One of the animation techniques that involves drawing each frame is called frame-by-frame animation. At its core, this is the same as hand-drawn animation, but each frame is drawn on a separate sheet, and then it is photographed.
When creating modern cartoons, the use of frame-by-frame animation is inevitable. Significantly facilitate the work of the animator will help programmatically generate images in frames that are between key scenes.
For these purposes, there are many programs for frame-by-frame animation. Consider some of them and make a choice.
Atani
An editor designed to create frame-by-frame animation. It has a built-in graphic editor and allows you to import images into WMF, BMP, GIF, EMF, JPG, ICO and PNG formats. The created cartoon can be saved as an AVI or as a GIF file. Each animation frame can be edited separately in the morph mode. It is possible to preview animations and support for hot keys.
Main functions:
- the ability to convert AVI to GIF;
- saving only selected frames as animation;
- adding a creeping line with text;
- over eighty different effects;
- the use of sounds.
Pivot Stickfigure Animator App
A tool that allows you to create simple animations, even if you don’t understand anything in flash animations. The utility allows you to add an unlimited number of a wide variety of slides. Saving the finished clip is only possible in .gif format.
The program has a nice interface and allows you to add several schemes to one slide. It includes many tools for resizing an animation figure, as well as its individual parts. With this application, even a beginner will figure out how to make frame-by-frame animation, and will be able to create a simple animated movie, spending only a few minutes. All in all, Pivot Stickfigure Animator is a pretty interesting freeware program.
Create frame-by-frame animation with Stickman
Stickman, which is different from most similar programs, is perfect for teaching children in animation schools. And for professionals, it provides a quick and easy way to create high-quality animated films.
The program uses a rather interesting and new technology for creating animation: key frames are used instead of drawing each frame, and intermediate movements are calculated independently. Groups of control points are set for each figure and allow you to control the animation.
In addition, exporting finished animation is available in the formats SWF, MP4, MOV, AVI, MPG, FLV and others. You can record your own voice or add sound from a file of any format.
Functions and features:
- creating animation keyframes;
- import images;
- support for multiple cameras;
- export of finished animation to nine video formats;
- layer support;
- export to flash.
Easy GIF Animator Utility
It is mainly intended for creating animated images in .gif format with the addition of various kinds of special effects.
The application has many settings that will allow you to change most of the characteristics of the gif-file. For example, the duration of the video or its color scheme. In addition, the Easy GIF Animator frame-by-frame animation program allows you to add texts directly to the image and preview the project in the browser. You can add sound to the created video and save the result in .swf format.
The Easy Gif Animator Rus program is suitable for advertising developers and web animators. The developers proposed a system of functional optimization. The finished animation is reduced to the size of the resulting file. Almost all popular graphic formats are used to save animations: PNG, BMP, JPG, and GIF.
Key Features and Features
- adding visual and text effects of animation;
- preview in the browser;
- color transparency is selected frame by frame;
- setting animation duration and loop counts;
- reverse part of the animation or the entire video;
- a position is set for each image;
- optimization of animation and images;
- Convert animation to black and white or grayscale;
- editing a palette;
- export animation to avi format.
Frame-by-frame animation with Synfig Studio
Free program for creating high-quality two-dimensional animation. It works mainly with vector objects and will allow you to create small animated pictures and draw entire cartoons.
It differs from similar applications in a professional and high-quality interface, which is equipped with a working window for images and functional panels (properties, tools, navigator, layers, parameters). At the beginning of the work, you need to set key points for the image, and the program creates and calculates intermediate frames.
Ready videos are saved in the formats Digital Video, AVI, Theora and MPEG, for animation the formats MNG and GIF are used. All these features make this program a great choice for creating animations at home.
- Russified professional interface;
- work with vector images and frame-by-frame animation;
- basic set of tools for creating animation effects;
- suitable for use on tablets;
- To improve lighting effects, the floating point function is used;
- manual and reference in English;
- the ability to save individual images in PNG, BMP, etc.
- export of finished animation to popular formats .mpeg, .avi, etc.
Adobe Photoshop
The list of features and effectiveness of this program is useless to dispute. Professional designers and artists have long recognized this fact and seriously expanded their creative prospects thanks to this popular graphic editor. Without a doubt, this utility has great functionality and is an industry standard.
The uniqueness of the program is determined by such functions as color management, masks, smart auto-correction, overlay effects, layer management, tools for precise selection, brush sets and so on.
The extended edition of the latest version of the utility differs from the standard one by the set of some additional functions. For example, working with three-dimensional graphics and a large set of tools for creating frame-by-frame animation, shadows and reflections in Photoshop.
Thanks to the ability to share and export presets, the editor’s workflow is significantly improved, and the advanced interface allows you to do the work in the editor with pleasure.
Powerful and popular program Adobe Flash CS5 Professional
This utility is designed for professional and high-quality development of interactive content on web pages, interactive flash-clips, as well as for creating videos.
The application has wide functionality that allows you to simply and easily create interactive projects for different platforms.
Frame-by-frame flash animation in this program is done with one click of the mouse. In addition, it is quick and convenient to make an animated flash movie out of an image using an object-oriented approach to creating animations implemented in the program.
- Creation of animated projects with lively and maximally realistic animation.
- Thanks to Creative Suite, the adaptation of the program has been greatly improved.
- The presence of the tool "Decoration", which allows the addition of expressive effects of animation.
- The Bones palette contains new attributes for movement.
- The function of inserting MP3 music into the project.
- Improved editor features.
- The Code Snippets panel contains workpieces that are quickly inserted into the project.
- Create realistic animations.