How to Make a Cartoon Movie Online
For over 100 years, cartoon animation has combined graphic arts and motion pictures. Animation has provided filmmakers the ability to show things that live action can't, ever since J. Stuart Blackton shot frames of chalk-on-blackboard drawings as a personal experiment. Today, computer software and the Internet make animation easier and allow for worldwide distribution.
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Things You'll Need
- Personal computer
- Animation software
- Audio recording software
- Microphone
- Scanner
- Digital drawing tablet
Instructions
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1
Write a script with storyboards. Keep your story short and punchy---10 minutes or less. Visual detail is important to animation, more than live action movies, so make a sketch of any gags or sequences that must be seen to be understood. Finish the pre-production process by drawing a full storyboard.
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2
Record your dialogue track using a digital microphone and audio recording software. Picture your characters. Imagine how they would talk and try to express that through your own voice. Exaggerate their defining voice characteristics. Tweak the speed or pitch of the sound file in the audio software until it reaches the desired effect.
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3
Use an animation program in conjunction with your drawing tablet to animate your cartoon. Draw the keyframes---defining positions in animation. Keep adding more keyframes between your first keyframes until you have a smoothly animated result. Avoid drawing characters' mouths if they're not speaking or otherwise making noise.
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Import your dialogue track, one character and one scene at a time. Watch the result several times to check the timing of your animation. Say the dialogue in the mirror to see the shapes your own mouth makes, then reproduce those movements in your frames.
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5
Export your animation to a video format, making sure that it clocks in at less than 2 gigabytes and under 10 minutes. Upload the file to YouTube. Embed the YouTube video on your cartoon website, personal website or social networking page.
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Tips & Warnings
A good rule of thumb for animation is 24 frames per second. Record table reads of your dialogue to figure out the timing.
Several commercial and open source software packages are available to animators. Toon Boom Studio is a professional package that costs a few hundred dollars. But several free options include Pencil, CreaToon and SynFig. Some clever cartoonists have made do with Adobe Flash, a program meant for interactive web content.
Different animation software packages allow for different types of animation in addition to traditional frame-drawing, such as rotoscoping and cutout "doll" animation.
The internet lends itself to shorter videos with quick stories. If you want to explore a longer storyline, split it up into a series of shorter self-contained videos.
A dedicated YouTube channel will give viewers a ready place to find your cartoon movies.
Take advantage of social networking tools such as Twitter and Facebook to keep potential viewers updated on new videos.
References
Resources
- Photo Credit Panda Cartoon image by Infs from Fotolia.com
