How can I start to become one?

D

deejaybunny12

Hi everybody! I'm fairly new here on this site, but I've browsed it and it seemed pretty swell so far. Anyways, I came here so I can hit my (impossible) pocket full of dreams.

I've always wanted to tell stories. I was never great at it, but writing stories has been my passion. Cartoons has fascinated me ever since I was a small child. Ironically, I do not watch as many things as I use to- I do love reading, though :)

When I was young, my little sister and I created "shows", which was basically using our own toys :P Hpwever, we moved onto comics and now we're trying our hands at animation. Then my dream sparked me- I want to create my own animated films.

The thing is, how do I start? I want to develope a craft of animated filmmaking first, but I just don't know where to start. I have problems that may stunt my creations:

I only have 1 person to work with, which is my younger sister. None of my friends are into flimmaking, acting, any of that. I never met 1 person who likes to act, even in the plays I was in. So, I basically have no editors, no musicians, no actors/actress, etc. I only have 1 director and 2 actors (my sister and I).

I'm a young female. Now, before I get, "that's sexist!" I've came to realize that many females aren't shown in the film business, and if they are, they are usually associated with chick flicks (is that how you say it?), romance, sitcoms, etc. I rather like historical documents- I'm a HUGE history buff, always have been always will be, and my main goal is to present history in the strangest ways as possible. I'm into wars, action, things people expect a male to create. I know my perspective will be different from a male's war perspective...and I don't know how many people would exactly like that.

I want to be an animated film director- as in, I want to create my own ANIMATED films. Although I do love "real-life" films, making my own stories in animations has been my passion since forever, and giving that up is difficult for me to do so.

I feel like this is going to stop me, and I already know I don't have the luck and money to be a successful filmmaker. Any tips for me to at lease try? I have a deep gut this is going to fail quickly, and I already have a deep feeling the future Steven Spielberg has already been chosen- and that's not me. This is something I want to do with the rest of my life...but if I'm begging for money....then I don't know. If all else fails...I can always be a neuro scientist...
 
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If you believe that your pocket full of dreams is impossible, then aren't you setting yourself up for failure? First step in achieving a goal and a dream is to believe in yourself. Remember the story of the little engine that could? Be that little engine and steam forward.

I used to play with animation using paper back books, drawing thumbnail sketches of cars and people and planes, then crash them and blow them up. All done in pencil (flip-style). Then I moved on to 3D animation with an 80286 with a math coprocessor and 3D Studio 2.0. If you want to learn 3D animation and you have a decent computer, you can download a free program from here: http://www.blender.org/.

Good luck and have fun. Most importantly, never lose sight of your dreams! And dreams can only become reality when set in motion, otherwise they're just fantasy. So do it! :)

Oh, and I saw a great documentary the other day called "The Pixar Story". I you have cable, watch for it. Very well done. Reminded me of one of my college term papers entitled, "Art In Motion in Motion Pictures: The Development of Computer Technology" where I discussed the use of computer generated and assisted animation and digital editing tools. This was back in the late 1980s.
 
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I recommend personally trying to get your hands on the DVD collections of The Ren and Stimpy Show purely for the commentaries by director John Kricfalusi.

He's one of the last great animators of the 20th century and the commentaries give a fantastic insight into the way that cartoons and animation is produced nowadays, as well as how it was when he started and the 'real' way as he believes - that animation should be about the images, not like most shows and films nowadays where it's about writers writing stories that get animated. Basically he believes the images should come first, rather than the script.

Aside from that take a look on youtube for animated shorts and look into programs like flash for computer animation. Check out www.fat-pie.com for quirky, somewhat disturbing but web-renowned self made animator David Firth and his bizarre flash animations to see what can be done in a variety of styles.

The world is your oyster. I have a couple of friends in animation, one of whom lives with David Firth so i'll be glad to try and help out best I can.
 
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Rankles said:
I recommend personally trying to get your hands on the DVD collections of The Ren and Stimpy Show purely for the commentaries by director John Kricfalusi.

He's one of the last great animators of the 20th century and the commentaries give a fantastic insight into the way that cartoons and animation is produced nowadays, as well as how it was when he started and the 'real' way as he believes - that animation should be about the images, not like most shows and films nowadays where it's about writers writing stories that get animated. Basically he believes the images should come first, rather than the script.

