Can I make a short 2D animated movie at home?

Question

I'm talking about only a 10-15 minute short movie, but one like the old disney movies. Is this possible to do at home? And, if so, how? Lots of details would be great! Thanks!

Answer 1

you can use flash or java..

it more easy...

Answer 2

It depends on what kind of software you have, if you add some details about what you have i'd be happy to help as much as i can

Answer 3

You could do it with Macromedia Flash MX (now Adobe Flash CS3) as a start. Then enhanced it with Macromedia Director.

Answer 4

use a video camera?

hook it up to your computer and then make some changes on it.

try asking a person who's good with technical stuff.

Answer 5

Animation is a really hard, time consuming thing to do. A 10-15 minute video could take you months. If you want to do it on a computer (Which is probably the best way to go) I can think of no software that can make the process easy enough to do in a few days, but there is some software out there that can streamline the process. Flash can make really good animations that you can add sound to and export to a range of formats, it's powerful, but quite hard to use, and since Adobe bought out Macromedia and attained a monopoly on web content software they more than doubled the price to $800. I don't think many people can buy it, but if you can afford it it's great.

There are many alternatives to the pure software animation method. One is the very traditional, draw each frame by hand method. I've done this before, it takes some time, but the results look amazing, and can really impress people, and in the end it's worth it. Just make sure to have a lot of paper, colored pencils and time. Draw each picture out on a separate peace of paper and alter each frame by a little bit. To make sure your frame lines up with the previous frame, hold the previous frame to a window during the day time and line the frame your drawing now over the previous frame to make sure stationary objects stay in the same place throughout the animation. I would suggest that a frame rate of about 3-4 frames a second would look fine while not killing you during the process. After drawing out the frames get a scanner out and scan each frame into your computer. Import the images to some video editor that at-least has the cross-fade transition. Put all the pictures in order in there appropriate frame rate. If you play it it will look somewhat jumpy, to solve this problem add rather long cross-fades (about 3 frames in length) between each image, this will give the animation a bit more fluidness, and is what the professionals do.

Another way to animate that could use much less time is the south park style paper animation where you cut out pieces of little guys out of construction paper and move them across the scene a bit at a time taking a picture every-time. You will need a digital camera a tripod and very good lighting. I wouldn't even try to do it this way if you didn't have a tripod. Also you will need a nice stable environment and a lot of patience because moving little guys across a scene made out of construction paper can be very difficult at times especially if you have sweaty hands which you will have after hours of animating, so have some tweezers handy. After taking many pictures of your scene import the digital images into a computer and put them in sequence with a video editor. Also make sure you have a very large memory card for your camera, you don't want to be half way through a scene and run out of camera memory and have to end the whole scene to get all the images off your camera.

I hope this helps, I listed 3 potential methods above. If you want to do a Disney style animation I would say the 2nd method would be best. Ultimately your question is, can you do this at home? I say yes you can! I've done it. Linked below, I have some previous animation work I've done to show you that this can be done at home, and to give you examples of techniques I discussed above. This will be hard however, and you may be tempted to just stop and do something else, but if you really believe in you're end goal you can do it.