AE good for simple cartoon-like animation?

Report · Aug 06, 2018

Dear community,

I am working at the university on a project regarding the reading abilites of children. I have to create a simple cartoon-like movie with existing 2D characters I already created for a website. The character's animation are not going to be very detailed, I do not have to animate moving lips etc. The movie presents the project, so text boxes will play an important role. So basically the 2D characters have to move around a bit, speech bubbles and text boxes have to (dis)appear and change. My questions is if After Effects is suitable for that purpose or if Animate CC is a better option, or maybe even another CC app?

Thanks in advance for your answers!

Report · Aug 06, 2018

It actually sounds like Character Animator might be a better bet: Adobe Character Animator CC | 2D character animation software

Report · Aug 06, 2018

Unless the projects are extremely simple you'll probably need a combination of Character Animator, Illustrator, After Effects, Premiere Pro, and Audition to efficiently produce animations that look good and work well. You'll also need to spend some time learning the principals of animation and apply them to the storytelling. Without some proper planning, artistic ability, and several hundred hours of really hard work you would probably be better off just using one or more of the dozen or so amazingly decent animation apps for iPad, iPhone or Android. You're still going to have to spend some time practicing, but the learning curve is going to be a lot easier to manage.

If you decide to go with a professional solution then make sure you vet the trainers that publish tutorials. Most advice you find on YouTube is from amateurs that don't really know how to set up efficient workflows. If you can't take a class invest in some training from Lynda.com or Total Training so you at least have a chance of developing an efficient workflow.

Report · Aug 06, 2018

I mean, the hit TV show Archer is animated in After Effects, so you can do a lot there.

If you want to just use AE, you should look into DUIK. It's free! (Well, you should donate something to them if you find it useful since - there's a lot of work put into it!) https://rainboxprod.coop/en/tools/duik/

It's a very useful addition to AE that helps you set up characters for animation (among other very useful little tasks) and it just got a major update.