The Lazy Animator Guide to Cartoon Animator Camera Craft (Coming Soon)

Cartoon Animator's camera is like a very basic, fixed lens camera. You have two options, keep it still or move it around. But what if you want to get more cinematic with your animations? Create epic landscape shots, or follow the action in a more dynamic way? In The Lazy Animator Guide to Cartoon Animator Camera Craft (coming soon) I'm going to show you how to create more cinematic shots inside Cartoon Animator.

I'm excited to be starting work on this all new online course for Reallusion's Cartoon Animator with the goal of teaching you how to create more cinematic camera shots within Cartoon Animator itself. Shots that require a little more work than just key framing Cartoon Animator's camera.

The focus will be on how to create each shot 'in camera' reducing the need for additional applications like After Effects and making your scenes easier to edit directly, rather than having to re-export footage from CA4 into After Effects whenever you need to change something.

That said, there will be times when using an additional application like a graphics editor is necessary, so I'll be using free, open source applications like Krita and Natron (possibly) so you can follow along without needing to sign up for any subscription services.

As well as creating cinematic camera shots the course will cover the basic shots used in both video and animation projects so you can get up to speed if you're an absolute novice.

In all cases I will demonstrate the shot, how to create it in Cartoon Animator, and give you explanation for when you might use such a shot.

Note that the techniques for creating each shot in this course are not the only way to create them. I'm simply teaching my own techniques based on years of using Cartoon Animator. If you can streamline them or find a better way, then by all means do so, I'd love to see your techniques.

In the final section we'll look at how to combine camera shots to create a complete scene, focusing on some camera shot rules you should keep in mind as you build your scene.

While this course is centered around Cartoon Animator many of the techniques could be applied to other animation applications with similar work flows. If you would like to follow along, without purchasing Cartoon Animator, you can trial Cartoon Animator free for 30 days (more than enough time to do this course), or you can attempt to recreate my techniques on your own application of choice.

That's the plan at this stage. Sign up to the newsletter to be kept up to date on the course creation process and when a release date is announced.

It's going to be quite a challenge recreating some of the cinematic shots I have in mind within Cartoon Animator. As far as I know there isn't any course like this out there specifically for Cartoon Animator.

The Lazy Animator Beginner's Guide to Cartoon Animator - The Fastest Way to Learn Reallusion's 2D Animation Software Application

IMPORTANT: This Course is still current for Cartoon Animator 5. All principles taught are identical to the current version. The only major difference is the implementation of the new Smart Content Manager. The course now includes an additional video to explain the differences between version 4 and 5's Content Managers. How much value do you put on your time? $10 an hour? $50 an hour? $200 an hour, or more? While you can learn Reallusion's Cartoon Animator 4 using free tutorials, you can spend hours of your time looking for tutorials that don't actually address what you're trying to learn, or worse, may not even exist. Don't waste hours of your valuable time when you can learn all the main animation features of Cartoon Animator, and become a power user, fast, for just USD$49.95 , without having to navigate all the official video tutorials that don't really cover everything in a logical order, or show how everything is connected ..

How to Import Vector Images into Reallusion's Cartoon Animator (without Adobe Flash) and Apply Render Styles

Reallusion's Cartoon Animator 4 used to feature vector images more prominently for character and prop creation back when it was launched as CrazyTalk Animator 2 . So much so that they built into the application a Render Styles system that made it easy to recolor vector images if you took the extra steps to create vector color groupings for G2 vector characters and props. Unfortunately G2 Vector characters weren't the success story Reallusion hoped for, proving to be too difficult for the average user to make, and they also required Adobe Flash (now Animate CC) for which many users weren't willing to invest in a subscription. Since then CrazyTalk Animator 3 , and now Cartoon Animator 4 , have focused more on high resolution bitmaps to create quality characters and props, however the Render Styles system and support for vector images still remains. Reallusion Not Interested in SVG Support? The only vector file supported by Cartoon Animator is Adobe's SWF format which i

The Fastest Way to Rig a Character in Reallusion's Cartoon Animator - A How To Tutorial

One of the biggest hurdles for beginner animators, new to Reallusion's Cartoon Animator Studio , is learning how to rig their own character designs from scratch. While Reallusion has worked very hard to make the process easier it still can seem complex and overwhelming, particularly now that CA's flagship, G3-360 character rigs are being adapted to work with live motion capture and pre-animated 3D motion files. Fortunately, by combining some of CA4's newest features (G3-360 body rigs and Bone hands) with one of its oldest (Morph-based heads), newcomers can get into animating their own character quickly and easily. The Lazy Animator tutorial, The Fastest Way to Rig a Character in Cartoon Animator , uses just one custom character sprite, and takes, around an hour or so (once you're familiar with the process) to rig a relatively simple, but still quite versatile character. The course is presented as a 19 page PDF document, with just two steps per page and clear diagrammati

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