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After Effects is a professional motion graphics and video compositing software that can also produce puppet animation, as well as animate photographs and produce video effects.

The most complex effects are efficiently produced using Javascript.

It is good for multi-layered short clips in high definition. Also rotoscoping plug-ins.

For longer video editing eith fewer layers use Adobe Premiere.

For lower resolution animation and line animation use Adobe Animate or TVPaint.

I experimented with Creative Effects filters for After effects in 'Pig Tales'. But this is a software that I want to explore in much more depth in future.

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After Effects is a motion graphics compositing software that can also produce puppet animation, as well as animate photographs and produce video effects.

The most complex effects are efficiently produced using Javascript.

It is good for multi-layered short clips in high definition. Also rotoscoping plug-ins.

For longer video editing eith fewer layers use Adobe Premiere.

For lower resolution animation and line animation use Adobe Animate or TVPaint.

Rotoscope experiments: Pig Tales

You Tube Tutorials

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After Effects is a motion graphics compositing software that can also produce puppet animation, as well as animate photographs and produce video effects. The most complex effects are efficiently produced using Javascript. It is good for multi-layered short clips in high definition. Also rotoscoping plug-ins. For longer video editing eith fewer layers use Adobe Premiere.

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PADLET GUIDE: Animation Appraches, Styles and Software

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PADLET GUIDE: Animation Appraches, Styles and Software

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Padlet purpose:
This padlet provides an easy entry overview 'map' of my bricolage research on contemporary animation inspiration with selected animations and links to more detailed blog posts on this site.

Contents

Overview of approaches and process for independent animation

2DCel animation links

Rotoscoping

Stop Motion Cut-Out animation

Handdrawn and charcoal animation

Overview of software features to look for and my practical experiments

iPad animation

Adobe Animate

TVPaint

Adobe Premiere

Adobe After Effects

Animation Health and Safety

To open the padlet:
Click on the square with arrow on the top right below.

To open the 'paddles':
Click on the paddle title or image, whichever shows a ‘hand’.
If no hand shows, click on three dots top right and expand.

To close, check whether or not the ‘paddle’ has opened in a separate window on your browser. Closing that will bring you back to the overview padlet.

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As an independent animator without access to a big budget of studio of collaborators, I was looking for approaches that communicate powerfully, but have a manageable workflow. Disney-style animation takes a lot of time and skill to do well - a 1 minute video at standard 24 frames per second needs 1,440 drawings, maintaining consistency as well as dynamic movement between frames. Animated feature films take years with a large workforce of animators and sound designers. Done badly even the most serious issues can make an audience crease up with laughter.

I was therefore interested to explore more manageable animation approaches that were suitable for my primary sources - ie drawings, photos, video from the community workshops and other contextually-relevant found sources. And approaches that were RSI-friendly in mixing digital and physical media.

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There are two main forms of animated movement: manipulation and replacement.
These can be used and combined in a number of different ways.

HandDrawn cell animation.

2D digital animation

Rotoscoping

Stop motion

3-D computer animation or CGI .

Motion graphics moving elements in space

Scratch video manipulation of video and other elements to tell a different story.

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Animation Approaches, Styles and Software

Visual Storytelling

Animation Principles and Process

Visual Dynamics

Global animation inspiration

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"Worm and Fuzzy” (Pencilmation #72) | Plus All Episodes From 2016!

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Man (Animated Short Film by Steve Cutts)

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Most, but by no means all, contemporary independent animation uses digital software. A wide range of approaches and styles can be produced. This can use frame by frame digital drawings that follow the same principles as traditional animation. It can also use vector drawings for tweened animation and Inverse Kinematic skeleton rigs that can be manipulated like puppets. The main professional software is ToonBoom Studio, TVPaint and Adobe Animate. With free software like Flika and tablet software.

See also:
Yoni Goodman Israeli documentary animation combining digital 2D, rotoscoping and video. Israel.

Jonathon Hodgson US animator using digital FbF drawn animation and rotoscoping, some without words.

Andreas Hykade evocative minimalist vector animation. Germany.

David Lynch minimalist line animation on satirical political issues. Sometimes with dialogue, but also with sound effects. US.

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Before Mickey Mouse: A History Of American Animation (1982)

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Winsor MCKay 1914 Gertie the Dinosaur was one of the earliest animations made on film. Each drawing was redrawn on each page and captured on film and then projected at a rapid rate. McKay presented his animation as a stand-up show with live narrative. Written text is also included on some of the frames.

JR Bray Dachshund: introduced the background shot and discovered use of celluloid sheets for layering where only certain elements changed each time.

Raoul Barre: Dreams of Hercules and Crazy Cat uses write on text.

Willis O’Brien stop motion animation of a prehistoric world.

Paul Terry move the background to show movement.

Fleischer rotoscoping to create realistic movement Clown and ink

Pat Sullivan Felix the Cat

Typically, an animated feature would require over 100,000 hand-painted celluloid ‘cels’. These would be photographed one by one onto a painted background using a rostrum camera – a specialised camera used to animate still objects.

Common visual conventions include:

Use of lines radiating from eye to show noticing something.

