When I was a young lad, I was fascinated by animation. I used to make little 'flip-book' animations and I was always drawing. I even made a couple of full-length comics (or should I say 'graphic novels' if I want to sound serious about it!).
Anyway, I recently started thinking about trying my hand at come digital animation. I've played with 3D animation software before but never really looked at the 2D side of things. I found some info at http://www.calicomonkey.com/blog/free-cartoon-animation-software.php and downloaded the 3 suggested apps. They each have their pros and cons - perhaps I'll review them at some stage. I also downloaded the free learning edition of Toon Boom Animate. It's great but it watermarks anything you render, and the full version is a couple of hundred bucks. I found a great video tutorial (http://cartoonsmartblog.wordpress.com/2009/02/06/free-toon-boom-animate-lesson-on-hierarchical-character-rigging/) that demonstrates drawing, rigging and animating a character from scratch. Very interesting and even useful as a backgrounder if you're not going to use Animate.
Finally, after some fairly technical slog, I decided to try a more 'instant gratification' approach and have some fun with the Go!Animate Animation Studio. It's very easy to use and amazingly powerful. My only complaint is that the site seems to get progressively slower when working on a long animation. Still, this is what I produced over the weekend:
I thoroughly enjoyed putting it together. And although Go!Animate isn't a fully-fledged animation app, it certainly exposes the user to several concepts and techniques that are fundamental to the animation process.
