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Pencil/2D Animation Resources Masterpost

5/10/24:

Hello, I broke into my old account so I could make a little masterpost of resources I come across for learning pencil/2D animation. (Free or affordable classes, places to get tools, videos to give insider insight, etc.) I may not be able to get everything included, so if you think of something, you can reach out and suggest things to add! I will be updating this over time, with notes on when it was last recently updated. And maybe I'll end up giving the old blog a refresh too. I likely won't be making new masterposts outside of this one any time soon, nor updating any old ones. It's been SEVERAL years, and the internet is a different place. I would assume most of the old links are out of date by now, unfortunately. I hope that this list is helpful to you as well, and if I'm incorrect in anything I list, I'm learning too! So please be patient with me and feel free to reach out with a correction. It's not finished yet, but Tumblr deletes my posts before I finish them, so I'm starting with posting the skeleton and slowly updating this)

Find a Community to Learn From!

(recommended groups to lurk/join/make connections and ask questions)

What Tools Do I Need?

PDF Guide to Animation Desks, as written by David Nethry

(next line)

Where Do I Get Tools?

(Places where you can buy art supplies, software, etc)

Cartoon Supplies

(Online seller who carries Ingram Bond paper, lightboxes, storyboard pads, blank cels, etc. See also: Lightfoot LTD, which is identical in every way to Cartoon Supplies and for the life of me I'm not sure the difference, though both are equally recommended along side each other.)

Jet Pens

(Ah... I love window-shopping this site. If you love stationary like I do, you'll be on this site for hours adding things to your cart... and inevitably removing them because it's not feasible to spend hundreds on pens and sticky-note pads.)

Dickblick

(I've found they have good prices on name brands, but I haven't purchased from them yet. Often, I'm too overwhelmed by all the choices.)

Improve Your Art/Learn the Basics!

(anatomy classes, starter tools, etc)

Aaron Blaise (Co-Director of Brother Bear)'s Online Classes

He runs very good deals on the classes occasional, but you can also do a year's access to all classes and keep what you download, which is very useful! They're short, quick lessons, and tend to veer into more "helpful tips" than teaching, from what I've personally noticed, but it's well worth the price if you get them at a good deal!

Inside Look at the Industry -- aka: the Special Features:

(behind the scenes stuff, etc)

Books are more useful than you might think!

(Richard Williams Animator's Survival Toolkit, etc) (check out gently used copies of these books on Thriftbooks for a good deal!)

Nifty Free Resources

(Things like height charts, references, color wheels, blog posts, videos, etc)

What Artists Can Learn From Aladdin's Incredible Color by J. Holt [VIDEO]

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The Art of Color Theory: Guide for Animators, Designers, and Artists (Animator Artist Life)

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Free software!

GIMP

(A classic, GIMP is an old friend of mine. The first software I downloaded for art, I used to use it almost entirely to create animated GIFs for the Warrior Cat forums. Ah, how time has passed. Nowadays I can't even remember how to animate a GIF on there, but such is life. I still use it to this day for digital art, even having Corel Painter. Before GIMP, I animated the old fashioned way -- MS paint and Windows Movie Maker. With determination, I scripted and animated a handful of Warrior Cat characters frame by frame. Each frame of Hollyleaf or whoever it was blinking was the likely source of death for our old computer, may she rest in peace.)

Storyboarder

(Storyboarder is a free software with which you can use to create professional and clean storyboards. It also provides printable storyboard templates so you can do you work traditionally and re-upload it easily into the software! It also works with Wacom tablets. Check it out! It's actually super cool.)

Pencil 2D

(A free, open source software. Simplistic design, switch between raster and vector, and best of all, again, it's free. I haven't used this one much yet, but I've seen it positively talked about by many! I'll update with more research when I have the chance.)

Krita

(I haven't used this one yet, so I can't speak on it either! But it's going on the list so I can come back and research it later. My poor laptop is not going to handle this many downloads lol.)

OpenToonz

(I also haven't tried this, but see above, haha.)

Blender - Grease Pencil

(Blender is well known for 3D animation, but they added a 2D feature called Grease Pencil as well.)

WriterDuet

(Free for up to 3 projects, very simple, but upgrades to a $10 a month plan, which is... eh, I'll keep my Scrivener for now. I used to write scripts in Microsoft Word or the Notepad on PC back in the day, I don't think I personally need the fancy features.)

Trelby

(A free screenwriting software, very basic and simple, good for beginners.)

Keep an eye out for

(Humblebundle occasionally does software deals -- a good art bundle at a discount can give you an easy start!)