Lines out of mouth for noise

Dream bubbles.

Use text screens and build-up text to drive the narrative. These screens move up and down to continue the feeling of movement from the animation.

Music of different moods and tempo

Whole screen moves up and down like camera shake. On old films the grit and scratches also flicker to give movement.

Depended on a huge studio of different animation departments. Men did the design and better paid jobs. A large army of low paid ‘girls’ did most of the repetitive drawing and painting that provided the profitability. This gender power imbalance led to gender stereotyping of characters and narratives and is also replicated in much of the contemporary Disney-style animation in Africa and elsewhere.

In order to reduce the amount of drawing and work required:

each image was constructed using multiple overlaid layers of drawings on transparent sheets of celluloid (cels).

images can be presented as looped cycles that are repeated and/or transformed to stagger or reverse timing to create complex animations.

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TVPaint is the best 2D digital software to achieve painterly styles in full length animation. It has:

a range of fully customisable art brushes (though not so 'artistic' as Corel Painter or Procreate/Fresco on iPad)

sophisticated onion-skinning

professional time-line manipulation

layer blending

multiple layer audio

creative effects

text features a bit clunky

I used TVPaint for:

Mary's Story 2D line animation

Rotoscoping in 'Pig Tales'

Erasure techniques in 'The Airplane'

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Adobe Premiere is a video editing software. Once the basic animation with clip audio synchronisation has been done in eg TVPaint, I used Premiere for:

combining animated clips and adding effect overlays and transitions

combining animation and video

fine-tuning audio

adding titles and text

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Assignment 3.2 Visual Exploration: iPad animation experiments

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Assignment 3.2 Visual Exploration: iPad animation experiments

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TASK: Bring evidence of all the visual work you've done so far together in one document. This should include a summary of what your visual work is trying to do with an explanation of how it links to your data collection and your research question. If you've modified your research question in the light of your data collection, clearly state your revised research question and explain why you decided to change it.

Note from Course Text: Aim to produce a substantial amount of visual exploration and developments. Don't leap to final conclusions yet: you are still at a divergent stage of the design process, although some convergent elements might start to creep in. This is still a stage of visual risk-taking and trying lots of different options. Don't spend ages on final pieces - work on a range of options that are still mock-ups.

SUMMARY

My work on my visual portfolio in Assignment 3.2 was limited to development of basic skills in animation and preliminary style and software exploration on iPad. Because of my RSI I needed to develop an animation workflow that did not require me to sit for long periods at my pc in order to get a better understanding of basic animation principles before transferring to more professional software like Adobe Animate. In Assignment 4, and also 5, my main focus will be more developed animations in professional pc software for my visual portfolio and detailed discussion of the most relevant sources of inspiration. My visual work in this assignment was primarily exploratory to:
1) Explore some of the ways in which the original community visuals could be adapted and used
2) Establish a range of potential animation styles that I could feasibly apply to story lines on the iPad within the time-frame of this module, based on inspiration from contemporary animation and study of work on animation techniques and other animators whose style I like.

a) Identification and practising drawing and cartooning principles behind stick figure and simple animation.

b) Preliminary iPad experimentation with animation techniques from my iPad animation software review (Procreate 5 that I knew already and new animation software) to see how I could translate animation inspiration from my data-collection into my own animations.
The main results are a clear story-line plan for two translation sets of very short animation variants in a range of different animation styles that are feasible for me to review and develop to a much more professional standard in Assignment 4: Making Lines Talk.

Woman Crying in Rough Animator

'Pig Tales' first attempts in Rough Animator

'The co-wife' first attempts in Rough Animator, now developed in 'Mary's Story'

I explored some of the ways in which the original community visuals could be adapted and used, particularly line styles, methods of figure abstraction and manipulation to show emotions, how women/men characters can be differentiated building on ways in which people in different communities and contexts do this, and different cultural styles. To enable me to animate with conscious use of any stereotypes in ways that provoke questioning, and building on types of humour and visual conventions already familiar to people.

This proved potentially never-ending, and I stopped (early) when it started to become repetitive. I focused my own drawing on freehand copying drawings from India and Pakistan in biro, pen and marker to get a feel for how the drawings were done and look at some of the contrasting styles of figure abstraction.

I also looked at narrative photo sequences from drawings and role plays in DRCCongo and Uganda as examples for future animation as well as rich resources for drawing women and men in a more figurative style and/or where the community narrative was clearly developed. For more detail see:

Through this process I identified a three series of story lines to develop in multiple versions for testing with audiences. I will revisit the community visuals in detail as I develop the creative translations in Assignment 4: Making Lines Talk.

'Tupa Tupa' means drinking/drunkard. The idea is to combine the two role play photo stories into one. And experimenting with the sequencing of the storyline - as in Matt Madden's 99 Ways to Tell a Story. This would be done combining physical drawing and painting on photos and/or rotoscoping over the drawings and/or photos, cropping them to add drama. Possibly I might do some cut-out and collage in the style of Sarah Fanelli. Certainly I want to retain the colours and expressions. Good sequencing and framing, focusing on the very expressive faces, should make it possible to tell the story without text or words. I would have to think about sound - possibly one of the GALS Swahili songs and/or sound effects.

