Questions of a Newbie on Character and Animation Creation

[filmyzen]

Hi,

I want to be a writer/director, but shooting with real actors is very tough as it requires professionals, and I can't hire them at this moment. So I'm planning to make some animation movies to convince people, and take my work seriously.

Since I have never tried animation before, I've a few basic questions that I would like to ask before diving in.

1) I am poor at drawing, on paper and on computer. Is it possible to create characters in Anime Studio Pro using real pictures of people? In other words, is it possible to create an animated version of myself as a character if I want to by just supplying a jpg file of me?

2) Is it possible to convert a normal video into an animated video in Anime Studio Pro? I may need this because most of my friends who are being used as actors in my movies are not good at delivering dialogues, for obvious reasons. So if I can just shoot them without bothering about the correctness of the dialogue deliveries, convert their actions (without audio) into animation, and do voiceover, it will pretty much serve my purpose.

More later if and when I start using the software Thanks for your answers!

[Víctor Paredes]

Animation is an art. Or at least requires lot of work.
If you are looking for an easy way to create movies meanwhile you and your friends learn to make real movies, I think you are on the wrong place.

You should try with that 3d tools for create animations in base to predeterminated characters, backgrounds and actions. I have seen some sites which let you do that.

Now, answering to your questions, yes, you can create a character based on photographies (the term for this kind of work is cut-out animation), but there is no way you get "real" people moving (even less chances if you are amateur). Well, actually, animation is not about reality.

About converting real video into animation, no, you can't. There is not a magic button to do that, there are not magic buttons for anything. You can use video as reference, in some other software you could modify the colors, maybe add some effects, but not actually transform the video on animation, whatever that could be.

As conclusion, if you want to make animations, you should try with AS, but if you want to make movies with real people, I recommend you to learn directly that. Animation is not the little son of real movies, animation is a career by itself.

I'm not saying you can't do both, just telling advice you to take care. No one is an easy fast task.

[jahnocli]

Take a look at Jib Jab -- they go as far in this direction as you can while preserving a "cartoony" look. Is it easy? No. Nothing worth doing ever is.

[mayurison]

Anime Studio is a vector base tool u can just take a photo import it and trace it using pen tool or just save my avatar as an example!:D

[mental!droid]

Or in other 'cases' if u really intend to start it tracing over it! be my guest and i'll show you some good tutorials.