person using it that determines whether a tool is capable of professional quality output or the specs of the app? What Animation Tool Should You Learn? In a discussion in the Cartoon Animator Users Facebook group  a member noted that they had been learning Cartoon Animator  (CA4) for four months, only to find out that the application isn't used by professional animators (based on asking 30 professionals on LinkedIn). The consensus was that learning Toon Boom Harmony or MOHO was the better optio...

Skateboarder Ed. Character by Warwick Hays. Warwick Hays has built quite a sizeable collection of characters, props, and backgrounds for Cartoon Animator that I've yet to really explore, however, being the tragic skateboarder that I am, it was surely fate that I would buy his Skateboarder Ed G3 character as my first purchase. Now I don't know a lot about Warwick but, based on the design of the skateboard prop that comes with Skateboarder Ed I'm fairly certain Warwick doesn't know much about skateboarding, and/or probably didn't use a good reference when designing his skateboard. Bart's skateboard has changed over the years, though curiously, even later versions, barely get closer to what an actual skateboard looks like. To be fair, Warwick's holding up a tradition of animators who clearly haven't seen a skateboard or noticed how skaters actually ride them. Just check out Bart Simpson's flat plank of wood with wheels from the opening int...

Water Valet 2. I never particularly planned a sequel to my animated short, Water Valet , but after purchasing some of Garry Pye's all new All Star G3 Characters for Cartoon Animator 4, I needed something to test them out. As with Garry's Bendies Characters , the first thing I did was customize an All Star to look like my TET avatar. Once that happened I thought, why not do a second Water Valet animation? People seemed to like the first, and it's a great, short project, I can do in a weekend (you think I would've learned that it would take longer than a weekend from the first time). It helps if you've seen part 1 but it's not essential. All you need to know is this office has a robot water cooler valet whose primary role is to push the one button on the water cooler that fills your cup with water. Watch part 2 below and then read the behind the scenes of how it was made. Behind the Scenes 1. TET's All Star Avatar Sources. Everything starte...

Bat Storm - Created in Reallusion's Character Creator 3 for iClone7. Three days before writing this post I had a light bulb moment for how to create my Batman parody character, Bat Storm, in iClone so that he would look almost exactly as I imagined him. There he is right in the main image of this post, in all his 3D toon character style glory. Along the way I learned a few things about using Reallusion's Character Creator 3 for iClone 7. Before I get into that I wanted to take a quick recap of the evolution of this character and how long it has taken to get here. Note: If you're interested, Part 1 to this post is here . It's not required reading and the same article is linked to again later. In the Beginning GoAnimate Charge Girl, Super Charge, Bat Storm, and Bat Flash. Bat Storm started life in 2010 as a Batman parody on the then named GoAnimate (now Vyond). His design was based purely on what was available in GoAnimate's Comedy World Theme Char...

Now it's easier than ever to animate your rough artwork with Cartoon Animator 4.1 Reallusion released its first major update to Cartoon Animator 4 since its launch, adding improved integration with several leading graphics applications. Likely a direct response to criticisms that CA4 isn't as functional as some of its competitors due to a lack of drawing tools. While you could already make your favorite graphics app with .PSD support the default editor that would launch whenever you exported an image from CA4 for editing, the 4.1 update takes this idea much further. Once you've set up your preferred graphics app (Photoshop, Clip Studio Paint, Affinity Designer, Krita, or PhotoPea) it will have an icon tool on the main CA UI Toolbar (technically it's the 'Add-On toolbar' but you can position this on the main toolbar if you wish). Now you can click on this directly whenever you want to just start drawing a new prop, scene or bone character from scratch. ...

Voicemod is a real time voice changer app. A common problem for hobbyist animators is finding people to voice characters. Friends are often called in to our no budget productions because they're friends and they're usually happy to help. However friends aren't always available and/or willing, and hiring voice actors can be expensive if you're making a lot of short animations just for fun. In desperation you start voicing all your own characters but quickly realize your vocal range extends to only about three different voices. This is where  Voicemod  may help. Voicemod is a free dedicated, real time voice modifying app for Windows (other OS's are in the works). It has a very simple interface that makes it easy to alter the sound of your voice to any saved voice profile with a single click. It also makes it very easy to modify any profile or even create your own voice modifications from scratch. Before I go further, while Voicemod is free you are limited ...

Rise recreates the opening scene of Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker, Teaser Trailer #1. My animated short, Rise, came about because I wanted to showcase my newly redesigned, Desert Scavenger for Cartoon Animator 4. Rather than do some lame demo like I did for the original version of the character I wanted to do something that would actually demonstrate the character's potential. After seeing teaser trailer #1 for Star Wars, The Rise of Skywalker, I thought it would be really cool to try and recreate the opening scene with Rey, in the desert, facing off against Kylo Ren's Tie Fighter. My version was never intended to be an exact copy of the trailer. What I set out to do was use the backgrounds I'd already made (which feature the crashed Star Destroyer on Jakku) to create pretty much a shot for shot similar scenario as best I could, within the limitations of my character. Watch my short below then read about how it was created. Redesigning the Character The...

Desert Scavenger G3, 360 Head. Creating G3, 360 character heads in Reallusion's Cartoon Animator 4 is something of a daunting task if you are working with a more detailed character head design. Your first attempt is bound to be a lot of trial and error. Mine certainly was and, in this article, I'm going to share with you what I learned. That said, this is not a tutorial. It's a run down of my experience creating a head for my own character. I've linked to Reallusion's video tutorials below. I chose to use a redesigned version of my G3 Desert Scavenger, Rey, Star Wars, parody character. Since the biggest part of her redesign was a completely new look head I thought now was a good time to try a more complex 360 head than my previous Color Monkey heads . The process of setting up a 360 head is not hard but there is a lot to take in. To prepare myself I went through Reallusions first eight video tutorials which cover almost every aspect of the 360 head creato...

Hero - still from a 2D animated short created in Blender 2.8 with Grease Pencil. There are a number of animation apps that like to promote themselves as the one tool for all your animation needs and, while many are certainly very powerful, I think Blender 2.8 , released earlier this year, may be the closest yet. If you're not familiar with Blender it's been almost the go to tool, since at least 2002, for anyone wanting to learn 3D animation on a budget - and nothing is easier on the budget than completely free. With the release of 2.8 not only is Blender a complete 3D animation tool, it's now also a complete 2D animation tool. That's right you can use it to create 2D, hand drawn animation, motion graphics, and bone rigged 2D characters. As well, it has plugins that can give 3D animation that 2D look. Hence my suggestion that Blender 2.8 is truly the one tool for all your animation needs (because Blender is also very capable at VFX - think of any 'live acti...