what if I told you that you can easily create cartoon animations using only CapCut and an image editor and no other software in this guide we're gonna go through the process step by step to create an animation from vectors, so that you can start making your own. You'll find the link to the animation in the description down below. okay so as promised here is the method to do it: a four step process that may look complex at first, but can become very easy with some practice.
to start with a broad description, first stage, will always be a fusion between a growing idea, and research for vectors. the combination between these two is what will give you your storyboard, just like in Hollywood movies, where you need to plan ahead of time your story, and needed assets. and that is a crucial element for the next stage: frame creation.
here we'll create all image frames that we will need for our storyboard: characters, backgrounds, and elements. and once we have our frames, we can go edit them in CapCut for the final result. now you may be saying to yourself: "is he crazy?
" "is this the tip? " "Animating frame by frame? " but bear with me here: it's easier than it sounds.
and things will clear up as we go along in the guide. okay let's get into it: so obviously, the start of the journey is a draft of an animation idea. at this stage you only lay out the main ideas, as their execution will depend on the vectors that you find online.
so my story is about a guy camping in nature, and being annoyed by a mosquito. (and yes don't take my story too seriously) at this point I don't really have a clear idea on how the animation will look visually. So I start by looking at the available vectors, and fine tune my scenario.
There's going to be 2 types of assets you'll need. backgrounds and characters The characters is going to be the hardest part, because you need to find assets that you can easily animate for this I suggest you add the following keyword in your search: "sprites" or "sprite sheets" this will give you assets that are already pre-animated. Once you find a style that you like, you can go to the author's page and search for similar assets.
there is for example this artist that has a lot of characters with a similar design that would go very well in a 2D game for example. but the one I liked is this one: this artist, not only has pre animated characters, but also face expressions. don't worry, I'll show you how to use them.
So I went for this character. And hopefully, get everything we need from this sheet. I also did the same thing with the mosquito, and settled with this sprite sheet: a good looking mosquito, that has all the positions we need for the animation.
okay, now that we've identified our characters, we go and search for backgrounds and sceneries. and this is actually rather easy, as there are many assets online. your main challenge though will be to gather sceneries with the same "feel and touch".
for this, using assets from a same artist is a good way. . .
but it won't give you everything. you really need to spend the time and browse through the tons of assets, mix up your search keywords, to end up with a set of images that go along well. for my animation, I gathered these sceneries: the camping base at day, (I was lucky to find the exact same one at night time), and some other backgrounds, and elements for various scenes.
now we can say that our storyboard is a "bit more clear". the different assets that we gathered help us finetune our animation idea. and now we can fully imagine our story, with every single item and frame that we will need.
And here, is where it gets interresting: you could choose to use these backgrounds directly in JPG format. and you would not need to do any further thing on it, and use them directly into capcut. but you could also: choose to get them in vector format, and tweak them a little bit.
let me show you how. so the reason we wanna go with vectors is to be able to layer our images. This way,we can create parallax animations with our backgrounds.
we can also make elements or characters appear behind objects. (which is always better) and we can isolate or remove some objects, to adapt the image to our wishes. so let's see how it works in this background: the camp at night.
this one has lots of things going on, that's why I choose it for my example. I will be showing you how to do it in Adobe Illustrator, and in Photo Pea. And I will slow down a bit: This is a critical step.
so I got my vector over here, and first thing you always wanna do is : "Layer Discovery". in illustrator, it will highlight the objects your mouse is on. start by moving objects around, see which ones are grouped or in the same layers.
right click and ungroup, or release the mask if needed. once you can properly select the wanted objects, put them aside from each other, like this. and let's bring our adjustments.
so, for the background, I need to tweak the sky to be able to do a vertical parrallax animation. to do that I simply resize the rectangle, and duplicate some clouds and stars. I also like this moon from another vector, so I select it and copy Paste it to my scene.
place it and size it accordingly. And, there is my background. now, for the camp, I want to get rid of this Fire, as I'm gonna be adding my animated fire.
so I select it, along all the little objects around it, and delete them. I also need this tent to be in a separate image, to be able to animate it separately in my final scene. so I also select it and put it aside.
now I simply export each group into a separate PNG file. on Photo Pea, it works in a similar way, except that you'll have to find the layers, on the right panel. play around with the "eye" icon, to locate the wanted objects.
Once you locate it, de-activate all the other ones, to isolate the wanted elements. And export your file to PNG format. and do the same for all the other objects.
Another way to do it is with "Mouse Selection". it will however select unwanted objects. And you will have to retry multiple times to get the right selection.
It's way more comfortable in Illustrator, but not everyone has it. so here is the free option with Photo Pea. so you do this on all your backgrounds.
when you're done, organise them in proper folders, and we can move along to the character frames. now the character animation works in a similar way to old school cinematography. a film role is composed of a number of frames.
and when put together images become animated. Us humans, can see up to 60 frames per second. the first movies ever made were up to 24 frames per second.
