I want to create a 3 1/2 – 4 minute animation for a piece of music. I’d rather do it myself but I’m under no illusion it will be a walk in the park, though I’m willing to have a go. Is there any software that makes this kind of thing easier than creating every frame or is that the general gist – frame by frame.

Any software recommendations from those that dabble?

If you’re a pro, how much does something like this cost?

Finally – if the software is prohibitively expensive then I was thinking about approaching the National Film and Television School as it’s reasonably local to me. If any of you have been or is a student of this kind of thing, is this something that happens much – i.e. outsider working with a group of filmakers for a project – or is it all in-house, so to speak…?

Any advice welcome.

x

As a novice I would look at Lego stop annimation, there have been some incredible films made with just lego:
https://itunes.apple.com/gb/app/lego-movie-maker/id516001587?mt=8
http://brickfilms.com/groups/lego-stop-motion/

You don’t need to animate frame-by-frame. You create a model, maybe with a skeleton, and generate “key frames” – the computer then works out how to get from one to the other.

Options are Maya, 3DS Max, and Blender (amongst others). The first two are commercial offerings from Autodesk, although I think both have free student licences. There are lots of tutorials out there, but be aware they all have a fairly steep learning curve.

Animation is a pretty wide brief there. There’s about a million different ways to animate, and almost as many different pieces of software to help you.

Some kind of clue as to what you’d like to achieve would be helpful.

(Degree in animation and work occasionally takes in 3ds max visualisation)

[video]http://youtu.be/8YlEpI00ouU[/video]

I’m an animator.

Here’s my WIP broken website

http://fullfaceanimation.com//default.htm

You could grab the 30 trial version of Maya and master that in a month…

or try Flash for 2d animation.

It really all depends on what you want to animate. Characters or random things?

Or buy yourself a Kinect sensor and set up your own home mo-cap system.

I’ve just done it for Facial animation 🙂

Love some of those Lego animations. I’ll have a look at that and the other recommended software.

Yeah, it would be helpful to give an idea of the type of thing I’m after. Very basic cartoon/comic strip style story. A main character and a few other figures, not much background, mostly dark with small details such as the edge of a wall, a car, a bed, a window; small scene-setting details. The characters are very basic in detail – I can’t find it now but there was a thread on this forum recently where someone posted a picture of their bike in front of a wall with graffiti on it and the words It’s All About The Freedom or something – the faces on that wall were remarkably similar to my sketches, only mine are evil-looking with hoodies. That type of thing but with the odd bit of body detail; hand gestures, for example.

So basically, it would be a series of movements, a few stills with a zooming in type thing (Manga-esque, when they’re attacking from the air), blood splatter transforming into an eyeball and panning out into a face etc.

Does that help…? Sounds quite complex now I’ve read it back…

I’d be quite tempted to do that with paper and scissors to be honest, depending how much movement we’re talking in the characters, but I love the old school. You could also do it in Flash or one of the 3d progs without much trouble, though you’d have to learn it first.

this sort of thing ?

I love the old school

So do I. It was my partners first suggestion, too. I’ll have a read on the web about the tech side.

That looks good, Klunk. I’m using OS X so I’d have to set up Bootcamp or something to use that. Worth considering if it’s any good, though.

Thanks guys – I’ll look into some of the recommended software. If it does my nut or I can’t get the results I want I may be back asking for a quote…

reading what you plan to do another option is after effects, as you can scan in drawings and manipulate them and edit and add audio and effects etc as you go along. A guy i have worked with in the past (Dave Penn) a motion graphics artist, did alot of stuff for harry potter games in after effects combining still images from the game with camera moves and other bits of animation. There is some of it in his old reel.

dave penn

the PAP thing looks good if you are comfortable having a go at drawn animation.

Iain (character animator)

a good book on the subject

Thanks again, Klunk.

And cheers, Doris. Just been watching some vids using that After Effects – interesting stuff.

I had a little gander around the web and found a few animations similar to the type of thing I’m looking at creating, though a little more detailed than I envision. Mine is more animated graffiti. Anyway, is the following vid a 2d flash type animation or something different altogether?

[video]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PGzghUQRVk8[/video]

Bump – anyone know how the above was created? (Not that I’ve aspirations of that quality).

I downloaded Blender last night but haven’t had a chance to have a play yet – looks like it should do the job for a 3-4 min cartoon.