Comments on: Any Tips For Drawing 2D Animations?

By: Juuso

Juuso — Mon, 12 Jul 2010 05:02:26 +0000

Did a bit of more research. Much of this was pixel art, but applicable to non-pixel art as well (like animation tips)

————————- pixel art tutorials
http://www.petesqbsite.com/sections/tutorials/tuts/tsugumo/default.htm
http://www.derekyu.com/?page_id=219
http://forums.zybez.net/topic/1335385-tutorial-the-pixeling-compendium/
http://forums.zybez.net/topic/724901-tutorial-the-way-of-the-pixel-artist/
http://www.vbgore.com/Pixel_Art_Tutorials
http://www.exotica.org.uk/mirrors/gfxzone/articles/goblin_pixelling_tutorial-article.html
http://www.natomic.com/hosted/marks/mpat/index.html

more pixel art tutorials: http://www.pixeljoint.com/pixels/tutorials.asp?id=2252

————————- animation:
http://www.manningkrull.com/pixel_art/tutorials/walking.asp

————————- art
http://www.itchstudios.com/psg/art_tut.htm – excellent, read this
http://www.howtodrawmanga.com/howtodraw/tutorials.html

————————- books:
http://www.bookdepository.co.uk/book/9780823023493/Creating-Characters-with-Personality
http://www.bookdepository.co.uk/book/9780764135736/How-to-Draw-and-Paint-Crazy-Cartoon-Characters

————————- pixel art tools:
http://www.cosmigo.com/promotion/index.php?Home+%28Pro+Motion%29

By: lonestarr

lonestarr — Mon, 12 Jul 2010 00:18:09 +0000

The key problem is the art pipeline:
I’m playing with Toon Boom PLE and it’s great. Sadly, the PLE version is not able to load plugins, so I can’t experiment how I could export any 2D stuff out of Toon Boom… It’s OK to export frame per frame animations, but what if I want the character data (with bones, etc) for ragdoll or IK (a la Shank)?! I would need then to access the internal 2D data with a plugin. And I’m not even sure if that’s possible to achieve with the Toon Boom SDK (the samples provided are very rough). BTW, if I export to Flash, then I would need to either choose Flash as a dev platform or decode the SWF files in my C++ engine… and that’s not obvious (despite the existence of many libs here and there).

Another option is to use a 3D package like Maya, and use only flat polygons, then export all data with the SDK. As for now, I think that’s the best way to go…

By: Alfred Reinold Baudisch

Alfred Reinold Baudisch — Sun, 11 Jul 2010 13:34:53 +0000

Didn’t know Pencil, looks nice.
Synfig is around too (www.synfig.org) but looks to complex.

By: Fili

Fili — Sat, 10 Jul 2010 20:52:41 +0000

If you want cinematics, you can use any 2D animation package, it’s more a problem of taste than anything else.
If you want to use animations in your game (without having a full character sprite for each possible position) you could make your own system with something like 2D bones. Some 2D animation packages (one of them is Toon Boom, if I remember right) have this, take a look because it’s not complicated at all. Bonuses: interpolation between different poses (meaning a more fluid animation), less memory/storage (important if you code for mobile devices), rag-dolls for bodies (easy to implement, fun to play with).

By: Andi

Andi — Sat, 10 Jul 2010 19:33:13 +0000

Go with Toon Boom…well worth the price. Toon Boom Studio is all you need, plus they have nice discounts all the time.

By: Alfred Reinold Baudisch

Alfred Reinold Baudisch — Sat, 10 Jul 2010 18:03:22 +0000

Cartoon Smart has tons of tutorials, but the drawing and animation ones are focused on Flash and Toon Boom (some of them).

By: Juuso

Juuso — Sat, 10 Jul 2010 17:45:04 +0000

Also saw this:
http://www.pencil-animation.org/

By: Juuso

Juuso — Sat, 10 Jul 2010 17:31:52 +0000

Looks flash tutorials mainly, right?

By: Alfred Reinold Baudisch

Alfred Reinold Baudisch — Sat, 10 Jul 2010 16:43:58 +0000

This site has tons of animation video tutorials:
http://www.cartoonsmart.com/