But for our animation, we can go with Less. so we'll break down every movement that we want into a series of frames or images. let's take the big one for him running: the hiker.
for example, I can already take the ones that are ready, and we can add a couple of frames, just to make it a bit better. we can duplicate, and reuse the legs, or the arms, by rotating them, to create complementary frames. Just be careful with selecting the right objects.
putting each important asset into a group is a good way to go: the arms, the legs, the head, and so on. to complete the running cycle, we just retake the previous ones, and put them in reverse order (mirror). now we have eight frames for running.
for the character sitting, we take the one that is already there. we can tweak the face expressions, using the available assets. so, we can make him grumpy, with the mouth and the eyebrows.
simply interchange them as you wish, and create sequences of frames. same thing for the man fighting, just these two frames will be enough. and, him sleeping.
we choose the right preset, and adapt the face expressions willingly. after we're done, we export each asset in a separate PNG file. and make sure to name them properly: it's very important for the next steps in CapCut.
we can also animate this windmill, by simply rotating, and creating a couple of frames, with incremented rotations. By putting the frames together, you get a rotating windmill. you can also tweak the vectors, for example, this toilet paper.
To animate it like it's shrinking from the rain, select the anchor points, and play with them a little. create a series of frames this way to animate it. and if you really want to, you can also animate the wings of the flying mosquito, by rotating the wings, and creating sequences of frames.
we do the same for all the assets that we want to animate: prepare sequences of frames. and by the end, you have a collection of images. .
. of all your animated characters. and we can move on to the next step.
the final stage will be in CapCut, and, REALLY, we already did the hard part. so for CapCut, I'll start by showing you the "General Principles", then some practical applications on your video edit. when you get into CapCut, you want to have your assets organised in folders: like this.
I have a folder for each character, inside it I have my frames, with numbers on the file names, (indicating the position of the frame) and all my assets are organized in the same way: characters, and backgrounds. so, let's say I want to animate this singing mosquito. First thing to do is : set the default media length to 0.
1 seconds that will give us 10 frames per second, which is "not too bad". then we simply drag our elements, one after the other and place them on the timeline, and you test. you'll often find that some frames are not perfectly aligned, creating this sort of "glitch".
so in this case you take the frame, and you put it above the previous one, and you try to superimpose them. play on the scale and position to align key elements of the body. in this example: the eyes.
Every frame should be superimposed to the previous one. when you're done, simply duplicate them, and make as much as you can: because we might be speeding up the compound clip. (and you can trim it, but not extend it.
) so the more you duplicate, the more flexibility you will have. when you're done create a compound clip and test it out. you can increase the speed, if you want a better movement.
once you're satisfied, put it aside. let's now do the man running. we use the same principle: 1- put the frames in sequences, 2- test them out, 3- superimpose the ones that are not, 4- duplicate as much as you can, and create a compound clip.
we can do the same with the campfire: duplicate the frames and create a compound clip. also with the toilet paper. I just took a couple of frames for this one, as we're gonna be rotating them later.
okay let's move to the backgrounds, and let's take the farm scene. remember that windmill that we rotated? well, here it is.
simply bring the frames and duplicate. then create a compound clip, and speed it up. we bring our foreground, and place and scale everything.
now, we bring our character, and put him between the layers. to do that simply go to the right panel, and select a layer in between. in this example, layer No.
2. bring the toilet paper in the same way. now to animate them, we'll just use keyframes.
for the man, set a start position, and an end position. same thing for the toilet paper roll. except that we'll be rotating it in the middle of it's path.
just a small rotation after another, using keyframes. test it out and adapt the speed of the movement by bringing the little "diamond" to the left, or to the right and REALLY, that's it. but I'll also show you some cool stuff you can use in your edit: No.
1 the parallax movement: very simple. place your scene in its final position. we put the back, the front, the tent, and the fireplace.
then, set a keyframe on every element, at the beginning. then you go to the end of the scene, and you set a keyframe, again on every element. the key in parallax is the following: you need to create a difference in the scale, and distance, of both elements: the front, and the back.
if the foreground scales 150%, and goes down 1,000 pixels, your background should scale to 250%, and go up 3,000 pixels (for example). so we do exactly that: the front goes down just a bit and scales a bit. the back goes up a lot and scales a lot.
But the key here, as I said in my previous videos, is to use the keyframe animations. open it for every element and use, for example, "ease out 3". do this for every element, otherwise it will create some bad looking results.
another thing you can do, is use the shake effect on the tent, to create a sense of fighting. You can also use the cartoon effect "Energy", to make a turbulent tent. let's go to where the mosquito sings.
we can use a filter in the mono category called BW 3. you can split your scene, and apply it to the second one, to create a sense of "lights going out". you can also reduce the Luma curve, to make it even darker.
and, I import this spotlight that I got from a vector, I simply place it, and select the right blend mode: "darken". use keyframes on the rotation, to create a sense of a moving spotlight. and do the same thing for the shadow, which is a separate image.
and there is your night scene. and really, when you look at my timeline, it's really a combination of what I just told you. my timeline is basically composed of lots of compound clips stacked with keyframes.
and here is the scene we were just talking about. as you can see, it's just those element stacked and keyframed. you can always fancy it with extra effects or filters.
for example here, I used a filter for daytime, a filter for the rain scene, and another one for the night scene. another key of this animation however, is sound effects. they take as much space as my other assets.
for the music, you can simply use the vocal and music isolation, and have them in separate tracks. for the singing, I just applied the voice changer "high". and Gloria becomes a mosquito.
as I said in my previous videos, the place to get them is PixaBay. I used here "male expressions", "male exclamations", "laughing sounds" "rain sounds", "mosquito sounds", here they are, if you want to get their names. I didn't have 90% of them when I started editing this animation.
I just got them from Pixabay along the way, as I nedded them. (I guess that's also a way to do it). well guys, I hope this guide will let you unleash your creativity.
if you have any questions, leave them in the comments section. and if you liked it, hit that subscribe button for more content. until next time, cheers.
