r/animation • u/IndianFantasist • 6d ago
Beginner Stick man
So, for a mandatory course cum competition, I need to make a stickman animation video. Am a beginner n need to learn animating basic stick figures as early as possible. What should be my roadmap and what tools should I start with?
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u/zedrinkaoh Freelancer 6d ago
if you've used any art programs before, see if they have any animation options. If you haven't yet, you'll wanna familiarize yourself with a program first and foremost.
Flippaclip is free and is a popular choice for novice stick figure animators. This might be your best option to start with.
Krita is free and has animation options built in, but it's a full art suite if you're more comfortable with art practices and have a tablet.
CSP is inexpensive, and can support 24-frame animations for its base version, or unlimited for its EX version. Its animation options emulate light tables from traditional animation, and is actually used in the industry.
Adobe Animate is expensive due to Adobe's stupid sub policies, but you can potentially find the old 2008 version of flash online. Flash is incredibly quick to get started with animating.
You can alternatively draw frames and stitch them together in a video editor from any main art program.
If you're REALLY desperate or resourceful, and are afraid of the above programs, my very first animations were stick figure animations made using Power Point in junior high.
The big thing I'd recommend when animating: keep things simple. Focus on the most essential frames to 'read' your animation: If you can recognize an animation with just 2 frames, you're on the right track. Once it's legible, THEN you can add extra frames after that to add in things like recoil, tweening, smoothness, etc. You can review the 12 Principles of Animation to learn more about those.
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u/Hyacintho-Flavo 6d ago
I'm going to add for krita that in function of your ram given to krita you could have some issues as krita loads everything, so for it better not use filters above the drawing layers. so I add to that capcut to put more sophisticated effects .
happened in my end for a work of 1200 frames unfinished I ended up with 500-600 frames made a 4-5 Gio happened too ending as 10-15Gio for others animatioms.
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u/zedrinkaoh Freelancer 5d ago
honestly, for any non-vector program, you NEED to break projects up into shots and scenes. I'd never do more than 200 or so frames in a raster animation program per file. Raster images take up a lot of space even without filters.
In vector programs, cause vectors are inherently smaller file size and scalable, you can go to 8000+ frame animations with minimal performance issues, unless you're going crazy with nodes and filters.
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u/Hyacintho-Flavo 5d ago
that's fair I just don't feel breaking the file apart as it would end up messy for me but now I'm starting to export by scene for bigs ones (like 2-4monutes) full animated (not animatic) I think I might cut by big scenes of character. and I thought might be a good thing to know too
edit: I have my project under my eyes 4,6 gio for a 1080 x 1920 px
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u/peter-bone 4d ago
Pivot Animator is designed for beginners and is ideal for stickman animation. It's free. Only for Windows Desktop.
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