#animation #wip #animation resources #art resources #free software #software resources #art tools #animation tools #how to #how to art #how to animate #animators on tumblr #2d animator #animation masterpost #masterpost #masterposts

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The Magic of Animation

Animation is like a dream come true, if magic exists, it’s in animation. As a child you may have been enchanted by the tree growing scene in Totoro or by how lively and comical a object such as the carpet in Aladdin could become. Have you ever wondered how this magic comes to be ? How all the mechanisms are set in motion to deliver the final product on your screen ? You have come to the right place, O Reader, this blog is solely devoted to the magic of animation, may it be to showcase its wonders or to uncover all its tricks.

This post will be a very small and incomplete talk about animation to serve as an introduction to this blog.

Why animation would be magical one may ask ?

Animation is magic because anything can take life on screen. Animation is the part of art that can not only give movements to a drawing but can also give it all the dimensions and complexity of a soul. Even a landscape has a new life when animated. All arts have their own way to convey life to their objects and animation is too often seen as simple entertainment compared to “higher arts” when it should be on the same level as all the other arts. Animation is magic because unlike a live action movie, anything can be done : sumptuous sceneries, impressive fights, surreal landscapes, you name it. This is why live action adaptations are often considered a loss compared to their original material. The magic of animation also lies in the possibilities it offers, which are far more important than for a movie.The world of animation is built by all the styles the animators use. Animation is perhaps where the directors pour their own identities and visions in a more spectacular and intimate manner. This might be because in animation distortion is the key. For example the animated human figure is rarely similar to the real human figure. This distortion is impossible in live action movies. The same thing goes for the laws of physics : for example, in the animated world, a fabric will not fall the same way it would in real life. Hence the animated world has a wide range of aesthetics to play with. When you watch animation you see a specific style and thus you see through the eyes of a creative mind. This is why the same scene animated by different animators will not render the same. The @gemanimate project in the Steven Universe fandom is a very good example of this, here is a comparison with the original material. Style goes hand in hand with technique : the technique influences the style and the style closer to the animator’s vision will be best express with a certain technique. Technique is the one of the reasons why animation is going through a golden age at the moment. Computers and 3D technology allow a whole new area for animators to experiment with more styles and more challenges too. The rising figure of this tendency is Makoto Shinkai : he said himself that without technology he probably wouldn’t have started animating. Nonetheless, traditional animation is not dead and choosing between the two is actually already an artistic choice like the one made by former Disney animators when they started the Hullabaloo project. You wish to see the magic of technique ? Follow me ! Style and technique go hand in hand to create the most magical aspect of animation : an atmosphere. Animation goes even further than live action movies when it comes to creating an ambiance.

Puella Magi Madoka Magica, Akiyuki Shinbo and Gen Urobuchi

Your Name, Makoto Shinkai

Le Tableau, Jean-François Laguionie

The Adventures of Prince Achmed, Lotte Reiniger When animation appears in a movie, it not only adds novelty but is also very linked to the special role of this particular scene. In Harry Potter and the Deathly Hollows, The Tale of the Three Brothers is told through an animated scene : animation manages to render the eerieness of this story as well as the fact that it is not on the same level as the main story line. It is a tale and animation helps emphasize on the difference with the real world.

Like all magic tricks, the magician needs time to master it, to hide all the tricks and to give the impression of an effortless demonstration. You may admire an animator with all your might and may want him to make a new movie every year but behind every animated piece there are a lot of hard workers and hours of work. Even up to these days, animation is not something you can make in a blink of an eye. For example, stop motion is one of the technique to require a huge amount of work to shoot only a few seconds. It took 30 years for Le Roi et l’Oiseau, one of the masterpieces of French animation and also the first French full-length animated film, to achieve its final form. On a side note, the first incomplete release of the movie ended up inspiring a young generation of animators which happened to create the Studio Ghibli afterwards. Even nowadays animation requires time. Take the latest Disney movie Moana, it took around 5 years to make it, from the first scouting in the Pacific Islands to the final release in theaters. All this time is needed because animation goes far more than just characters moving, it’s about giving life, it’s about making the characters deep and complex as any good characters should be. It’s less a question of realism than a question of how touching and believable the story and the characters are. Animation is magic because it has so many different formats and each has their own specificities, may it be a movie, an animated series, an anime... Different formats mean different ways of using animation especially when it comes to animated series. A series of 10-minute long episodes will not tell a story the same way as a series of 20-minute long episodes. Nor would a movie or an anime, the latter having very specific “rules” of its own. Some may think that nowadays animated series have way too simplistic drawing styles. As creator Alex Hirsh pointed out, style is not the only decisive element in animation, scenario and character development are keys to a good series. A story needs to follow a coherent scenario with a coherent ending. Gravity Falls is the best example when it comes to animated series, its ending crowning the series at the paroxysm of its excellence. Moreover, even in these “simplistic drawn” shows, there is a clear distinction and work on the style, Steven Universe is not Gravity Falls, each has its own aesthetics and ambiances.

