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There are also features like delays and looping which you can use to make animated GIFs or short, repeating clips as you practice creating your own animated images. Learning how to animate in Photoshop is fairly straightforward with the Timeline function, which makes it easy to build out your individual frames. They offer student discounts, so if you’re still in school, this can be a great place to start without spending a lot upfront. You can access both (and other Adobe products) through their Creative Cloud subscription, which starts at around $20 per month. Types of Animation 2D AnimationĪdobe Animate is a paid platform used by both new and professional animators.Īdobe Photoshop and Animate are some of the best software for learning how to animate online and on your desktop. That means that the same image was drawn over and over again with almost undetectable changes that would then be put together to create the moving sequence.Īlthough most modern animators work in either 2D or 3D animation and use computers to generate their characters or backgrounds, hand-drawn or cel-animation remains a popular art form and can be a fun place to start if you’re an experienced artist but still finding your feet as a first-time animator. These days, computer animation (also known as CGI) is the most commonly used technique, but back in the early days, everything was hand-drawn.
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Before we get into how you can make an animation of your own, let’s take a moment to go through what exactly animation is and how different types of animation are used for creative projects.Īnimation, in its simplest form, is the process of taking still images and joining them together in a set order to take on the appearance of movement.
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