Looking for answers? Ask your animation question!

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Sorry, for the recent lack of updates. We got lost in the amazon jungle collecting rare orchids and ended up trapped in an Aztec temple, which turned out to be a space ship… Or maybe we were just busy with other life and work stuff.

JK is currently doing more writing than animation and has some amazing articles about life and creativity over on his blog jkriki.com (and also is recovering from vertigo). I have been busy working for Studio Film Bilder and pitching my own TV series to networks.However, we both would like to continue Animator Island – articles and videos. Unfortunately, writing articles or video scripts takes me forever to do, because I want to write the ultimative resource for you every single time. At the moment I don’t have that time… So I thought I want to try something different that forces me to produce more output faster: A Vlog where I answer your questions.

If you have any questions about animation, storytelling, producing, art etc., please write a comment below. I am a freelance 2D animator (frame by frame and puppet, mostly ToonBoom Harmony), but also sometimes do 3D. I will try to answer questions that I feel like are of interest for many people.

I am a little nervous about how this will turn out, but I also look forward to interacting more with you guys. Thanks for your loyalty (and a warm welcome to first time readers)!

All the best,

Ferdinand

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Sempiira

Hello, I’ve been reading on animator island for a little while now, but I’ve only recently created a profile. I’ll be asking questions as I go along! 🙂

Samone R.

Just how developed should your draftsmanship be for 2d animation? I know some of the basics, like figure drawing and perspective, but I still feel like my drawing skills fall flat at times. Do you have any advice for something like this?

iMax

Hi, thank you for the the time and effort you put into this website. I was always interested in doing animation, but never found/took the time to really start practicing. I recently downloaded Opentoonz now that there is a free version of it. Do you have any recommendation on how to go about working on the animation skills, either traditional or with puppet animation after doing the bouncing ball exercise?

John

Hello, I don’t want to disrespect what you stand for and your art etc but I am a guy who doesn’t care to be an artist or an animator having said that for personal reasons (like to have fun with friends or graphically demonstrate a complex idea to friends and family) I would like to learn basic animations or “lazy yet productive” animation techniques for drawing as less as possible and still have a usable result (by making the PC software be it flash or adobe or whatever “connect the dots” so to say)

I don’t desire something fancy or professional looking I am hoping to output animations similar in quality to this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j8bUWw1-8wk

or maybe put the effort make something like this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D9oe1d7TsZo

To wrap it up I would like to produce animations of that sort of quality and spend like a few hours a day for a few days in order to make like lets say a 10 to 20 minute animation of such quality (as shown above).

+ I have ordered a wacom tablet 😀

The problem is that I can’t find a series of tutorials that could help me (free or paid, though I wouldn’t spend much if they are paid) they either focus on the drawing techniques (how to make faces geometry etc which I don’t care since I don’t mind about quality anything southpark like sketch is acceptable for what I want to do) or is very simple like how to combine stickman frames or is very complicated like really professional animation tutorials with 3Dlike dolls and arcs and physics and posture and what not which again I don’t care..

So I was wondering if you could do a “Dirty lazy animation” tutorial series having exactly that target group in mind (maybe it would be the first step for some people to get into animation without knowing that they would like to before watching this)

Or if you know any existing set (or seperate videos around the web) that would help me out?

for example a big problem I cant find the solution yet is the process like what to draw and what to clone or finding an algorithm to make easy mouth animation without having to set like 100 mouth drawing for one character monologue etc.

CONFUSED

Hi. Okay so I am doing a BSC in communication engineering but I’ve always been into animation and want to do something related to it in the future. I’ve been googling about the requirements for being an animator or studying at an animator school and most of them say I have to have a computer science degree or something. I am doing a minor in Computer Science and I have some knowledge about coding and computer architecture. I know how to code in Java but I am not an expert in coding. So my question is can I choose animation as my profession even though I don’t have a degree in computer science? And from where do I start right after I graduate? TIA

Greg Holtz

Hello, Mr. Engländer,
What instrument (quill pen or brush) do artists in the inking departments of traditional animation studios use to trace the outlines of images onto the cels? I’m asking this because I would like to use acrylic inks of various colors for my own outlines, as Disney Studios have traditionally done. I’ve typically used permanent markers but would like to experiment. I appreciate any feedback!
Cheers,
Greg

Deeksha

Hello,
I’ve worked on crazy talk animator software trial pack… I’ve some queries regarding animation techniques … If anyone worked on this software please let me know!

anony

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8CtGdjrxle8
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ufzwtbqvYQA
These are the videos where talking tom and talking angela are dancing as in the song the hero and heroines are dancing! I’m totally amazed. How do they do this? What is the full procedure step by step to do this? What can be the easiest way to do this? Please help!

Sina

Hello what’s perfect image size for animation for sending in insta I make 3min animation 640*360 its 8mega bit it has problem in sound sound lagging

Touba Taheri

Hello,
I am so happy to find this website and I hope you can help me with my question. I am a conceptual painter. I get my inspirations from different types of music. I am really eager to combine these two arts (painting and music) together. I want to take a picture from my painting, put a music on it and make the painting shapes move with the rhythm of the music. I want to make specific parts of the painting disappear or get tangled for example. But in respect to the concept and rhythm of the music. Does animation help me for this process? Or should I learn some other software? I have been looking for an answer for a long time. Please let me know if you have any suggestions.
Thank you.

Najee

the is so stupid questions I can ask but how do you make those sounds for what can I use to make those sounds you know like in YouTube videos where they go like dun