# Need help for professional anime equipment (2-D style)



## mugen187 (Nov 15, 2012)

Hi everyone,

I'm currently looking for professional equipment to make 2-D animation kinda like Japanese anime or Comics like Justice League. But I want to create one to make an anthro series. I recently bought a book on how to make anime called "How to Draw Manga: Making Anime" it's a good book but I think there's something missing within the book. Are there any another books you guys can recommend me to buy along with the professional equipment to make anime.

Also, is it possible to make a professional anime series by yourself? Because the book I got from How to Draw Manga: Making Anime says that you need at least 100 people working to make a full episode of 20 to 22 minutes, but I want to at least try to see if it's possible to do by yourself. You know the ones you see in Funimation that has the full length videos.

Thanks guys


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## sunandshadow (Nov 15, 2012)

Wow, OK, you have a lot of work ahead of you. ^_^;  And this should be in the art forum, animation is art.

First, go to amazon.com and search for draw manga or draw anime.  You will see there are about 50 books available on various topics.  Personally I like the "How to Draw Anime and Game Characters" series.  You don't necessarily have to buy them, try your local library first and only buy the ones you want to refer to again and again.  Also, you will want the Muybridge photobooks of people in motion and animals in motion, and, dang, who wast that good animation primer from?  I forget whether it was the Disney one I liked or not - I don't have that one on my shelf.  Oh, and unless you are already good at drawing realistic people, you probably need some anatomy books.  And books aren't the only option, DeviantArt has a ton of tutorials on all aspects of drawing and animation including anatomy.

Next, purchase a nice drawing tablet - that is your professional equipment.  The vast majority of anime-production is done on computer these days.  And you will need some software to go with it.  Flash was an industry standard for a few years but it is on its way out now, I'm not completely sure what will replace it.

Now, animate some stick figures or mannequins of people and animals.  Master the motion before you worry about detail or color.  Make a cartoony music video for one of your favorite songs - you will learn for yourself how much work 3-5 minutes of animation is.


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## sunandshadow (Nov 15, 2012)

Oh, one more thing.  You should figure out which existing anime series have characters who look like what you want to draw.  Use google image search to save a bunch of pictures of those characters to a folder on your computer.  The ones that show the whole character from toes to head are best.  Ones where there character is wearing form-fitting clothing or minimal clothing like a bathing suit are also helpful because more of their anatomical structure is visible.  Then you need to analyze these example pictures to see what proportions the artist is using, and draw for yourself some mannequins with those proportions.  It's permissible to use tracing for the analysis step here, though preferably not for the mannequin-creating step.  If you intend to create anthro or animal characters you will want to do the same thing for your favorite examples of that type of art, to identify and analyze what you want to emulate.


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## Arshes Nei (Nov 15, 2012)

I think you really need to learn how to draw. I mean it's just a guess.

If the book doesn't have a muscle elf, don't expect to get anywhere. It's a requirement.

[yt]YjJb6DMlJ1Y[/yt]


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## Tiamat (Nov 15, 2012)

mugen187 said:


> I think there's something missing within the book.



Yeah, the "This book is bullshit" disclaimer.


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## Taralack (Nov 15, 2012)

Hahahahahahahahaha 

oh

hahahahahahahahahahahahaha

mate were you high when you made this post


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## Zenia (Nov 15, 2012)

Man, I get exhausted and my hand hurts like heck when I have to do 60 pics for a video for my YouTube series... and my videos are just still pictures. I can't imagine trying to make an anime all by myself. Especially if I am just learning how to draw.


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## Arshes Nei (Nov 15, 2012)

Credits at the end of shows/movies are overrated. It's just shit to read. Fuck that.


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## HipsterCoyote (Nov 15, 2012)

ToonBoom, Director (outdated, so maybe it's cheap now?), Adobe Flash, and After Effects. 

No peer. 

You'll be having to prepare to spend several hundred dollars.

Instead of learning how to do animation, learn how to do motion graphics: look at Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends and My Little Pony for reference....Or, as much as I detest that awful show because it is SO shitty, *braces self, forces self to type*, My Life Me.   This is quick "animation" that takes advantage of tweens like nobody's business.

Look into puppeting.  NOT THE PUPPET TOOL, THAT THING IS ONLY GOING TO BRING YOU PAIN AND SADNESS. 

You'll also be wanting a tablet or to outsource your assets to someone who can draw.

It is possible to make a professional anime series by yourself.  It will not be easy, it will take years, and you will probably not make it because of the amount of discipline it takes and how much easier it is to hire out help and collaborate....And, frankly, if you're asking this question right now but don't know that Flash and Toon Boom and Director are your go-to programs par none, ... Not to be a jackass, but you probably don't know anything about 2D animation so you need to do a lot of learning in order to save yourself time and tears before you jump into the fray. 

