One of the most crucial elements that everyone in the animation industry needs is a well-functioning and user-friendly animation tool. Whether you are a game developer or character designer or a digital artist, you would need the assistance of an animation tool to bring life to your static images. These are regarded as the pencil and eraser for an animator. Today, we are going to take a look and familiarize you with some of the most well-known and highly recommended animation tools that are available in the market for you to use.
This in-depth guide will help you understand the key features of these animation tools as well as how you can use them. It will also help you figure out the minute details that separate them from one another. So, without any further delay, let’s get straight into them.
A Guide to the 6 Best Animation Tools for You to Use
Before we start, we just want to mention that this list is not a ranking and the tools have been listed in random order. There is no chronological order of best to worst or the other way around. Our basic goal here is to introduce you to the best of the best here.
Also, we would ask you to steer away from only the popular tools. What may have worked for someone else may not necessarily work for you and vice-versa. If you are taking an animation course, these tools will come in handy for you as they would help you hone your skills. Alright, with that being clear, let us find which animation tools have it to our coveted list.
Piskel
Piskel is an online animation tool that would help you in creating pixel art and animated sprites. It doesn’t require any sign-up and is completely free of charge. However, if you would want your work to be displayed privately or publicly, you can create a gallery of your own by logging in your Google account. Apart from the online version, there is also a download version available for Mac, Windows, and Linux.
It is known for how user-friendly it is. A great aspect about this tool is that it gives you a live preview of the image you are creating. Although the proprietary format of the tool imports your files as .piskel, you can also import them in BMPs, JPGs, PNGs or even animated GIFs.
Adobe Character Animator
Allowing you to create cartoon characters efficiently and quickly in real-time with much ease, Adobe Character Animator is one of the latest additions to the Adobe franchise. All you need to do to use this tool is to plug in your cam and mic. You then have to import a character that has been prepared for animation in the tool. These are known as puppets.
A great feature of this tool is that it automatically detects your voice and facial expressions in order to animate the face of the character. You can make your character make specific gestures, walk, blink, breathe, and hold objects, among others by using pre-defined functions and triggers.
Toon Boom Harmony
One of the most diverse animation tools in the industry that is widely used by both experienced and beginners, Toon Boom Harmony is extremely diverse. Whether you want traditional drawn animation or flash-style-cut-out animation, a combo of 2D and 3D animation or particle effects, this one caters to all your interests.
Running on both Mac and Windows, it uses vector/bitmap drawing technology. It also features special effects such as lighting effects, volume, and auto-tuning among others. The advanced palette that comes with this tool gives you greater control over the colour and texture of your end product. There are also provisions for various camera angles and extended control.
Blender
Offering you various high-end features, Blender is one of the best cross-platform free 3D creation suites. With the help of this tool, you can create animations, models, renders, and video games as well as other 3D-based projects. Since it is an open-source software, it has been developed by numerous contributors across the globe.
This tool runs on Linux, Mac as well as Windows. It is known for its advanced modelling, UV tools, and sculpting. There is an option for advanced rigging too. The real-time preview of your tracked footage, manual and auto-tracking and camera reconstruction makes it a favourite of many enthusiastic animators. You would also get onion skinning, colours and layers for fill and stroke and sculpt brush stroke with this animation tool.
Animaker
Animaker allows you to work on both vertical and horizontal video layouts. There are plenty of different styles for you to choose from when you are using this tool to create your animated video. On top of that, it offers full HD video support.
It also features the animated infographic maker with more than 100 chats, 1000 icons and 3000 maps. Besides, some of its features which make it highly popular are curve, record, camera in and out, enter/exit effects, transition effects, and multi-move, among others. We should also mention about its audio features that include background music tracks, voice recording, and text-to-speech.
Cartoon Animator 4
Previously known as CrazyTalk Animator 3, the Cartoon Animator 4 allows you to select characters from its humongous database while also allowing you to import PSD character templates. With this tool, you would be able to make any static image move simply by applying various motion template provided in its library.
Besides, it supports facial detection and lip-synching and comes with a bone rigging tool. You would get 4K video support here as well. Importing PSD files as character templates and exporting to PSD for graphic editing is extremely easy with Cartoon Animator 4. Not to mention, how cool is its 360-degree head-turning feature.
We recommend you to at least test three of these tools before settling down on one. This is because if you don’t try your hands in them and settle for one after just trying one animation tool, you might lose the experience of finding an even better one. So, while we understand that it is not possible to test all of them, we can certainly suggest trying a couple of them.
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