Animation Tip: How to start animating

Paint and Movie Maker. Those are free, and that's all you need. Those are bare bones though (not the best tools by far). Other better tools are editors (like Final Cut or Premiere), Flash, and ToonBoom. Even Photoshop is better than Paint.

So animating is a skill, like flying an airplane. You learn a tiny bit at a time.

So for step 1 of animating, find a picture of a face. Take it into Paint and open the mouth a little, save that picture as something separate, open the mouth even more, and save that one. Then take your three pictures (closed mouth, open a little, and open a lot), and put them into Movie Maker. Record your voice talking or find a voice clip. Then time up those three images to the voice.

That's a good way to start animating.

Here's an example of LazyGopher doing his first animation this way:



- TAE