Animation

Has anyone had any experience in animation as I was considering making a short animation about zombie pirates. If so did you do it by hand or using a computer(if that's possible, what software did you use)?

Computer - Macromedia Flash. You can do frame-by-frame animation, as well as use "tweens", which basically fills in frames for you between two key points.

For an example of a kick-ass flash cartoon, check out http://www.ninjai.com By the time they got to chapter 12, they pretty much mastered flash cartooning, methinks. Or go to http://www.atomfilms.com/af/animation/flash/ to see more.

All depends what style of animation you want to do. I've been using After Effects for most of my animation, using photo cut-outs, which follows a Monthy Python/South Park style.

Ive done some stop motion animation.
Using a super 8 camera, with single frame, and also with a DV camera hooked (firewired) up to a MAC running BTV software:

http://www.bensoftware.com/

I found BTV to be fine for these purposes.

I use MAX 7 for my animations. Or a camera and cutout shapes on a flat table. I'm moving into the world of stop-motion at the moment.


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And, Jesus, is it time consuming.

it took me a year to learn 3ds max [img]eek.gif[/img]

on the subject of stop motion, saw a fantastic stop motion short in cannes.

Basically this writer was having writers block and the paper was attacking him. It was very nicely executed.

One of the tricks used , was where the sheet of paper was on the desk, that was actually a tray of milk totally flat on the sruface , so when the guy went to write his hands slipped right into the the paper..

I was a DP on an Stop-Motion/Claymation short. It was really very cool. I would show up and light the scene, check the camera and lens, discuss the shot then walk away. They would do their thing for a day or two and then I would get called back to do the same thing all over again.

Talk about shooting ratios--It was shot on 16 and I think that practically every frame was used. It would be fun to do another.

Thanks for the help. What do you think about the software you recommended? Is it easy to use or not? I'm thinking about doing a 2D animation as I don't think i have enough time to learn how to do good 3D animation.

You may want to look at Hash's Animation Master. Of all the 3D packages, it gives you a lot of flexibility for a relatively small price tag ($300). It has a decent toon-renderer that will let you do cartoon-like animation, and will also allow you to grow into more complex 3D animations later on.

I bought a copy a few years back, and within a couple weeks I was compositing animated clips into one of our movies.

Good luck.