Steven Universe

Gravity Falls

Over the Garden Wall Animation is magic because it is a important part of another side of art : video games. Video games nowadays can expand and keep innovating partly because of their use of animation. Here again style is a very important aspect : the story travels through it to bring you a very specific ambiance and grab your attention. And there again, the scenario influences the style chosen.

Child of Light

Limbo Animation is magic because it has a very special place compared to the other media when it comes to audience. An immense majority of people still thinks that animation is either for kids or a weird hobby for adults to have. They fail to see that animation is a huge part of education for kids : animation helps develop imagination, it sparkles creativity, and helps them understand themselves better. Rebecca Sugar said that she created Steven Universe because she wanted to help young people in search of themselves and she would have loved to have a show like this when she was young and struggling. Likewise Gravity Falls is an ode to the imagination and creativity of childhood and the transition to adolescence. Hence saying that a show is “for kids” doesn’t mean anything else than an ignorant contempt. As an adult, you can appreciate animation as the art it is and reflect on things differently. The animation industry targets more and more adults with some heavy-themed productions. Psichonautas is a very good example of this. The movie addresses multiple issues such as depression, PTSD, drugs and global warming through a very dark ambiance. Likewise, Night in the Woods explores mental illness, animation and striking imagery conveying Mae’s dissociative disorder.

Night in the Woods Animation is magic because it comes to life with music. As I said, animation is not only movements, backgrounds, styles and everything in between. To bring the characters and the world to life, animation needs voices and music. A Miyazaki movie will not be the same without Joe Hisaishi to paint the sound of his universe. The same thing goes for the voice actors. Their part in the process is as important as any other. The Joker in the Batman Series would not have been the Joker without Mark Hamill and even up to these days, he is the most iconic performer. The voice actors themselves are like chameleons, you are sometimes surprised to discover it was a very familiar actor/actress who was dubbing a specific character. Tara Strong is a very famous voice actress precisely for that reason. Animation is magic because it is linked with everything else. Animation sparkles creativity from the watchers : fanart is the mark of this creativity. Besides, animation is connected with culture too. Animation and video games are also other ways and maybe less conventionnal ways of learning about history, literature etc. The anime Puella Magi Magica Madoka plays on the Faustian myth whereas the Fate series are very good ways to learn who Semiramis or Hassan ibn al-Sabbah were in history. These series often use historical fact in very clever manners to serve the scenarios. Like everything, animation has a bad side, still they are the reason we should appreciate all the more the good stuff. The Muse answers all your questions here, O Reader !

> Part one [+130 links]

To celebrate this blog reaching 10k visits, here's animation masterpost part II. I'm glad you guys found the first masterpost helpful. I hope you guys start using this information right away, practise is key. Happy animating !!

tumblr blogs/webs

ANIMATIONWorld

AnimationScoop

AnimatedViews

Pegbarians (youtube account about animation)

Pixarplanet (Pixar news)

Rotoscopers

2dtraditionalanimation

animatedshorts

calartscharacteranimation

disneyanimators

shortanimation

more resources/tips:

Animator Starter Pack: 100 FREE 3D Models

Animator Starter Pack V2

Project AVATARAH: Free Rigs by Cogswell students

Animation Templates

Animation Library

Animating eyes: “The Mask”

Artist Interview with Bobby Pontillas

Advice for Aspiring animators by Anthony Holden

Character animation lecture notes

Character Turnaround Sheet

book: Drawing for Animation by Paul Wells (please buy the book & support the author if you can)

book: Animation: The Mechanics of Motion by Chris Webster (please buy the book & support the author if you can)

book: Cartoon Animation by Preston Blair

book: FORCE: Dynamic Life Drawing for Animators by Michael D. Matessi (please buy the book & support the author if you can)

book: The Advanced Art of Stop Motion Animation by Ken. A Priebe/ Henry Selick (please buy the book & support the author if you can)

book: The Animated Beastiary: Animals, Cartoons and Culture by Paul Wells (please buy the book & support the author if you can)

Diagram of the organization within the Walt Disney Studios

Find contrast in your character’s emotion

Former Disney Animator, Francis Glebas - Drawing Tips & Tricks

How to Practice - Improve your Art Skills, the Smart Way!

How to Design Characters

How to TEACH YOURSELF animation

Interview with Character Designer Dan Haskett

Pixar’s 22 Rules of Storytelling

“Stuff I’ve Learned About Storyboarding” part 1 by Hat Lieberman “Stuff I’ve Learned About Storyboarding” part 2 by Hat Lieberman “Stuff I’ve Learned About Storyboarding” part 2.5 by Hat Lieberman “Stuff I’ve Learned About Storyboarding” part 3 by Hat Lieberman

Texturer (Free textures for 3d modeling)

Tips for the Aspiring Professional Animation Artist

Tips for self-taught animators

The Art School Dilemma

Traditional Animation mentality & habits for digital medium

JoceyDraws Q&A : WORKING IN ANIMATION

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