This series - as it is in the form of photos - was not developed in Assignment 3.

A series of different translations around the big gap between women's dreams and visions, and the realities of violence and suicide. This will be done in a number of different versions: simple line black and white style, colour cartoon and fuller colour with masking.

2: Exploration of stick figure drawing and cartooning principles

I wanted to explore potential drawing and animation styles that were effective but also simple enough for me to feasibly apply to story lines on the iPad within the time-frame of this module, based on inspiration from contemporary animation and study of work on animation techniques and other animators whose style I like. I then practised some of the techniques identified. But as this was potentially a never-ending process - life-long I hope - I did not pursue this too far at this stage before working on specific translations with a clear purpose.

I started by identifying and practising some of the drawing and cartooning principles behind stick figure and simple animation using standard cartoon guides (!! refs to be inserted), and also looking at the work of STIK.

I started Sketchlook 3: Animation Doodles (A4 old 'scruffy' lined exercise book with gouached pages over old text) for me to freely practise my own character animations and just 'doodle' as I explore different styles and 'think outside the box'. I was particularly interested in what happened when my spontaneous quick drawing doodles produced random expressions compared to what happens when I purposely try to depict a particular expression. And how I can link the two in a learning process without tightening up. In Assignment 4 I want to work much larger and do this more freely still.

I also started to look at facial expressions of women and men from different parts of the world so that my animations are better able to question/avoid stereotypes.

iPad animation

I also started to experiment with the iPad software I had reviewed in:
iPad animation software review
to start to identify which software might be best suited to my animation ideas.

Again this exploration was potentially a lifelong project. So I did not go too far in this assignment, leaving much for Assignment 4 when I can experiment in a more focused way with specific creative translation storylines. I did however start to get more familiar with quick animation, and some idea of the different possibilities and styles.

MotionBook

MotionBook produces quick Flipbook-style animations. There are only 4 brushes but you can alter the line thickness, opacity and colour. No layers except a fixed background (where you can import a photo) and one animation layer. The timeline is quick to add, subtract, duplicate, delete and move frames around. It can export the animation as frames into Procreate for further development, as well as animated gifs and MP4.

Procreate 5

For simple cel animation. Here you can take advantage of all Procreate's drawing, painting, selection, effect and masking etc features. You can have many layers in each frame, as well as designated background and foreground layers. And import photos and video. Layers can be blended and masked.

The timeline is a bit clunky for complex animation with lots of elements because it is separated from the layer menu. Buy you can export from here to Rough Animator

Rough animator

Preliminary animations and walk cycles

Rough animator: Goat 6FPS : First animation copying the lines of the community drawing and placing on a phoito of a cheap sketchbook page. 6FPS is quite leisurely to relly notice the way the goat turns its head (only move the eye position) and stops and looks.

Series 2 Woman crying

Rough Animator: Line Drawings from Photos

Rough Animator: Woman Crying
Animation of first Photo coloured and simplified. Uses selection tool and painting to adjust the cracks in the animation.

Series 3 Pig Woman

Rough animator: Goats Coloured: I started to make a story of flirting goats. Colouring the background. Duplicating the layers again but flipping vertically and altering opacity to create reflections. I could develop this much further into a comic encounter.Inspired by FilmBilder Lambs

Rough Animator: Woman Crying
Animation of first Photo coloured and simplified. Uses selection tool and painting to adjust the cracks in the animation. Purple background gives a sadder feel.

Rough animator: Pig Woman art colour
Colouring over the line with crayon on the woman, and paintbrush on the pig and background to make a more cartoon effect.

Toontastic

A stop motion lego puppet animation programme with audio and scenes. Can be used by children. But with a bit of practice this can be used to produce some very comic animations.

Features to get used to, practise and plan:

the action is live so you have to practise several times to get things right

audio is live recording, so you have to be careful about background noise

you can only move one character at a time

With a bit of practise, skill and good storyline, this could produce some very comic animations in childlike style eg on leadership.

Reflection

Notes on how I think my visual work so far meets the assessment criteria:

creativity: I have only just scratched the surface of what is possible. But the experimentation can become quite repetitive unless I have a clearer narrative focus. For Assignment 5 I will revisit these drawings - possibly the above vignettes, but more likely some new narratives eg a pig fight, a longer narrative using more of the Uganda drawings and a longer narrative around women and men's perceptions of empowerment in India.

research and idea development: again I have only scratched the surface. But will further develop ideas and themes in Assignment 5. I still need to assess all my visual work in relation to the creative translation theory questions I identify and develop these questions further.

visual and technical skills: I came to this with very limited animation experience, apart from some video in Flash. This was the reason why I wanted to develop animation skills in this Research Module. I think I have made quite a lot of progress from a very low base. I am planning very intensive work on both narrative and visuals in Assignments 4 and 5, now I have established the basics.

context: my animations so far have been mostly attempting to recreate the community drawing styles, or animating photographs. I will be applying styles from other animators in Assignments 4 and 5.