Aside from that take a look on youtube for animated shorts and look into programs like flash for computer animation. Check out www.fat-pie.com for quirky, somewhat disturbing but web-renowned self made animator David Firth and his bizarre flash animations to see what can be done in a variety of styles.

The world is your oyster. I have a couple of friends in animation, one of whom lives with David Firth so i'll be glad to try and help out best I can.
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Thanks! Quick question: I'm too broke to afford Flash. Never will be able to afford it. Is there any other animation program I can use for less?
 
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Rankles said:
I recommend personally trying to get your hands on the DVD collections of The Ren and Stimpy Show purely for the commentaries by director John Kricfalusi.

He's one of the last great animators of the 20th century and the commentaries give a fantastic insight into the way that cartoons and animation is produced nowadays, as well as how it was when he started and the 'real' way as he believes - that animation should be about the images, not like most shows and films nowadays where it's about writers writing stories that get animated. Basically he believes the images should come first, rather than the script.

Aside from that take a look on youtube for animated shorts and look into programs like flash for computer animation. Check out www.fat-pie.com for quirky, somewhat disturbing but web-renowned self made animator David Firth and his bizarre flash animations to see what can be done in a variety of styles.

The world is your oyster. I have a couple of friends in animation, one of whom lives with David Firth so i'll be glad to try and help out best I can.
Click to expand...

Wow your friend lives with David Firth. Ptikobj (I think that's the name) is amazingly amazing.
 
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deejaybunny12 said:
Thanks, this looks good. Can I do 2D animation on it, because that's what I primarily want the most (which is 2D animation)
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I suppose you could do 2D animation, but it might be more troublesome than doing 2D animation in a purely 2D animation tool. It's the only free tool I've used for animation, and I've done some pretty interesting and involved animations with it, but they were all in 3D.

Give the wealth of open source software, and the relative simplicity of 2D, I would think there has to be an open source tool for 2D animation. Hop on over to sourceforge.net and browse the section of vector based multimedia graphics editors (thats Multimedia -> Graphics -> editors -> vector based)

I found this one, but there are probably many more. I've never tried this, so I don't know how good it is, but it looks promising ... http://sourceforge.net/projects/synfig
 
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If you're looking for a good free 2d animation platform, I would suggest taking a look at Synfig Studio:
www.synfig.org


Here's the demo video that comes with it (and I think the project files for this are available as well):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wwSZZivjQMo


EDIT: Guess I should have completely read oakstreet's previous post, he recommended the same program... I played with this last year a little bit, but never enough to get my head fully wrapped around it (and I'm not much of an artist) It certainly looks like it's goal is to be a complete animation package capable of producing feature film quality animations (think old Disney movies, before they all became 3D) Generally speaking though, more and more is being done in 3D, and if you do decide to go that route, blender is an amazing tool, it really does boggle the mind at times how some of the best software is available for free. :D
 
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If you read even further, you'd have seen that I didn't really recommend it, because I had never used it. A recommendation is still useful ... even to me, since I might someday be looking for such a tool, and I hate to go to the trouble to configure and build something that turns out to be a lemon.

Doug
 
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inkscape is a free, Open Source, Illustrator replacement. After using that to create the graphical components, you can either use keyframed motion in an NLE, or something like Jahshaka (also free).
 
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beejay...where are you located, if I may ask? i'm sure there are people somewhere around you that like/want to act...just have to find them. :) also, don't give up on your dream or think negatively about your ability to make them come true!
 
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LittleEarthquakes said:
beejay...where are you located, if I may ask? i'm sure there are people somewhere around you that like/want to act...just have to find them. :) also, don't give up on your dream or think negatively about your ability to make them come true!
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Well, I can't give you my exact state for personal reasons, but hint, it's in the west-south of the USA, hottest place in the USA, part of the 4 corners, bottom right...
 
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haha yea, sounds like one place to me. i'm sure you can find some actors around there that want to act....call around to your local community theatre ask them about their actors, ask them if they know of any film acting classes around you, etc. :)
 
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