# Animation on a Mac!



## Stridder44 (Feb 24, 2003)

I really want to make my own animated short films. One idea my friend had was to buy a high quality flatbad scanner and scan each frame or cell and peice it together iMovie (or some sort of software). Could I do this? Or does anyone know anything in the field of animation and how I could creat my own animated short films? Thanks for all the help!


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## Arden (Feb 25, 2003)

Wow, what a topic, and the breadth of possible responses!  There are so many different ways to get into animation on the Mac that I probably won't be able to list them all, but here goes.

· If you want to go the long way, you can do stop motion animation i.e. Wallace and Grommit by taking photos and scanning them, taking digital photos, blah blah blah.  You'd then have to arrange them into a movie, and I'm not sure what software does that.  Of course, this method is time consuming and you have to have the patience to blah blah blah.
· Another method is 3D animation, like Shrek, Toy Story, Final Fantasy, etc.  This method is also time consuming and very expensive, involving programs like Newtek's Lightwave 3D ($1250), Alias|Wavefront's Maya ($2000), or Maxon's Cinema 4D ($1700).  If you can afford the upfront cost, this avenue is very fun and rewarding to put out a final product, though the learning curve for 3D modeling and animation is very steep.
· A third, cheaper option is a vector animation program like Flash MX.  Flash is quickly becoming a standard for animation on the web, and you've probably seen it in use many, many times.  Some good examples of Flash cartoons are located at www.atomfilms.com.  Flash is relatively easy to learn and it costs only $400, plus it makes small files that almost everyone can download and run easily.

I hope this helps.  There are many routes to take to make your own animations, plus you can add sound effects and music.  I suggest you look around online and investigate these different tactics.  I hope you send me a link to anything you create!


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## Stridder44 (Feb 25, 2003)

Oh, well thank you for showing me different possibilities on Mac (some of which I intend on doing), but when I say animation (and I should have been way more clear on this) I mean animation...like anime. Or disney animation. Im talkin about paper to paper. Hand drawn cells (Maybe not so much cells...I could just buy a wacom tablet).  
But like I said before, thank you Very much for all the info. I do consider doing some flash animation as well.


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## Arden (Feb 26, 2003)

Yeah, in that case Flash might be the way to go because you could animate your whatever and export it as a movie.  I can't imagine you'd want to draw a million frames of animation by hand and scan them all into your computer because that takes lots of paper (obviously), and you would come up with lots of differences between frames from scan to scan that you'd need to spend lots of time in Photoshop just to get them all to look right, not to mention the sequencing of them all into scenes and whatnot.

I did a little more research and I found Beatware's e-Picture Pro ($170), which lets you animate parts of an image.  (Perhaps this and Adobe Illustrator or Macromedia Freehand...)  Do a little research yourself, ask around some more, and I'm sure you'll find a solution that works for you.


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## Stridder44 (Feb 26, 2003)

hehe, yeah...good point. Well thanks for the info!


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## Arden (Feb 28, 2003)

Consider it a freebie.  The next one will cost you. 

Actually, all that would cost you is me doing animation for you.  If you want anything in that regard, let me know; I'd be happy to help out.


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## OraliusJohnosn (Dec 11, 2004)

toon boom studio is a flash like program but it has 3d capabilities lipsyncing and a bunch more, then there are a bunch more high-end production software check out the options at http://www.toonboom.com/main/


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## symphonix (Dec 11, 2004)

If you want to try out stop motion animation, then Boinx iStopMotion is a great one to look at -- http://www.istopmotion.com/ -- You could probably use it with cell or pencil animation provided you setup the camera correctly.


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## Natobasso (Dec 12, 2004)

Fascinating thread here

You could always set up a video camera, link it up to your iMovie and take stills from it and VIOLA! No scanning required and it's straight to digital.


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## patrean (Dec 14, 2004)

You should also take a look at After Effects for animating scanned hand drawn images.


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