For Assignment 4

Reading through the course material again after a gap, I noted that I was asked to work across multiple media. This was also part of my decision to focus much more on in-depth experimentation with physical as well as digital media, but with a narrower range of primary source data sets. Having thus re-focused, I came to see some new possibilities:

Creativity: I revisited the work on creative process I had been doing for VC Advanced Practice as the basis for a much broader experimentation of a wider range of translations of the same narrative.

Research and idea development was significantly widened to include approaches and styles that I really like and enjoy, beyond more conventional digital styles.

Visual and Technical skills focus on a workflow that has TVPaint at its centre, but includes physical media and iPad experimentation in Procreate.

Context was significantly broadened to new approaches by following up threads from Moving Image 1 and Discord discussions on my Howard Wimshurst course. This reinforced my bricolage approach, as many of my discoveries were serendipetous, partly from Google or You Tube generated 'additional suggestions' on animations that I had purposely searched for following recommendations. This serendipity then became the focus for a further set of purposive searches.

Resulting plans for creative translations from Assignment 3

As noted above, most of my time on this assignment was spent in developing a visual repertoire of ideas and inspiration from the community drawings and role plays and the work of other animators and illustrators (See links in the menu below).

My visual portfolio for this Assignment was very limited and preliminary because the process become repetitive and mechanical without a clear focus on narrative and story-line. As a result of my research and visual experimentation I have identified ideas and story-lines for two translation sets:

I anticipated that most of my time in Assignment 4 will now be on developing my visual portfolio from these translation ideas. This will include drafting the animations on the iPad, but transferring these to Adobe Animate and/or After Effects in order to get better fluency and combine scenes into an overall narrative.

Changes in Assignment 4

By Assignment 4, following more in-depth work on animation techniques and approaches, my interests had broadened considerably. I therefore followed my tutor's advice to focus more on particular sets of primary sources.

Between VisRes A3 and A4 the COVID pandemic struck, necessitating changes to my plans for Visual Communications Assignment 4 to produce an audience-based body of work to 'make the world a better place'. I thought that the work I had been doing on Africa so far in this VisRes module would be very well suited as sequential narrative and animation in Adobe Animate as part of an advocacy-focused body of work on the coffee industry, together with other material from my professional work.

At the same time I had progressed with work on Moving Image 1 as a personal development course, experimenting with Stop Motion and animation of natural materials. I was also progressing with a practical course with independent animator Howard Wimshurst using TVPaint that enabled manipulation of natural media images.

So as a result of both these developments, I for a while decided to focus in much more depth on India and Pakistan that offered more than enough primary source material for very significant 'creative translation' experimentation across a range of animation approaches. Rather than becoming diverted by too many different narratives. And focus in this Module on TVPaint and 'material performances', as well as continuing to use Procreate on my iPad for some of the image creation.

See:

But these plans were changed in Assignment 5 to encompass work on all 4 creative translations.

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Assignment 3.2: Visual exploration: iPad animation experiments

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TASK: Bring evidence of all the visual work you've done so far together in one document. This should include a summary of what your visual work is trying to do with an explanation of how it links to your data collection and your research question.

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Adobe Animate: animation styles, techniques and tutorials

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Adobe Animate: animation styles, techniques and tutorials

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In had originally intended to focus on Adobe Animate as a professional animation software for 'Flash-style' vector animation and coded interactivity.
But I found TV Paint was more artistic and had easier timeline features for the purposes of this research. And to learn animation principles.
A software now top of my list to explore further now I have a better understanding of animation. And also wanting to develop interactive animations for my professional work.

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Animate features and advantages

Vector stick animation allows very easy and quick manipulation.

Easy motion graphics with shapes.

Html coding for motion graphics.

Character rigging and links to Adobe character animator make character development relatively straightforward.

Symbols for automating cycles and loops

Layer blend and opacity modes.

Hand painting styles and link to Adobe Animator.

Potential for very low band width.

Interactivity with html canvas.

Animate gaps and challenges

Number of features means a very high learning curve.

Artistic styles are not as advanced as Procreate or TV Paint.

Can crash easily if overloaded with complexity eg of art brush strokes or complex characters.

Drawing and basic keyframing

Using Adobe Animate for Frame by Frame animation requires:

very good drawing for key poses and in-betweens

good understanding of the Disney animation principles

understanding of drama and timing

The best tutorials available are by:

Howard Wimshurst Animator Guild: https://www.animatorguild.com

Flow, intensity and dramatic timing

But with good drawing and understanding how to create dramatic timing, extremely dynamic animations are possible.

The best tutorials available are again by:

Howard Wimshurst Animator Guild: https://www.animatorguild.com

Lighting, atmosphere and distortion

Character animation and rigging

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Animate features and advantages Vector stick animation allows very easy and quick manipulation. Easy motion graphics with shapes. Html coding for motion graphics. Character rigging and links to Adobe character animator make character development relatively straightforward. Symbols for automating cycles and loops Layer blend and opacity modes.