Go get The Animator's Survival Kit by Richard Williams.
Also go get Understanding Comics and Making Comics by Scott McCloud.


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## mugen187 (Nov 15, 2012)

Thanks man
For the anime-production I've seen this one video from Dannychoo visiting I believe Gonzo studio where Sengoku Basara is made. In the video there's this scene where the key drawer gave the one the drawings scenes of Sengoku Basara for coloring and basically all you need to do was just place the coloring where the key drawer outlined. I tried to find the name and ask forums but no luck.

Also, since Flash is out what are some good anime software for my anime series? I found this one called Pencil, it works just like a flip book along with a time sequence. It's for the Mac and Windows.


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## Arshes Nei (Nov 15, 2012)

So since you're comparing your project to Pros, how much are you drawing?


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## HipsterCoyote (Nov 15, 2012)

No, Flash is in.
ToonBoom is in.

Director is old, but essentially the same thing as Flash and thus, in. 

If you are looking to make PROFESSIONAL anime equipment then that is what IS professional anime equipment.  This is what animation studios like the one I worked for use.  

If you're super duper determined you could use Blender (3D program) in an orthographic view with shape keys and 'no shadow' texturing but that's going REALLY far out of your way.   Blender is completely free and has miles of documentation.

Pencil and these other manga softwares probably have strange export and import file structures and are probably shittily programed but most importantly do not have nearly as much copy on how they work, how to troubleshoot the program, how to do things right, etc.


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## Arshes Nei (Nov 15, 2012)

HipsterCoyote said:


> If you are looking to make PROFESSIONAL anime equipment then that is what IS professional anime equipment.  This is what animation studios like the one I worked for use.



It's the kind of stuff that apparently is missing in this book http://amzn.com/4766112393

Maybe this 





http://simania.co.il/bookimages/covers80/802240.jpg book has it.


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## mugen187 (Nov 15, 2012)

I'm not starting just yet I'm still learning my basics down. I know how to draw bodies and expressions and a bit on backgrounds. I just ask this question so when I know I'm READY then I'll come back here review everyone's answers and get to it.


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## Tiamat (Nov 15, 2012)

Sweet, see you in 5 years.

Maybe.


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## Arshes Nei (Nov 15, 2012)

mugen187 said:


> I'm not starting just yet I'm still learning my basics down. I know how to draw bodies and expressions and a bit on backgrounds. I just ask this question so when I know I'm READY then I'll come back here review everyone's answers and get to it.



The answer is, this doesn't matter.  It's going to take a long time to get drawing down and by then technology changes. So who cares what they're using now it could change.

You know why I said "Fuck reading the credits"?

*I was being sarcastic*

You want to do this by yourself but haven't even researched the amount of work and people who work on shows. You might want to do that while you're learning how to draw. Find out what's going on behind the scenes and less about hot cool "professional equipment" 

Then again there's jobs in animation where you don't have to learn how to draw, but that wouldn't be 2D animation afaik.


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## Teal (Nov 15, 2012)

.........you don't know what kind of work goes into animation do you?


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## mugen187 (Nov 15, 2012)

Thanks
 Instead of 5 years I'll do my best as quick as possible. I just have a lot of passion trying to get my work out there but you know I still have a lot to learn even though I can draw bodies, expressions and a bit of background because I've been drawing self-taught for 3 years now but my sister built my drawing foundation (she's also self-taught too but WAY better than me since she started first for the longest or even before I was born) I'm learning how to draw body proportions, anatomy of many animals in the anthro/furry community, color, foreshortening etc.

So yeah, I have a LONG way to go if I REALLY want to be in that professional position.


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## mugen187 (Nov 15, 2012)

All right. Got any videos that have behind the scenes you can share. I've seen a couple from Family Guy etc.


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## Tiamat (Nov 15, 2012)

Don't get me wrong, I don't want to say 'dont do it.' Seriously if you want to make animated films give it everything you've got.
But yeah, you have a lot to learn, by your own admittance though and you are looking in all the wrong places.



> I've seen a couple from Family Guy etc.


 no...just....no.

If you are really *serious *about learning, check out these forums:

http://conceptart.org/forums/forum.php

There is a new section dedicated purely to animation.


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## HipsterCoyote (Nov 15, 2012)

Mugen, no offense, but, you're very ignorant.  This is OK, because ignorant and stupid are two different things.  You're not stupid.  Yet. 

