Any Software for Cut-out Animation ?

[Jay Nance]

I'm working on a cut-out animation web series (old school, original South Park style) I was just wondering if there were any simple cut-out animation,software I can use?

I don't mind doing it the old fashion way digital camera/tripod/ final cut but I was just wondering is they're another way like scanning the cut-outs or making the images sharper
Any help I appreciate it

(knowing me though I'll probably continue sticking to what I do)

-Jay

[Evan Tedlock]

if you have a mac you should try I-stopmotion and if you have a pc you Should try flipbook pro. They are both super easy to use and pretty powerful.

[Stephen M. Levinson]

Flash is the best software for what you want to do. South Park is made in flash.

[Lenny Boudreau]

Flash is top of the line and with a top of the line price tag.If you have the money, great. But if you're short on scratch, look at Anime Pro Studio.

http://my.smithmicro.com/win/anime/index.html

[Andy Linke]

I think all of these are good suggestions, i've heard good things about istopmotion, and obviously flash. The program I used for my cutouts was Framethief. Cheap download that enables you to playback, it has an onion skin feature, a feature to draw on the frame. Overall it's pretty good for a pretty reasonable rate. I think in order to get the sharp edges and things that your looking for you want to make sure you have a good camera, and camera set up, some good lights, and enough contrast between your characters and objects and your backgrounds so that everything reads how you want it to read. Good luck I'm interested in seeing it. If you haven't checked it out yet check out my animation "BIRD FEED" in the video forum that was done with paper cutouts and Framethief. Just wish I could have afforded a better camera.

[Jay Nance]

Thanks for the feedback everyone. I see I have a lot to choose from.

Also Andy I checked out Bird Feed and I must admit that was a damn fine cut-out
animation short. That must have been a pain to make but I bet it was worth it in the end.

-Jay

[Capmconnundrum]

Here's a tutorial for cut-out using toon boom:
http://www.tallgrassradio.com/toonboom/2007/09/introduction-to-phot...

[Monty Lawton]

I think Anime Studio Pro is great. Check out "Sputnik" on my personal page. It was the first thing I did after reading the tutorials.

[Capmconnundrum]

Monty,
"Sputnik" was fun. Looks like Anime Studio Pro is the way to go bang for the buck-wise.

[Kyoshi]

AE or flash should do it. As for maya that's a whole another ballgame

[OCL-R]

you could also just make your pieces, and animate it all in After Effects. you could definitely tweek stuff around and keep the cut out look at a much higher scanned resolution than if you had a basic camera. the advantage if After Effects is that you have the ability to animate 2-D objects in a 3-D space, making it easy to create depth and easier to animate depth without loss of quality do to image resizing.

but if not, for a good old-school look, just invest in a good camera. the advantage of iStopmotion is the ability to shoot with a ghost image of your last frame present, pretty basic program, but used right and you can create some pretty smooth animation, and the advantage of that, is that you can use a still camera, giving you the possibility of a good resolution with the proper lighting, and then the option to export as an image sequence or even a raw .dv file format and composite it all together in another program, the more you inter-grade all your material in raw format the better quality you will have in the end. plus, the new iStopmotion also has chroma-keying abilities, making animating that much easier.

in the end, there's lots of alternatives, but again, if you have the money, just invest in a good camera, and find a suitable and compatible program.

[J.C. Rider II]

I agree After Effects is great for this buy costly. iStopMotion is wonderful with a minimal learning cure and the learning curve can normally discourage some from using most programs.

I used iStopMotion and the camera on my laptop to make My Life X and it was easy, fun and not very time consuming.


Find more videos like this on Channel Frederator RAW

[SudsySutherland]

Anasazi by animateclay.com. Needs a camera hooked up to USB at all times... That, and its free so it might be worth a shot.