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iPad animation: Rough animator, Procreate, Toontastic and other

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iPad animation: Rough animator, Procreate, Toontastic and other

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In parallel to experimentation with physical materials, I developed technical skills in a range of digital software options that can simplify and automate the drawing process.

I started with experimenting with iPad software as a means of quick exploration, brainstorming and drafting. Procreate 5 and Adobe Fresco in particular have brushes and graphic capabilities that are very useful as part of a workflow with more professional animation software.
Assignment 3.2: Visual Exploration: iPad Drawing and animation experiments
I later developed skills in software used by professional independent animators - particularly TVPaint - for my more experimental polished vignettes.

Digital software used

iPad

Procreate 5

Adobe Fresco

Stop Motion Studio

PC

Software Overview and Feature Checklist

Key features to look for when choosing animation software:

Drawing tools vector drawing tools for creating motion and scaling and/or pixel-based tools for more artistic effects. Including image import so that backgrounds and other features can be created from photographs, artwork or imported images from other drawing and painting aps.

Symbols or re-usable elements, including import from other software.

Puppets and rigs : ability to create characters with movable skeletons and bones that can then be manipulated for action as in 3D animation.

Tweening or smoothing/interpolation of animation between drawn key-frames, including control of the number of before/after frames, colouring and opacity.

Onion-skinning: viewing of previous and following drawn frames to facilitate accurate drawing of current frames

Layers to be able to create scenes with background, foreground and multiple animated elements with different animation rhythms.

Timeline features: control over frame speed and duration, easy addition and deletion of frames.

Audio features to import music, narration and sound effects - preferably onto separate layers for multiple sound effects, music and/or voice over.

Text features to add titles, captions, credits and additional text overlays.

I started by experimenting on the iPad with different software, to experiment with different styles and basics of short animation:

But I found the professional software on a pc with bigger screen and much better timeline automation features much more user and RSI-friendly for my work. I was already familiar with Adobe Animate, used for some of the diagram animations on this blog. But after looking through tutorials and reviews on You Tube, I decided on:

TVPaint because of its drawing and painting features.

Adobe Premiere for final compositing and sound effects

Other software to be further explored in future:

Blender for 3D

Adobe After Effects for compositing

Adobe Animate for tweening and interactivity

ToonBoom studio for easier smoother cartoon-style animation

Bloop animation review of the main professional software: 3D from Autodesk (3DMax, Maya and?); Blender (free 3D); Cinema 4D; After Effects; Adobe Animate; Photoshop; TVpaint; Toon Boom. See also https://www.bloopanimation.com/animation-software/

Overview of free and professional software: MohoAnime Studio (free); Synfig (free) ToonBoom Harmony (professional used by Disney); Opentoonz (free Open Source used by Ghibli for Princess Mononoke) Cel Action (free no drawing tools); pencil 2D (minimalist traditional FbF); Tupi Pen Source tweening; Flipbook imports drawings from a scanner; Sprinter Pro to import and animate bones; Stop Motion Studio for Stop Motion.

Useful overview that guided my initial review of the software - subsequently extended in the list on the left.

!!Software comparison Excel chart to be done

iPad Software Review

Rough animator

by Jacob Kafka for hand drawn animation application runs on Android, iOS, Mac OS, and Windows.
https://www.roughanimator.com
Pros:

Well-designed timeline with unlimited layers, easily adjustable exposure length of individual drawings, for pose-to-pose or straight-ahead animating

Onion skinning

Preview playback and scrub along timeline

One audio layer for importing audio and lip syncing

Import video for rotoscoping animation

Customisable brushes

Export animation to Quicktime video, GIF, or image sequence

Export projects for import to Adobe Flash/Animate, After Effects, and Toon Boom Harmony

Cons:

Limited brushes

Only one audio layer

Transformation features with numeric position, rotation and scale, but limited flexibility and without registration point

Procreate 5

For short artistic cel animation and/or artistic redrawing of animations from more specialised animation software. Only available for iPad.

Pros:

Sophisticated drawing, painting and image creation tools including infinitely customisable brushes and smudge brushes, blend modes, masking, flexible selection and transformation tools, effects and ability to import photographs and video to timeline.

Timeline with assignable foreground and background layers, and possibility of separate frame-lengths for each frame.

Layers for each frame produced through grouping in a separate layers panel.

Onion-skinning flexible options of number of frames, colouring and opacity

Text tools

Export of creative process videos.

Cons:

No audio

Complex to use unless you are very familiar with procreate drawing and painting tools.

Animation features are a bit clunky because of the separation of timeline and layers panels.

Motion Book

Very simple easy to use programme for digital flipbooks. Its simplicity makes things quick and easy to produce minimalist animations that can be exported to Procreate and other programmes if needed. Very good for learning basics of animation.

4 basic brushes

basic timeline without layers but can allocate a frame for background and import photos and movieclips to it for rotoscoping.

inApp purchase of selection and transform tools.

But a bit basic for my purposes, though was good to learn on.

