Make Your Own Cartoon in Five Steps

In a previous animation tutorial we discussed the steps necessary to create your own cartoon. I’ve since come to the conclusion that the article, while complete, was a bit too complex for a beginner and contained too many steps. The animation tutorial has been condensed into a more succinct five steps that will be used in the future. All Calico Monkey animation projects will follow this five step plan from now on, so expect to be referred to this page in the future.

Planning

Many animation problems can be prevented with proper planning. This can be as simple as creating a script or as complicated as communicating with a band to ensure you have permission to use a particular song in your animation.

Often you get excited about a project and just want to jump on in. We’ve all done this. Those are the projects that never get finished. With a plan in place though, it is so much easier to not get discouraged with the amount of work that remains.

The following are all good examples of planning:

• Storyboards
• Write a script
• Animatics (here’s an animatic tutorial)
• Create color palette

The primary goal in planning is to work out the problems before they actually become problems.

Audio

Recording audio for your animation is an important step that can really differentiate your work from other online cartoons. It’s important to use a program that can cull out any ambient background noise that will maliciously attempt to sneak its way onto your recordings. For example, GarageBand on the Mac has a great setting for this, labeled “iSight” (there’s a setting for male or female voices).

Your audience will certainly notice the quality of the sound if you really get section done well.

Animate

The program you choose to animate with is inconsequential. By this point you will have set yourself up for success. With your planning and audio in place you have done as much as you can to make your animation as easy as possible to create. Such an arrangement should let you concentrate on getting the best possible performance out of your characters.

Composite

After the animation is completed you will usually need to bring all of the elements of the cartoon into one program so that it can be exported into one cohesive cartoon. Flash works great for this, as it provides a scripting language that will allow you to add playback buttons to your animation as well as some basic sound editing utilities if you need it.

If your cartoon is destined for YouTube glory then perhaps Toon Boom can handle all of your compositing needs. Toon Boom does a great job of exporting to Quicktime friendly formats such as .mov, which YouTube loves. Otherwise, consider Flash to combine your sound elements with your animation.

Distribute

Your animation is complete but you’re not done yet. Now you have to tell the world all about it. Fame and power are soon to follow!

If you’re at a loss as to how to go about spreading the word of your amazing new cartoon, here’s a list of 23 ways to distribute your animation.

The magic of the five step plan is that it works for both big and small projects. Consider using this as a guide to help you get those cartoons out of your head and out into the world where they can benefit all of mankind.

Tags: make your own cartoon