Is 2D/traditional looking animation possible with Blender?

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#1

I’d like to make some short, 2D animations.

I’m not talking about 3D models with toon shading, but proper traditional animation. I like the feel of such animation, and 3D animation with toon shading just isn’t the same.

I’m used to modeling, shading and rendering in Blender, but I will have to learn the animation tools.

So would I be better off learning Flash or some other 2D app, or will I get up and running in Blender more quickly?

Also, I know how traditional animation gets made - you sketch every single frame. But whats the approach in flash for something like a character turning it’s head?

#2

For a long time now, there’s been a project where a developer is integrating the engine known as Freestyle into Blender, which will allow pretty much any type of 2D toon-style images from pencil sketches to anime.

It’s currently at the point where it is seeing final review, which will either result in it being committed to trunk for 2.67 or delayed on the count of it needing more work.

If it doesn’t make it into 2.67, you can always get a build of the Freestyle branch and use that, but if you decide that it needs to be trunk first and you can’t wait, then there are a number of commercial and free options out there that can be used. (I think the app. known as ‘Pencil’ is free, then there’s some low cost options such as project Dogwaffle that have animation capabilities., If you need the big guns, then apps. like Toonboom studio can be used though that option is also the most expensive).

#3

i’ve done this animations with Blender some years ago. It’s called cutout animation, because i’ve used drawings, as they where cut out from paper, and then i’ve done an armature to control the movement, and to change some pieces (as in the head turning). Plus i’ve added some props in real 3d with toon shading.
There are some cool 2d animations done with variants of this technique, if i can search for some of them i’ll post it here!