I’ve never animated in 2D before so I don’t have a preference for animating in any particular software. While I use Clip Studio Paint for drawing, I don’t think it’s very good for animation. I’ve heard good things about 2D animation in Blender and its potential for combining 2D with 3D which is cool, there’s also Adobe Animate which seems to be used a lot in the industry. I tried Adobe Animate at first but I didn’t like its vector-based drawing system, although I might go back to it if we learn more about it in class. I ended up going with Blender, I thought it might be good to learn it a little bit in preparation for next semester, even though for now I’m using it for 2D.
I watched this video to get an understanding of Blender’s interface for 2D animation as well as some of the keyboard shortcuts. The information about Blender’s interpolation feature was interesting but I don’t need it at the moment.
Once I got a handle on the basics of the interface, I started following Alec’s tutorial and the bouncing ball timing chart he provided on blackboard.
The result of my first bouncing ball animation:
The edit mode and sculpt mode in Blender was interesting to use in combination with 2D. You can use the sculpt mode to move around your drawings vertices and smooth them if they get messy, Blender’s 2D animation tools are definitely rooted in 3D concepts and it was quick to squash and stretch the circle using these tools.
In-Class Exercises using Krita:
Bouncing Ball References