Free Animation Software for A Newbie- UPDATE: I MADE A VIDEO!

Grunt's Ghosts

So I have been wrestling with the idea of doing a Youtube channel that focuses on Roleplaying Games, like Dungeons and Dragons, for a while now. I don't have a good camera to put my fugly face on so I thought I could do simple animations, since it would also be a unique style to set it apart from other similar channels. I've never messed with any animation software before so I was wondering if there were any that would be easy for a newbie to use.

Elvenshae

2D or 3D animation?

Grunt's Ghosts

2D.

CelestialBadger

Animation takes a hell of a long time, especially 2d animation. It'd be easier to get a cheap webcam, you can find them at yard sales.

Or go for another gimmick. Sock puppets, paper cutouts, action figures, minis, that sort of thing.

If you really want to try animation, I haven't tried these but they look simple enough:

http://listoffreeware.com/list-of-best-free-2d-animation-software-for-windows/

flowerhoney

CelestialBadger wrote: »

Animation takes a hell of a long time, especially 2d animation. It'd be easier to get a cheap webcam, you can find them at yard sales.

Or go for another gimmick. Sock puppets, paper cutouts, action figures, minis, that sort of thing.

If you really want to try animation, I haven't tried these but they look simple enough:

http://listoffreeware.com/list-of-best-free-2d-animation-software-for-windows/

These are all true words.

Free animation software, unless you really don't care about things are going to look, are likely to be painful to use. They just can't even get close to legit stuff sadly.

Do you have a wacom tablet or something you can use to draw in the computer? A better way might be still images that you cut together, kind of like the zero punctuation. It's still going to require you to have some software though

Paladin

How about Source Filmmaker?

Edit: no wait 2d nevermind

Iruka

Krita has animation tools rolled in now (PC only):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9uvju6sUNJA

If you are new to drawing/animation this isnt going to be the most intuitive process, but its not incredibly difficult to learn the software side if you are computer savvy. All considering, many artists have moved into using photoshop for animation, so Krita is not far off from that, by the looks of the UI.

Grunt's Ghosts

I started playing with Pencil since it has tutorials.

I'm not expecting to make anything big and fancy, something low key, like Cyanide and Happiness or Zero Punctuation or Order of the Stick, something that is simple visually. I might look at that Krita too since I know Photoshop well enough and that might be easier to work with.

Also, I don't have a wacom tablet, yet. I have a friend of mine who is going to dig his old one and we'll see what I can do with it.

CelestialBadger

I think you'd be amazed at how much effort something like Zero Punctuation takes to make, at least in comparison to just videoing your face.

Grunt's Ghosts

Oh, yeah. I'm not brushing off the hard work it will require. I have friends who work for animation studios and I've seen how hard it is just to get something to walk across a screen. I just thought that it might be cool to try it out.

Iruka

Go for it, man. Animation is mostly intimidating because its a time sink, but it wouldn't get done if no one considered the effort and time to be an enjoyable process. Have fun!

Endless_Serpents

What about rough stop motion animation?

Get some miniatures, or make some figures. Some Lego or cardboard backdrops.

As long as you're not after fluid movement I reckon that's the most viable animation option.

JohnnyCache

I've been looking for a tool that could help me with some animation with a lot of re-use - IE just moving the mouth and blinking the eyes on fairly static drawings, maybe occasionally toggling them from a static pose to another static pose. Would any of these suggestions be ideal for that?

Grunt's Ghosts

Someone suggested Flash to me and if Newgrounds is any indication, it mustn't be that hard.

ArbitraryDescriptor

Grunt's Ghosts wrote: »

Someone suggested Flash to me and if Newgrounds is any indication, it mustn't be that hard.

Flash, now called Adobe Animate, is perfectly adequate and now supports development of Canvas and SVG animations.

But it's certainly not free.

Grunt's Ghosts

Yeah, I just looked at it. It's a Substitution based program. Sorry, not paying $20 a month for it.

Grunt's Ghosts

So it's been awhile but I got back into things. I ended up doing a Zero Punctuation/Alternative History sort of animation where it's cut frame by frame, but I think it came out ok. Took me three days, maybe 15 hours to do less than a minute of video, but that's because of I made everything from scratch. Now that I have frames to work with (like the Ghosts, his eyes, ect.) it should become a bit easier to do more videos. Which is what I plan on starting tomorrow, which I hope to make a bit longer.

https://youtu.be/W3jWQGNiRkg