The process of animating requires much more advanced products and software in order to have a fully animated film at a professional level. Some of these products include Adobe Flash, ToonBoom, After Effects, Maya, and many more.
However, as a beginner to the world of animating, I don't have any of these products at my disposal. Photoshop does have the ability to animate, but only as GIF format (short graphic images that are usually set in motion). As a digital graphic illustrator, I have certain softwares such as Paint Tool SAI and Manga Studio, which are both painting programs that I utilize to create detailed character designs and illustrations. However, none of these programs have an ability to animate, and the aforementioned programs are much too expensive for something last minute. Without the experience or the knowledge of how to use those programs, I decided to go for a simpler option.
Using Paint Tool SAI to create the illustrations for each frame, I used the copy and pasting option to move the images around accordingly while keeping some continuity in the image and movement. Similar to how traditional animators work, I would traced the images to create the in-betweens (this creates the movement) between the key frames (the before and after). After creating each image, I exported them into a simple PNG format and saved the progress.
With a number of different labeled, now started the tedious part of importing each and every image into a video editor. For this, I used Wondershare Video Editor, a free movie editor with capabilities similar to iMovie for the Apple computer. I imported the PNG frames into video editor and condensed each frame into either a 0.02 frames per second rate or 0.01 frames per second rate. The movement appears choppy, but that ties back to the effect I am going for as a children's story feeling.
Animating, of course, is much more complex than this, using tweening and different key frames to create movement at a more professional level. However, for the sake of this project and having very little budget and time, I believe this is an effective way to animate.
However, as a beginner to the world of animating, I don't have any of these products at my disposal. Photoshop does have the ability to animate, but only as GIF format (short graphic images that are usually set in motion). As a digital graphic illustrator, I have certain softwares such as Paint Tool SAI and Manga Studio, which are both painting programs that I utilize to create detailed character designs and illustrations. However, none of these programs have an ability to animate, and the aforementioned programs are much too expensive for something last minute. Without the experience or the knowledge of how to use those programs, I decided to go for a simpler option.
Using Paint Tool SAI to create the illustrations for each frame, I used the copy and pasting option to move the images around accordingly while keeping some continuity in the image and movement. Similar to how traditional animators work, I would traced the images to create the in-betweens (this creates the movement) between the key frames (the before and after). After creating each image, I exported them into a simple PNG format and saved the progress.
With a number of different labeled, now started the tedious part of importing each and every image into a video editor. For this, I used Wondershare Video Editor, a free movie editor with capabilities similar to iMovie for the Apple computer. I imported the PNG frames into video editor and condensed each frame into either a 0.02 frames per second rate or 0.01 frames per second rate. The movement appears choppy, but that ties back to the effect I am going for as a children's story feeling.
Animating, of course, is much more complex than this, using tweening and different key frames to create movement at a more professional level. However, for the sake of this project and having very little budget and time, I believe this is an effective way to animate.
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