Animation Desk

Animation desk by Kdan is another animation app that allows to create animations and cartoons on android or iOS device. It is free and easy to use app where you can

good selection of 45 different brushes

easy frame by frame animation with easy alteration to frame timing etc and storyboard labelling and export

create animations on videos, images, PSD layers.

on-line Kdan cloud community

Cons

no audio

not text

no layer blending

https://youtu.be/iXSMOsOlVH4 https://youtu.be/kXHyZ0aY4VM

Flipaclip

Developed by Visual Blasters LLC for both android and iOS. This is a much more robust animation software designed specifically for animation.

Pros:

very quick and easy drawing and frame by frame animation with anime style marker and brush, onion-skinning etc

multiple layers for each frame to do complex moving backgrounds and camera effects

easy selection and transform tools to move objects around in space with registration point

easy timeline manipulation

can import, add and remove video

multiple track audio including import and recording of own audio as well as in-App sound libraries.

has a video capture to export a record of the animation process

export as MP4, GIF, IMAGE SEQ

Cons:

separation of timeline and layers makes animation quite time-consuming.

limited brushes biased towards anime style

https://youtu.be/6_HElptQ5c0 https://youtu.be/CEl9ZmDM-Ms https://youtu.be/-xd12uQhDrg https://youtu.be/hYMiCQ-p_RI https://youtu.be/00Wka4man0k

Toontastic

Lego-style 3D animation developed by Google for android and iOS users.

This is a very simple App that is an entertaining introduction to 3D storytelling with narration and mood music. Movies are inherently amusing because they have the feel of children playing with lego figures:

You have the option of different scene numbers but are guided to have a beginning, middle and end. But these can be swapped around and extra scenes added.

Each scene is recorded live with a set length and stop watch while the director moves the characters around and does a voice-over narrative or adds live sounds.

You can zoom in and out of scenes with a somewhat jerky movement. The inbuilt scenes are quite complex with different floors of buildings and moving parts. You can draw your own very simple coloured backdrops - one brush, eraser, paintbucket and large set palette of colours.

There are an array of inbuilt characters that walk, talking mouths, can be scaled and moved around. Arms and feet can kick, hit and hug, but limited actions. Colours and certain parameters of each character can be changed. Only one character can be moved at a time - like children playing with lego.

You can draw your own characters and objects that can be extruded to be 3D but with no moving parts.

There is a choice of mood music - one per scene - with volume control. If you want your own music this would have to be input at the time of recording. There is no facility for importing your own sounds.

Stop Motion Studio

Stop motion studio is a popular animation apps for android and iOS users which allows make animation video on your device. It is an easiest app to get you into stop motion movie making for android and iOS users. It is also used as slow motion video app to make slow motion video with different video editor options. App has lots of attractive features, which makes it super easy to get into stop motion video. It has different modes as overlay mode, grid mode, integrated movie editor and others.

Stick Nodes

Stick Nodes is a tweened IK stick animation Apdeveloped by ForTheLoss Games, Inc for Android and iOS users. It is a powerful but also quite clunky and complicated stickman animator app with:

options to construct fully animating kinematic stick figures and/or import ones ready made. These can be exported to a library for re-use.

add one background image per project

automatic frame-tweening with ease and stretch

sound effects using sound effect apps

text captions

virtual camera to move and zoom.

It is a possible Ap to use if you do not have more professional Aps like Adobe Animate. But time for the steep learning curve is substantial to do more than a few Japanese kick box animations with text (see below). That time is better spent leaning Adobe Animate.

I include these tutorials here because some of the techniques can be applied to cel animation figures also.

Miscellaneous

PicsArt Animator

PicsArt Animator is a GIF and video maker app which allows you to create animations & cartoons on your android or iOS device. You can easily click snap using your 3D camera apps and use them to create beautiful animation video on your smartphone. It allows you to draw frame by frame animations and see animation timeline with play mode option. There are some advance drawing and sketching tools listed in this app which can be used to make beautiful animation video for free. Along with these you can also use multi-layering for complex animations and also control animation length and speed.

Movepic

Animates loop photos and cinemagraphs.

Movepic is a popular photo motion apps for android and iOS users which allows you to easily create live photo with animate effect. It is available with both free as well as app to purchase option with lots of features. It brings fabulous photos & gifs into your social life with various animated effects and beautiful filters. You can easily animate anything in loops photos simply by drawing a path , and make your still images into awesome loop photos & cinemagraphs. Along with these it also allows you to adjust the speed of the loops photo animation.

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In parallel to experimentation with physical materials, I developed technical skills in a range of digital software options that can simplify and automate the drawing process. I started with experimenting with iPad software as a means of quick exploration, brainstorming and drafting.

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Key features to look for when choosing animation software

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Key features to look for when choosing animation software

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Drawing tools vector drawing tools for creating motion and scaling and/or pixel-based tools for more artistic effects. Including image import so that backgrounds and other features can be created from photographs, artwork or imported images from other drawing and painting aps.

Symbols or re-usable elements, including import from other software.

Puppets and rigs : ability to create characters with movable skeletons and bones that can then be manipulated for action as in 3D animation.

Tweening or smoothing/interpolation of animation between drawn key-frames, including control of the number of before/after frames, colouring and opacity.

