Which programme ??
Hey guys its me again 
... i was just wondering which is your prefered software for animation and all the cycles eg. walk cycle, jump cycle etc ?? ... and also do i need to have good drawing skills before i can make such things or are there programmes which make this process easier .... thanks in advance 
... i was just wondering which is your prefered software for animation and all the cycles eg. walk cycle, jump cycle etc ?? ... and also do i need to have good drawing skills before i can make such things or are there programmes which make this process easier .... thanks in advance
Comments
Pencil allows you to do more hand drawn style animation
Photoshop has an animation/video paint mode and can be used for animation but is not cheap
After Effects is great for moving stuff around like cut outs and puppeting (creating a mesh over an image and then moving the mesh to create different shapes), and can also be used to build parent and child objects out of groups of images that can be moved to create animation, e.g. attach an image of a leg to a body with a joint and then move the body and the leg will follow but allow the leg to be jointed off the body.
Flash has many features for animation and is also very useful for many styles of animation
there are many more programs but this is a good start to look into.
Pixen is free as is Pencil.
Drawing skills are useful, but care can take you a long way with your animation. Think in terms of parts and build things up. You do not have to draw whole objects, just part that you can assemble. A wacom drawing tablet is a great plus. You can't sign your name with a bar of soap so don't expect to be able to draw easily with a mouse.
Use tracing and 'rotoscoping', or possibly photographic images to create animation if you can't draw. And there is a vast range of reference for animation out there, and you can also film your own and then study the frames.
hope that helps
kipper
Poser Debut: this has a walk cycle as a template, so you just have to replace the figure
Anime Studio Debut 8 also has walking template amongst others, where you can replace the graphics (this is a neat program all in all, and not that expensive).
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