Instead of videos, go to Amazon or Halfprice and 

*GET THE ANIMATOR'S SURVIVAL KIT BY RICHARD WILLIAMS

GET CARTOON ANIMATION BY PRESTON BLAIR

GET ILLUSION OF LIFE  BY OLLIE JOHNSTON 
*
*GET GRAPHIC STORYTELLING AND VISUAL NARRATIVE BY WILL EISNER*

Okay?

Get an animation program that supports tweening (like Adobe Flash or Director or ToonBoom) and 

_*LEARN HOW TO DO MOTION GRAPHICS*_


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## Tiamat (Nov 15, 2012)

What were those book titles again?


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## HipsterCoyote (Nov 15, 2012)

Oh wait I'm sorry 
_*
*__*MANGAKA'S KITTO NO SURVIVURU BY RICHAADO WIRIAMSU  *_

_*ON THREE: MY LIFE AT 10 FPS BY TATSUHIKO YOSHIMITSUBISHI 

DELUSIONS OF SUCCESS BY 15 YEAR OLD MANGAKA 

PURPLE HAIR AND PLEATED SKIRTS BY WIIRU EISNAA

*_I will have you know I am now sitting here reading things out loud with this_* "HOOOOHHH NEEDU HEEPU FAA PROFESHUNU ANIME BUSHIDOOOO*_" accent like some totally serious throaty dramatic samurai B-movie villain


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## zhuria (Nov 15, 2012)

Hahaha!!! This is amazing XDDD


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## Smelge (Nov 15, 2012)

Learn to draw real things before fucking up your art style with manga.

What the fuck is the deal with all the manga shit anyway? Why do people want to have their stuff look like thousands of other peoples artwork by doing a generic style? Develop your own.


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## mugen187 (Nov 15, 2012)

Don't worry I stop manga long ago. I realize that shit wasn't good enough since I started seeing the people I know, who are HARDCORE manga fanatics, drawing the same shit every time. It was worthless and not so good for my drawing style. Therefore, I switch to comics and anthro art because I see A LOT of unique styles of characters. Since then, learning comics and anthro art has develop my drawing skills to a WHOLE new level. I feel sorry for those guys drawing that shit wasting their skills.


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## Teal (Nov 15, 2012)

Manga =/= shit

Hey OP can we see an example of your art?


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## mugen187 (Nov 15, 2012)

Well not exactly shit I'm sorry if I offend you and Arshes Nei since you guys help me out on this situation. What I mean to say was not my style anymore. Don't get me wrong though I do have favorite anime shows like Samurai Champloo, Cowboy Bebop, and Ergo Proxy but I just wanted to change my style to claim it my own.

Again sorry for the misunderstanding. It was my fault I got carried away right there. But you understand where I'm coming by claiming your own style and work hard enough to hoping one day you'll get notice.


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## Arshes Nei (Nov 15, 2012)

Will you guys stop deleting threads like children. 

We asked to see examples of your art.


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## Taralack (Nov 15, 2012)

mugen187 said:


> But you understand where I'm coming by claiming your own style and work hard enough to hoping one day you'll get notice.



I feel like OP wants to be internet famous by making his own anime oooooooo

Do you have any idea how many frames it takes to make one second of animation? (the answer is - a lot) 

The fact that you deleted your thread right after replying, and not posting any of your own art, tells me you have a long way to go. It's good to have a huge goal to aim for, but come back down to earth and start with the basics first.


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## Tiamat (Nov 15, 2012)

Thanks for bringing this back up, getting tired of the thread deletion abuse.


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## HipsterCoyote (Nov 16, 2012)

Toraneko said:


> I feel like OP wants to be internet famous by making his own anime oooooooo
> 
> Do you have any idea how many frames it takes to make one second of animation? (the answer is - a lot)
> 
> The fact that you deleted your thread right after replying, and not posting any of your own art, tells me you have a long way to go. It's good to have a huge goal to aim for, but come back down to earth and start with the basics first.



CHIGAU 

HOOOAAHH

ANIME IT TEEKU SEVEN TO TWELVE NO FRAMESU 

RICHAADO NO WIRIAMSU HE SAY "ANYTHING NO ANIMATED ON ONES IS SHAME UPON ENTIRE FAMIRY; JAASTO VERY COMPRICATU STORYBOARDSU" 

[video=youtube;Du2T8nNfkeI]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Du2T8nNfkeI&amp;feature=related[/video]


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## sunandshadow (Nov 16, 2012)

Toraneko said:


> I feel like OP wants to be internet famous by making his own anime oooooooo
> 
> Do you have any idea how many frames it takes to make one second of animation? (the answer is - a lot)


That actually varies hugely depending on what is happening in that one second of animation.  If it's, like, a character standing still seen from the back with their hair blowing in the wind, you can get multiple seconds out of 4 looping frames.  If you're doing pivot animation in front of a scrolling background frames don't even really apply, cause you're not drawing anything new, just moving it around with a computer program.  But, if you want a flock of missiles going fast in all different directions trailing green glowing smoke, that takes a lot of fps.


