Hey, I’m new to Blender. I was hoping someone could suggest the best way I could learn how to do simpler cartoons like the simpsons, home movies, and aqua teen. I’ve looked through the tutorials but I can’t find anything that’s that style, everything i see is for more advanced looking animation. should I start with photoshop or another program to design characters and/or backgrounds? Thanks.
You can set your camera to Orthagonal to get rid of the perspective distortion which gives 3d cg it’s 3d look. If you turn off spec and hardness in the shader panel for your materials you’ll get flat coloring. Then you can use Blender to create Simson’s like 2d animation.
I don’t know whether it would be easier or more difficult than using a purpose designed 2d animation program, though, I don’t have much experience with them.
Thank you, that helps a lot. Do you know of any programs that I should begin my search with? I know southpark uses Maya but that’s a similar program to Blender right?
You can check out synfig
http://www.synfig.org/Main_Page
Of course you can always try with Blender too. If your new to Blender it may be a challenge, but I’m sure you’d learn a lot.
Looks like Synfig does not work well with multi-processor systems. Too bad…
Yes, Maya and Blender are both 3d modeling and animation systems. If South Park is using Maya, they are doing something similar to what I suggested to get the 2d effect.
I’d guess that 3D animation programs have better or more convenient tools than 2D programs, which would explain why a company producing 2D animation would use a 3D program.
Here’s what iamelgringo000 over at Slashdot says:
Don’t click on this if you dont like bad words =]
The real trouble starts when you find you have features you want to use . . . but your original plan does not account for this. Good luck anyways.