How do I get into animation?

[Amblydoper]

I like to draw. I am taking a drawing class this semester, and I am getting pretty good, but I am interested in stepping up to hand drawn animation. I don't want to use a computer for this, although I am not opposed to using it to aide the process or to compose the final product.

So, how does one go about making, say a 30-60 second hand drawn animation? How many FPS is reasonable? How much time would I have to invest? Should I be drawing on trace paper, or something transparent? Any web resources available to animators?

[The Shroud]

Someone will come along with real, professional advice, soon, but in the meantime:

When I was a kid, about 20 years ago (wow, sheesh), I built my own animation stand using instructions from an art book. It was built to hold punched paper like this and consisted of a lamp underneath glass to aid in the tracing of frames. I never got around to actually committing my drawings to film/video, because it just wasn't very feasible back then. Today, you could just snap each frame on a digitial camera, or use a video camera that has a stop motion feature. You could also scan each frame into a computer and use animation software (I've tried Toon Boom, and was able to make a decent 30-second animation in 1 day while consulting web tutorials) to bring your drawings together and add color and sound, etc. Of course, that software really comes in handy when you animate Hanna-Barbera style, where you don't re-draw elements of the picture that don't move.

As for the framerate, I've always heard 15 or 12 fps, with each frame repeated to equal the framerate of your medium (15 twice for video and 12 twice for film or 24p video).

I sense that you'd like to do it old-school, and I think it'd be a lot of fun to do what I did when I was a kid, then actually mount a camera and record the pencil drawings. Of course, however long it takes you to draw a frame, multiply that by 450, and that's how long it'll take you to animate a 30-second clip!

Anyway, good luck.

[Amblydoper]

Thanks for the info, The Shroud. I'm surprised that the frame rate needs to be so high. I was thinking 8-10 fps (3 frames per cell). I'll probably just use iMovie to assemble the frames into a video clip... Toon Boom looks expensive. I have rigged up a temporary light table before, maybe I will build a decent one this summer.

[CalMeacham]

There's an ad for an aspiring animator right now on the jb boards in Boston. They're willing to take on new people, but they expect some skill in computers. Check out Monster.com or other sites.

[The Hamster King]

Originally Posted by Amblydoper

Thanks for the info, The Shroud. I'm surprised that the frame rate needs to be so high. I was thinking 8-10 fps (3 frames per cell).

Traditionally animation is done "on twos", meaning two frames per drawing. This varies with the action in the scene. Very fast movement may require a separate drawing for every frame, while very slow movement may allow you to get away with animating "on threes" or "on fours".

Cheap TV animation is often done on threes or fours all the way through, but that usually results in a final product that looks jerky.

If you really want to do it old school, you might be interested in Animated Cartoons, by E.G. Lutz. It's the original guide to animation used by Disney and other pioneers. It will show you how they did it back in the day.

[Amblydoper]

CalMeacham, I'm knee-deep in architecture school right now, but thanks for the suggestion. I'm just looking for a hobby, but I bet I would love that job.

Pochacco, thanks for the book recommendation. My campus library has it in storage, so I just requested it. I suppose I can do everything "on fours" and then add an extra frame or two where needed. Maybe that will be a good way to start, before I jump into something more complicated.

Thanks for everyone's help!

[Alex_Dubinsky]

Originally Posted by Amblydoper

I like to draw. I am taking a drawing class this semester, and I am getting pretty good, but I am interested in stepping up to hand drawn animation. I don't want to use a computer for this, although I am not opposed to using it to aide the process or to compose the final product.

Does hand-drawn animation exist anymore? I think the closest you'll get is "hand drawing" in photoshop/illustrator with a tablet. Otherwise, I think most animation is 3D (even if it doesn't look like it).

I wouldn't scoff at it. It's just a medium. You still need the same artistic talent.

[Woeg]

Actually, an astounding number of animated cartoons these days are done in Flash.

Check out the list here: http://coldhardflash.com/series/

[Polycarp]

Take Jessica Rabbit for a heavy date?

[Sunspace]

Or you could go to a school like Sheridan to study animation. I was there studying classical (hand-drawn) animation in '92, just before it became popular and the price went up. It was tough; I didn't survive the first year.

Animation is best described as 'acting on paper'. You study human anatomy--muscle and bone structure--so that your characters are built properly. You study 'squash and stretch', the apparent physics of cartooning, so that they appear to move correctly (this is actually a cultural visual convention). There's life drawing. There's composition and design. There's dialogue, music, and sound. There's the design of story. One of the best classes was History of Animation. And the homework was great: watching cartoons!

The classical animation they taught us was all hand drawings on countless sheets of paper. We photographed them using film-based movie cameras, counting frames and all. There's a specialty called 'layout' which was all about doing the backgrounds. You have to research the things in your movie and make them consistent from frame to frame. It's very detail-oriented.

It seems to be a little different now; I suspect that elements of the computer-animation course have been moved into the classical-animation course. The easy availability of computer animation and video-editing tools has changed the whole situation, I suspect in a way similar to what the rise of desktop publishing did ten years earlier. Now anyone can get the tools, but there's still the need to learn what to do with them.

Check out the course list.