How do create 2d digital animations?

Question

How do you create digital animations in clip studio paint or other 2d animation programs

Answer 1

Creating 2D Animations starts with drawing.

Create Character Sheets

Are there characters you enjoy drawing? Your characters are two dimensional but you can still add dimension to them by solidly drawing them with detail and a little bit of shading.

For your first character, create a character sheet. On one drawing paper, section out areas of the paper for to show off it's different poses. draw the character in the frontal pose. Next, challenge yourself by drawing the character in a side pose, and action pose and some other emotional face. Draw it's clothes and props. Try drawing the different talking positions. Give it a name. Try drawing the name of the character in a stylish way to give it more appeal.

Create a storyboard.

Using 12 post-it notes to start helps a lot. Do you imagine your main characters in various settings and interacting with different characters? 1 post it note can be one scene. You can move the post-note around till you get the order of your story correct. Write out the dialogue under each main frame. Once you get the right order and dialogue color in your story frames.

Start animating your first scene.

Take your first post it note that you added to your storyboard and decided for it to be the first scene. Scan in your character sheet. Start building the background on a new layer based off your storyboard. You can draw two key positions of movement to show exaggeration. You could practice ideas with a paper flip book till you get access to a software program of your choice.

Import your ideas that you worked out on paper to become digital. One program you could try to animate with is Toon Boom. You can scan in your concepts, scan in your digital files or redraw your characters digitally and start by animating in a frame by frame manner. As you get to know Toon Boom Harmony because you'll be able to do things like auto detect the voice for lip syncing, use pegs to create puppet animation, rigging, stretching with ease using deformation, move your puppet around using bones and have different camera views to save a lot of time.

Answer 2

Hi there, I've working with 2d animation for over 6 years using Photoshop and TVPaint, and I would definitely recommend at least trying Photoshop out. If you are interested in taking lessons, I am going to start accepting students on this platform once Wyzant has approved my registration, and would love to teach you right from the most important animation principles. But if you are just looking for how to get started, here what I suggest using Photoshop:

1. **Planning and Storyboarding**

- Create a storyboard to outline your animation.

- Determine the key frames and the timing of each action.

2. **Setting Up Your Workspace**

- Open Photoshop and create a new project with the desired resolution and frame rate.

3. **Sketching Key Frames**

- Create a new layer for each key frame of your animation.

4. **In-Between Frames (Tweening)**

- Add new layers between key frames for in-between frames.

5. **Animating**

- Use the Timeline panel to adjust the timing of each frame.

7. **Finalizing the Animation**

- Once satisfied, export the animation by going to `File > Export > Render Video`.