As you know, there are different types of animation, and today I am going to focus on the types of animation that you can do in 2D. Frame-by-frame, rotoscopy, cropped animation, and characters matched with inverse kinematics.

1. Frame by frame

This is also known as classic animation, traditional animation, or flip animation. What you do here is pretty simple, you draw every frame. Say ah! Simple truth? I know. But wait, there’s a way to do it. First you have to know your frame rate, which in the following example will be 12 fps (frames per second), and for that we will have to make 12 drawings per second.

How to do it: You can do this by having the correct timing of the movement. First, you need a sample (if you are animating a jumping character, then you need a video of someone jumping).

Once you have the video, there are many ways to calculate time and convert it to frames. My favorite is: Stop Motion Works Stopwatch (link at the end of this article). In my example, it will be an 8 frame jump.

What you do is: You draw the keyframes of your character’s skeleton and then continue to draw the frames in between. Let’s do an example of a woman jumping (just the action, that is, no anticipation and no aftermath, to keep this simple and friendly). Draw the initial pose (frame 1), then the character in the air (frame 5) and finally the landing posture (frame 9).

After you have those 3 drawings, draw the middle frames. A drawing between the initial pose (frame 1), the pose in the air (frame 5) and the landing (frame 9). In other words, draw squares 3 and 7. And finally, draw the missing squares. Easy enough? Once the skeleton is animated for every frame, add frame-by-frame detail, a little body shape, then a more detailed head every frame, then the right arm every frame, and so on. You continue until you have a detailed character in each frame.

Pros: Your limit is your own imagination. Characters can do whatever they want, have any facial expression they want, and any pose they can think of.

Cons: Takes a lot of time. The 1-second animation can take a couple of hours.

2. Rotoscopy

Rotoscopy is another form of frame-by-frame animation. What it does is take a footage and import it into your favorite 2D animation software. Now all you have to do is draw the outline of each frame. Then you replace those drawings with some details that make up your character. Big nose? Long hair? Fat? Thin?

Pros: It works a little faster, because you don’t have to draw the keyframes and then the intermediate ones, you just follow each frame; and the movement is very realistic, because it just follows the footage frame by frame.

Cons: Although it can be a bit faster than traditional animation, it still takes a long time to do it, because you have to draw every frame, and also, you start to have limitations: the character will only do what the person in the footage does.

If you need it to do something different than what you have in the footage, then you will have to switch to traditional animation, drawing the keyframes first and then the intermediate ones.

3. Cropped animation

This type of animation requires preparation. You take every angle of your character (front, sides and back) and “cut” the character into its parts (hence the name Cut Out Animation). For example, if you were to animate the front side, then you would have the head on one layer, the arms, the right, and the hands for each side on a different layer, and so on. This takes time to prepare, but the good thing is that you don’t have to draw every frame, you only prepare once and then you animate the character like a puppet.

Pros: It’s much faster to animate, because you don’t have to draw every frame, you only draw your character and each facial expression once, and after the “puppet” is ready, you can start animating.

Cons: It may take some time to prepare and the character is limited by the platform. That means you cannot put it in any position you can imagine, only those that you can achieve with the platform. Another downside is that it is not the fastest way to animate, because if you want to move your hand, then you need to rotate your shoulder, then your arm, then your forearm until you bring your hand to the place you need.

4. Paired characters (using inverse kinematics)

This type of animation is the fastest to achieve. Software like Toon Boom or Animation Studio have many tools that help you manipulate a character with inverse kinematics and automate facial expressions.

Inverse kinematics is the opposite of forward kinematics (used in Trim animation). In the Cut Out animation, if you need the hand to be in one position, you have to rotate the shoulder, then the forearm, and so on. Inverse kinematics allows you to click the hand and move it to the desired position, and the positions and rotations of the shoulder, arm, and forearm are automatically calculated using mathematical formulas.

Pros: Cheer at full speed. With just a few clicks and drags.

Cons: It takes longer to prepare than cropped animation, but it exponentially reduces your work time. Another downside is that you have limits, you can only do what the Rig allows. You cannot move the character to any position you can imagine, but only to those allowed by the platform.

Conclution:

You can’t have it all. Either you have unlimited movement but a large investment of time, or you have limited movement with little investment of time. These are the options you have. And for the record, Disney movies use frame-by-frame, but the shows you see on TV, because they’re scheduled, use a combination of paired characters and frame-by-frame, depending on the shot they’re working on.

My advice is to learn to do frame-by-frame animation and paired characters, you need them both. But if timing is a big issue, then you should definitely master rigged character animation. You can find courses online.

Here is the link for Stop Motion Works Stopwatch