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## HipsterCoyote (Nov 16, 2012)

Well it also depends on if you're RICHAADO WIRIAMSU. 

No, actually, I'm serious: even if you've got a character just SITTING THERE, some animators will insist that each individual, repetitive frame must be drawn since nothing at all is truly still. At least, nothing alive.   You can loop just like you said, yes. If you're doing "animated radio" (the Hanna Barbera budget animation like Flintstones and The Jetsons), then all this looping will come into the picture. 

But it all depends on your budget. 

This is why I am so insistent on motion graphics if you're starting out, Mugen.  What you do, is you nest pictures.  Imagine if you will a paper puppet with pieces to represent each limb, much like a wooden artists' pose-able doll.  Now, allocate all those pieces to separate layers on an animation program like Toon Boom or Flash.  Let's take Flash and break this apart:

Each piece is an _object _which means you tell the program, "This thing right here is its own independent thing so it has its own properties."  Those properties include whether it is a graphic (_*always*_ make sure your objects are graphics in Flash, or the equivalent, unless you're doing something like motion blur; in that case the frames which should have motion blur need to be converted for THAT INSTANCE ONLY) or a movie clip (which will rasterize a vector graphic and endlessly loop the animation contained within the object so you can put layer styles like motion blur or outer glow on them), or a button (with its own code you can specify, as in game-making). 

Now, each object (NAME THEM: I select the drawing which is to represent the head and I hit F8 to make it a "symbol" -- the object of which I speak -- and type "Rarity-Head") can contain animations within them.  I have an object called Rarity-Head and if I isolate this symbol in Flash by double clicking on it and moving into the symbol to look at and edit its own, individual time line, I can draw multiple instances of Rarity's head.  She has cute little ears, so what I'm going to do is I'm going to draw animations of her ears perking up, her ears cocking like a dog's, her ears going down in a 'scared' sort of fashion like a cat's, and her ears going back in an agressive sort of fashion, again like a cat's. 

Okay, now I go back to my time-line which holds the entire character's individual body parts.  Now I double click on her EYELIDS.  I draw all possible combinations of her eyes within the scope of the animation I'm trying to make: a nice blink animation (frames 1 to 10, we'll say, arbitrarily), and then animations that make her eyelids recoil upwards in surprise, draw down in anger,  et cetera.  

I isolate her eye IRISES (her pupil and the color of her eyes) as their own object layered BENEATH the eyelids so that I don't have to individually draw her eyes looking in all possible directions and can just move them where I see fit; when her eyelid layers are instructed to display "Angry" frames, because the lids are layered ON TOP OF her irises they will look appropriate rather than cutting through. 

Now, let's go back to our timeline.  I want Rarity to look around, blink, then be super surprised. 

So, I tell Flash, "Take Rarity's irises/pupils and drag them left from frames 1 to 30. Now, make her eyelid layer play the "blink" animation from frames 1 to 10.  Now, drag her pupils layer rightward from frames 60 to 70.    Now, play her eyelids in the "surprise" animation and, at the same time, make her pupils layer shrink." 

That will be a very poorly timed, very simple animation without its basic principles but I honestly don't feel like describing the anticipation, action and followthrough of her head cringing and then recoiling in a startle, nor the motion of her hair that should carry through with her action.

This is also a trick you need to use for dialogue.  You can make 20 mouth pictures
- closed
- Ess
- Uh
- Ah
- oh
- Ooh
- Eff
- Ell
- Th
- Ch

With a HAPPY looking mouth, and the same thing with a SAD looking mouth, using the same formula.  You can animate almost ALL dialogue that you do using those mouth shapes.  If you do this in that consistent order for each character you will always know that, for instance "happy Ell" is number 7 for every single character. 

I can teach any of you how to do motion graphics in depth, but you'll have to pay me.


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## Taralack (Nov 16, 2012)

Man I know that sounds simple in theory but I just know all those frames are gonna pile up and start getting messy...


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## HipsterCoyote (Nov 17, 2012)

What, for motion graphics?


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## Taralack (Nov 17, 2012)

HipsterCoyote said:


> What, for motion graphics?



Yeah. I know how it all works but I also know it can get pretty unorganized really quick.


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## HipsterCoyote (Nov 17, 2012)

Yeah, that's why you gotta name eeeeeeverythiiiing.


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