Animation, making cartoons!

[sheetsMMAfan]

Already doing the video game for Sherdog on the side, a PM from Masato got me thinking. I always wanted to do animation as the next step of shooping, and I think I am going to take it up next as a hobby.

I have started with skeletons early today, and adding the body parts to go along with. I am learning how to attach the body parts to the skeleton now, then it's on to mastering the movements.

I will keep you all posted on my progress!

Going to start with South Park like animation first, in terms of movements, than graduate to a fresher Looney Tuneish look when I am skilled.

[Masato]

hellz yeah

I did a 3 year classical animation program at a technical college, like animating on paper etc

It is a beautiful art form at all levels of simplicity, but is painstakingly slow. I am too impatient but I do miss it, and wonder in the past 10 years what software exists to make it really easy.

Sheets, do you know what software you plan to learn? Maybe I'll learn with you we can help each other figure shit out

[sheetsMMAfan]

Toon boom studios 7 at the moment. It's pretty damn cool.

Once I get that down pretty well, in a year or 2, I might switch to Maya on my gaming rig.

For now Toon Boom Studios looks like it can do exactly what I want it to do. I want to start putting out parody videos of MMA and such for fun, then transition into some cool kid stuff once my little girl gets a little older :)

[Masato]

fuckin stoked. Lets try to inspire each other. Will find me some Toon Boom

[sheetsMMAfan]

Once I get the script for stage 2 of the game, I am all game until its done. In the meantime and in between, I will try and figure out how to animate me some cartoons!

[johnkilo]

God I wish I could animate. There's something I want to animate but I don't know how. I wish I knew much about Flash, it's one of the only things that really holds me back as a webdesigner.

[sheetsMMAfan]

Just downloaded Splashtop 2 for my iPad, and plan on using it for a drawing pad so I can start drawing again to help out with my animation. Kinda stoked about this!

We can pull all of our talents together, and help each other out John. That's what this place is about :)

Unless you want to start a TRAP thread or a YLYL thread in the new F7 ;)

[sheetsMMAfan]

WOW...

I was trying to use Toon Boom before I even really sat down and tried to figure it out. I ended up getting way ahead of myself, and getting REALLY confused. I decided to look up tutorials, and even though its a silent one, this one helped ALOT!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2GfWDHARemI

Then, after creating a stickman doing a vintage double dragon jump kick, I decided to look up the whole Flash vs Toon Boom debate to see which I should try and learn. Flash is easier to learn, and more user friendly. Toon Boom is superior in almost every way if you are willing to teach yourself or learn something new that isn't very easy.

Here are movies made using Toon Boom...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toon_Boom_ ... ilmography

Toon Boom has my vote. Even though there is a HUGE learning curve IMO, I will stick it out and post my projects here :)

[Masato]

Thanks for the foresight Sheets, I have been playing with the idea of learning some animation software forever... like I said I went to animation school like 10 years ago, so the mechanics of animating well are still all in my brian I just don't know the modern software to do it.

You have inspired me to finally get on this

So funny, since leaving Sherdog I went through about 24 hours of panic, then suddenly had a creative explosion that is still occurring. I suddenly had the courage to start sketching out a comic/graphic novel story I'd written, now I want to animate, I'm having TONS of fun doing the tile mapping for the Sherdog game, and I even am starting to figure out the solutions to my 3rd screenplay which has been kind of broken for over a year.

You guys are continuing to be a part of this, thank you all. SERIOUSLY hope to collaborate with any of you now and in the future... I think we have a unique team of like-minded people here, if we get our shit together we could make some badass stuff (the game being the first in the bunch hopefully)

Will take a look at Toon Boom, and ask some of my animator friends their opinions

later!!

[sheetsMMAfan]

I am fresh into this, as I have no former training in animation or even art in general. I use to be a pretty good at drawing, and am probably going to take that up again so I can import drawings into Toon Boom and animate them from there.

Glad we helped you man!