How to Animate on Paper in 2020 [PART 1]

#animatingonpaper #traditionalanimationtutorial #animationpaper
This video is for anybody still trying to animate on paper in 2020
Animating on paper as an alternative to a digital drawing tablet. In this video I cover materials, scanning, and resources to get started animating traditionally.
I have always felt that paper is the best way to start out learning animation because you can focus on drawing without having to fumble around with learning new software.
00:00 - Intro
01:12 - Materials
02:38 - The Lightbox
03:24 - The Scanner
04:15 - Layout
06:07 - Endscreen

[@feliz5547]

Am I the only one that actually prefers drawing on paper?

[@cynicalartz]

I think it's cool

[@samuelflipaclip7415]

Drawing on paper just feels so NICE honestly. I have full control of it and i just love the texture and feeling of the pencil on paper

[@notfamous649]

Me toooooo

[@NickGoblin]

I was binging videos by comic book artists a while back and I believe it was Ryan Benjamin who said that drawing on paper (or using any physical medium like a canvas) is your fundamental; your baseline and root for artistic potential. I was always focusing on how to digitize my workflow until I heard him say that. Now I'm working on a symbiosis between the two.

[@gunier.j.kintgenanimations]

A Very informative video for the beginner! Just a few things I'd like to add: 1. You can use printer paper, though animation paper is diffidently better. The downside with printer paper, is that it gets kind-of hard to see through after about 3-4 sheets. If you can't afford that, then tracing paper is a cheap substitute. Be warned though that tracing paper is really fragile & thin. 2. A pegbar is absolutely necessary, but you don't have to use the "ACME standard" as it's known. For my cartoons, I just use a normal 3-ring binder hole punch, & that works well enough. You can also find pegbars for normal punched paper as well. once again, the ACME standard is better, but you can use either one. I'd advise you to take my advice with a grain of salt, as I'm also a beginner. I've been making cartoons since 2019, but there is no doubt that this guy is better. Still, Just thought I'd add my 2 cents, Hope this helps!

[@loziink3970]

Though I animate digitally, I could have benefited from this in high school. Thanks for this video and can't wait for more.

[@KogaCommittee]

Thanks for stopping by!

[@MicahBuzanANIMATION]

I definitely don't miss scanning hundreds of drawings, but there is a certain texture to physical drawing that you just can't capture through digital.

[@OakTreeIsaac]

Man, I HATE scanning each frame! It’s so boring and takes forever 😂

[@KogaCommittee]

I just wanted to point out that during the Layout section of the video I inked the buildings because I was reusing it for the background to save paper. I would remove the red lines in photoshop and then convert the lines to vector. I'll go into detail about that stuff in the next video...

[@juinmi6718]

here alerider942's animation progress kzbin.info/www/bejne/nXeooJyCaKqikJY it was made long story happened?

[@spiderstheythem]

HUGE thank you for this. i'm learning to draw and i hate computers, don't like using them (the keyboard hurts my hands and i find the software overwhelming and complicated and futzy to use, and i just get distracted by the internet), i mostly draw on paper. and my biggest artistic inspirations are animators, so i have been wondering about animating on paper so i dont have to buy and learn to use expensive software. this gives me a good idea of what that's like in practice. idk if i'm ready to buy a light box and try it myself yet, i wanna improve my drawing skills for a bit longer first, but i'm definitely considering it :3 thank you for the video!

[@conkerisdumb]

cant stay on my computer for to long so this is great even tho I have had a drawing tablet for 4 years

[@caramelize4564]

guys, you can also buy a 20 dollar tablet!! it won't be the best, but it costs less than what it takes to buy a scanner/tons of paper/light box/ect. (this video is still really cool tho, didn't know people still did paper animations!)

[@KogaCommittee]

I had a cheap bamboo tablet when I was working on paper, but it still wasn't good enough for me to do animation on because I had a really difficult time transitioning from paper to digital. The only thing I could really do with my tablet was color.

[@caramelize4564]

@@KogaCommittee that makes more sense! hope your doing better with tablets now! i just left this comment for people new to the community so they know that there's really cheap tablets out there :)

[@gunier.j.kintgenanimations]

Say@@caramelize4564 , Do you know if there's something for that price with a screen on it?

[@tjtjmich16p]

Amazing video bruh i love your art style, And I'm about to get a table after months of begging my parents, I used my old laptop as a light box and i used printer paper and pegs to animate and i still do up till now

[@mateusborges745]

Man, you are excellent, you bring this content in a moment that i need it, thanks bro!!

