What I Use to Create Animated Videos
How many people do you know like to watch videos? I know I spend many hours on many types of videos. I love animated videos because of the creativity that is involved in creating them. If you have ever wondered if you could take one of your still art creations and bring it to life, you can! Luckily for us who like to create, technology has advanced to give us some great programs to help make that a reality! I will tell you about a couple of my favorite software programs.
I use Adobe Creative Cloud for my 2D animations. This suite of programs allow me to detail my animations and put them together seamlessly. You can purchase the suites separately or altogether. If you are going to be doing animation as a career vs a hobby it is more economical to purchase Creative Cloud as a whole. It also gives you access to over 20 programs that you can use. See the purchase options at Adobe Creative Cloud.
The first software program that I will elaborate on from Creative Cloud is Animate CC. I like this program because I can get nice clean animations and colors. Adobe Animate has quite a few features that I tend to use in each of my projects. The loop tool, the onion skins and the symbol library are some of the most handy features that I utilize.
The loop tool allows you to review bits of the animation over and over without having to view the entire animation. I love the Onion Skin tool in Animate because it allows me to review one keyframe to the next in order to see how I can make a smoother transition. Although I have mine set as blue (past keyframe) and green (future keyframe), you can customize the opacity and the color of how you wish to review your keyframes.
Another feature I like is the symbol library. As the name implies, it is a library of everything that is in the document. It shows you files that have been imported, symbols and shapes that have been made in the document, and even tweens of items that aren’t made into symbols!
Find more information on Animate here: Adobe Animate Tutorials
Another program that I use alongside Animate to create animations is Photoshop. When I am working on animation, I usually hand draw or sketch them out in Photoshop. I like to use the “KYLE Ultimate Inking Thick ‘n Thin” for line-art and coloring because it gives very solid lines.
After designing the character in Photoshop, I refine my character in Illustrator or Animate. Here I will make the colors of the characters more accurate to how I want them in the animation and I can make sure their lines are crisp. One reason I like to refine my character’s colors and lines in Animate or in Illustrator is because they are on a Vector system which is calculated through math equations, unlike Photoshop that runs on Raster photos that are based on pixels. Vector lines allow me to scale the character or image up or down without it becoming blurry or pixelated.
Now that you have a couple great options for starting your 2D Animation adventure, there are tutorials that are very easy to follow to get you on the path to making amazing animations.
2D animation is a great place to start if you are considering animation. It gives you a great basis of the concepts that you will expand on when you move into the 3D animation space.
If you would like more guidance you can take online classes that you can customize to fit your needs and skills as an animator. This gives you the opportunity to try animation before spending thousands and thousands of dollars in a traditional school setting. Wouldn’t you like to find out if you’d like to pursue animation before taking on that debt or be forced to take classes that didn’t relate to animation? Learn More: https://www.bloopanimation.com/animation-software/