Onion-skinning: viewing of previous and following drawn frames to facilitate accurate drawing of current frames

Layers to be able to create scenes with background, foreground and multiple animated elements with different animation rhythms.

Timeline features: control over frame speed and duration, easy addition and deletion of frames.

Audio features to import music, narration and sound effects - preferably onto separate layers for multiple sound effects, music and/or voice over.

Text features to add titles, captions, credits and additional text overlays.

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Rotoscoping is a techniques I used in 'Pig Tales', using TVPaint for line rotoscoping from video, and then adding Creative Effects in After Effects.

See also:

Yoni Goodman Israeli documentary animation combining digital 2D, rotoscoping and video. Israel.

Jonathon Hodgson US animator using digital FbF drawn animation and rotoscoping, some without words.

Gianluigi Toccafondo

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Rotoscoping Overview

History
Techniques

Contemporary Inspiration

1: Rotoscope as Reference: Mary's Story, Uganda: Cow Walk
2: Rotoscope as line animation and Effects: Pig Tales, West Bengal
3: Rotoscope as impression: Airplane, Pakistan

What is Rotoscoping?

'Rotoscoping' is the process of frame-by-frame tracing of recorded movements of actual humans or events. It involves drawing and painting on and manipulating video or photo sequences to produce animated frames.

This can be done using natural media on tracing paper or cinema film or digitally in any professional 2D animation software.

Rotoscoping is not an easy option to avoid drawing freehand. Producing dramatic animation requires in-depth understanding of keyframing and movement to select the frames, and good drawing/painting skills to select and reproduce elements on each frame. Drawing mechanically on top of photographs and video produces robotic and uninteresting animation - unless that is the effect required.

- rotoscoping limits possibilities for creating imagined worlds and narrative
- real actors and objects do not have line, so tracing often results in lines being too prominent and sharp, too flaccid or too stiff.

But it is possible to produce very beautiful work this way that also plays on distinctions between fantasy and reality. With good drawing skills and an understanding of 'boil', keyframes and dramatic abstraction, different degrees of replication and fidelity of line and/or shape can original produce a range of effects from mechanical to chaotic.

History of rotoscoping

Rotoscoping was developed in 1915 by animator Max Fleisher who used this technique as a way to create a seemingly more 'realistic' (or photorealistic) style of movement. Disney and other studios used this technique as one way of enhancing 'realism' in animation through the mimicry of live action.

The first software to do digital interpolated rotoscoping, 'Rotoshop Software', was developed by computer scientist Bob Sabiston in the 90's which he used to make his film " Snack and Drink ". Subsequently this software was used by director Richard Linklater for the production of his feature films Waking Life (2001) and Scanner Darkly (2006).

Rotoscoping techniques

Digital rotoscoping: Filmed or live media are used as a reference point for the creation of digital animated movement: motion capture, interpolated rotoscoping, mattes and frame by frame rotoscoping.

Motion capture: Uses live actors and the signals of their movement is interpreted by a computer.

Mattes/Masks/Stencils: Similar to motion capture but uses two dimensional sources to create a silhouette (called a matte) that can be used to extract that object's shape from a scene for use on a different background. This extraction is often aided by green screen technology, motion-tracking and/or digital onion-skinning. Then images are composited in layers these in much the same way as a stencil or cut out shape would work in analogue collage/layering. Digital rotoscoping plays a large role in the production of visual effects and animation.

Interpolated Rotoscoping: the digital equivalent to the pose-to-pose approach. The animator sets a particular style, line weight and colour. They then link key drawings to anchor points in the source footage. The computer then 'interpolates' all the in-between movements according to the action on screen.

Digital Frame By Frame Rotoscoping does the in-betweens by hand - either in physical or digital media. Each frame of the video footage is drawn or painted over, one by one. Done digitally the technique requires import of the source video, but can be done in most professional animation programmes. In physical media every source frame is printed out and manipulated before being rescanned and played in sequential order.

Zemni Examples

Mary's Cow: Rotoscoping as reference for line animation

Pig Lament, India: Rotoscoping as line and shape animation

!! To be done. The airplane, Pakistan: Rotoscoping as video effect.

Contemporary Inspiration

Jonathon Hodgson here uses video as references for very expressive line drawings.

Tommy Pallotta, Snack and Drink (1999)

Gianluigi Toccafondo mixes rotoscoped video footage with very expressive painted shapes and background.

Elizabeth Hobbes, Finding My Way (2014)

Zemni Rotoscope Experiments

Rotoscoping for reference: Experiment 1, The Cow, Uganda

7 Woman gets a cow

Woman Walking with Cow 3 with Stop Start animation. TVPaint

Woman Walking with Cow 4 Red Eyes
TVPaint. Refining the Stop Start animation with the cow running off the screen.

Cow Walk Cycle 3D animation video source from You Tube.

Cow Rotoscope 2 keyframes only TVpaint

Woman Walking with Cow 1 The different image planes were layered and used motion tween to move them at different rates across the screen TVPaint

Cow Walk Cycle 1 Rotoscope overlay with notes

Cow Walk Cycle 3 in-betweens

Woman Walking with Cow 2 Walk cycle overlaid on rotoscope with pose marks

Rotoscoping as animation: Experiment 2: Pig Fight, India

Rotoscope Pig Fight

Rotoscoping over an edited version of the Kadiri pig fight video in TVPaint. These are not so successful and not as dynamic as I would like them to be.