[@KogaCommittee]

Glad I could help in your moment of need!

[@noircat9076]

Your animating skills amazing

[@christiangab1227]

Thank you for sharing such a simple guide to animation you are truly awesome and helpful ^^

[@KogaCommittee]

I'm glad it was helpful!

[@Seanime]

Dope vid bro! Yeah I can relate to that start myself man, smh when I got my Wacom Tablet it was curtains!

[@KogaCommittee]

It's really crazy how long I went drawing on paper, up to like 2015.

[@therealmicmountain]

excellent..... i love this. i still draw on paper but i worked out a technique using adobe animate where i only make character rigs with it so not as much work!

[@KogaCommittee]

Nice! Sometimes I miss working on paper but then change my mind when I think about the scanning.

[@SparksBY1992]

I needed this video. Thank you so much for creating it. I was stuck on what to do next.

[@KogaCommittee]

Super happy to help!

[@PilferpupCartoons]

Your content's really fun, love your aesthetic! :O

[@KogaCommittee]

Glad you enjoy it!

[@alialqattan9902]

You are so cool with it

[@jbennett2338]

Nice work man!

[@KogaCommittee]

Appreciate it!

[@x-dah-t-er8779]

🎉🎉🎉🎉 party on dude very explanatory,! Hey where’s part 2 ! Where’s Logan committee part 2 - with iPhone camera u think u could use a stop animation camera 2 scan ? I bet u’d say go 4 it?

[@daxtrigger135]

As of right now, I can't buy a lightbox and an animation tap cause of this stupid pandemic, so animating simple stuff like eye blinks and mouth movements are _hella_ hard. I wish I could buy them, it would make my already complicated life way easier.

[@KogaCommittee]

Before I got into using all that stuff I would make a lot of flipbooks. It's more basic than doing it on regular sized paper, but you still get the satisfaction of seeing your drawings move.

[@mr.lonely947]

Very good

[@KogaCommittee]

Thanks! Stay tuned for Part 2

[@yv3652]

Any art on paper or other natural materials is better.

[@zachmetry6124]

Where part 2 at?

[@snaketooth19]

Personally the biggest challenge of converting hand drawn to digital is how to quickly and accurately remove the white paper background of your character. I've used the magic wand tool before which has worked nicely. However the challenge with that is you have to have fully filled in drawings, in your example where the hair is a separate layer I don't think that method would work very well. Any other alternatives?

[@KogaCommittee]

At first I would scan my drawings in as color pngs, then color correct the frames in photoshop with preset actions, which was fast if you have all the drawings in the same PS file separated into layers. Then I would import them into Flash as keyframes and use "trace bitmap" to convert them to vector. Then you could just select all the frames at the same time, break them apart, and delete the white fills to make the background transparent. I also had a limit of like 20 drawings before the scanner would start eating them, and paper wasn't cheap, so managing the number of drawings was never really a problem. Most scenes for something like Kerslash were between 4 and 7 drawings. I also had some really specific settings that would preserve a lot of my inked lines, but I'm still in process of trying to recreate the steps for the next part of the video. Around the time of ep 2 of Kerslash I added an extra step where I started converting my drawings to vector using Adobe Illustrator's Live Trace feature (which is a thing I don't think exists anymore) instead of "trace bitmap" because you could delete the white beforehand and then imported them and break them apart same as before. I hope this helps!

[@snaketooth19]

@@KogaCommittee thanks for the response! That is helpful

[@rhysseddon7279]

You can punch printer paper you just need to make a punch bar, I made one out of wood

[@masterstevechuks5437]

What's the name of the program you use to convert it to digital

[@KogaCommittee]

I used Adobe Illustrator Live Trace. Part of the problem I'm having with part 2 of this video is that a lot of the things I used to use are discontinued adobe services like the software they used to have that just converted raster to vector. You can also do it in Flash/Adobe Animate, but it's not as accurate.

[@isaiahthompson8268]

Part 2?

[@KogaCommittee]

Currently in the works.

[@Jorashii]

wheres part 2??

[@KogaCommittee]

I'm still in the process of making it, and having to move slowed me down. It's coming though...

[@Jorashii]

@@KogaCommittee oh take your time bro!

[@winterberry3412]

When you don't have a lightbox

[@KogaCommittee]

Get one!

[@shim64]

was that a jojo reference