The line drawing would be better as a gesture drawing from live video. The coloured version would be more interesting painting into that digitally or on acetate using printouts from the line animation as underguide.

Pig fight 1: Line rotoscope of edited version of pig fight video. TVPaint. This would be more dynamic as a gesture drawing from live video.

Pig fight 2: Coloured version of line rotoscope. TVPaint. This would be more dramatic painting into the gesture line digitally or on acetate using printouts from the line animation as underguide.

Pig Fight Rotoscope 10 watercolour grunge 2 original colour

3: Rotoscoping as animation: Domestic Violence, Pakistan

Key Issues and Conclusions

https://viscom4dev.zemniimages.info/richard-linklater

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Rotoscoping Overview HistoryTechniques Contemporary Inspiration 1: Rotoscope as Reference: Mary's Story, Uganda: Cow Walk2: Rotoscope as line animation and Effects: Pig Tales, West Bengal3: Rotoscope as impression: Airplane, Pakistan What is Rotoscoping? 'Rotoscoping' is the process of frame-by-frame tracing of recorded movements of actual humans or events.

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Stop Motion cut-out is a technique I used in 'Pig Tales' and 'Tupa Tupa', manipulating drawings and photographs in Procreate on my iPad. More effective digital cut-out stop motion can be achieved in After Effects. Manual manipulation using Stop Motion software like Stop Motion Studio on an iPhone or iPad (see examples on my Moving Image blog).

Terry Gilliam political/satirical collage stop motion with some dialogue, but mostly comic sound effects. UK.

Nuri Yorstein

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Cutout animation is a form of stop-motion animation using flat characters, props and backgrounds cut from materials such as paper, card, stiff fabric or photographs. The cut outs are used as puppets for stop motion. Cut-out animation puppets can be made with figures that have joints made with a rivet or pin or, when simulated on a computer, an anchor. These connections act as mechanical linkage, which have the effect of a specific, fixed motion.

The technique of most cut-out animation is comparable to that of shadow play, but with stop motion replacing the manual or mechanical manipulation of flat puppets. Flat, jointed puppets have been in use in shadow plays for many centuries, such as in the Indonesian wayang tradition and in the "ombres chinoises" that were especially popular in France in the 18th and 19th century. The subgenre of silhouette animation is more closely related to these shadow shows and to the silhouette cutting art that has been popular in Europe especially in the 18th and 19th centuries.

Cut-out techniques were relatively often used in animated films until cel animation became the standard method (at least in the United States). Before 1934, Japanese animation mostly used cut-out techniques rather than cel animation, because celluloid was too expensive.

While sometimes used as a relatively simple and cheap animation technique in children's programs (for instance in Ivor the Engine), cut-out animation has also often been used as a highly artistic medium that distinguishes itself more clearly from hand-drawn animation. Today, cut-out-style animation is frequently produced using computers, with scanned images or vector graphics taking the place of physically cut materials.

Of most relevance to my work here are:

- puppets manipulation of cut-out photographs, drawings and other flat materials.

- manipulation of drawings and paintings in natural media like charcoal and scraperboard to produce expressive lines

For other types of stop motion see my research and own work in:

My experiments January 2021

Animatic with digital manipulation of photograph cut-outs in Procreate on iPad. To be developed as Stop Motion photo-collage in Stop Motion Studio with final composite in After Effects.

Feeding the pigs sequence. Started with digital manipulation of photograph in Rough Animator on iPad. The version here was produced by drawing and watercolour painting from video, then photographing the puppets and manipulating in Procreate on the iPad. With final toning and tinting in After Effects. To be redone with smoother movement as cut-outs of the sketches and drawings and multiplane manipulation in After Effects.

Silhouette experiments for Mary's Story, Uganda and/or Pakistan 'The Airplane' are also envisaged.

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Cutout animation is a form of stop-motion animation using flat characters, props and backgrounds cut from materials such as paper, card, stiff fabric or photographs. The cut outs are used as puppets for stop motion. Cut-out animation puppets can be made with figures that have joints made with a rivet or pin or, when simulated on a computer, an anchor.

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Charcoal animation is an approach I plan to look at much more in future. Particularly as part of 'the airplane' animation from Pakistan.

William Kentridge charcoal stop motion animation on political issues. South Africa.

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Hand drawn animation is an approach I started to explore with pencil and watercolour in 'Pig Tales', but I manipulated drawings in Procreate. I did not do substantial amounts of redrawing. I plan to look at much more in future.

Catherine Anyango Grunewald evocative physical media on social and political issues. UK.

William Kentridge charcoal stop motion animation on political issues. South Africa.

Ryan Larkin hand drawn animation, generally in watercolour, including social issues like homelessness. Canada.

Peter Millard hand drawn animation, sometimes minimalist, sometimes bright colour. UK.