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Make an animated cartoon the easy way

Edited by Ronniel Javier, Lynn, Charmed, EJ and 10 others

5 Parts:

Web-Based Cartoons You Can Make Yourself

Free Alternatives to GoAnimate

Tips Tricks & Warnings

Questions and Answers

Comments

Cartoon animation is one of the best ways to make a visual presentation of the story you want to tell. You can be the director, and communicate the plot of your movie using cartoon animation. 'Don't worry if you don't have any skills for creating a cartoon animation because this tutorial was made for a newbie like you. Even someone with zero skills or expertise can do it. Yes, you heard it right. You don't need to use any expensive and hard-to-learn software programs to create a good cartoon animation because we are going to use a do-it-yourself, web-based application called GoAnimate. There are very cool features regarding animating cartoons.

You can pick whatever character you want.
You can choose the background and locations.
You decide the actions and emotions of your characters.
You can add a voice-over or text to speech voice, making your animation more interactive with your viewers.

So let's get started.

Contents

1 Web-Based Cartoons You Can Make Yourself
2 Free Alternatives to GoAnimate
3 Tips Tricks & Warnings
4 Questions and Answers
5 Comments

Web-Based Cartoons You Can Make Yourself

1
Register at GoAnimate
.
Go to Their Website and register. Note: You can use your existing Facebook or Gmail account to register. You can subscribe for free to test it out, but the trial has limited features and only lasts 14 days. You can subscribe to their GoPlus plan for the very reasonable price of $18 for three months. You can compare every plan on their website.

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2
Choose your plan
.
After you have chosen your subscription, whether it's a free or not, you can actually start doing simple, easy and cool cartoon animations.

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3
Start from scratch
.
From your account, click the "Make a Video" button and start from scratch. If you have a free subscription, just choose any template you want and hit "Make Video". Please see the screenshots below.
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4
Add your characters
.
You can choose different characters you want in your video, plus, if you are a GoPlus member, you can import your own character. To do this, just drag or click your character to your scene background.

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5
Flip your character
.
Look at the screenshots below.
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6
Add actions
.
This is one of the coolest parts of GoAnimate because it allows you to make your characters perform certain actions automatically. To do this, click your character and a menu will pop up with options for many actions (see instructions below).

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7
Add a text to speech voice
.
If you don't have a portable microphone to do a voice-over, you can use the "text to speech" feature and choose your language and voice for each character. All you need to do is to type the words, and it's translated into actual dialogue.
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8
Change your scene background
.
By clicking your background tabs, a lot of backgrounds will appear. Choose the background that suits the theme of your presentation. Just click and drag to add your background.

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9
Add music
.
This is very simple, just follow the screenshots below.
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10
Add a new scene
.
If you want multiple scenes in your animation, click the black "Add Scene" button. Just follow the screenshots below.
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Free Alternatives to GoAnimate

There are alternative programs you can use for free, that will do similar things. Below, a few select ones are listed.

Dvolver.

This is a great way to create simple cartoon animations without having to register. Visit Their Website. To start, follow the steps below. Images are attached to better understand what to do. Please, do pay attention to the mouse cursor when following the steps. It points at what to click.

1
Select a Background and a Sky
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As you can see the image below, there are two options, the Background and the Sky. To continue to the next step, you must first pick your choice of background and sky. In this sample, I picked the first option listed for both background and sky. You can combine each of the background options with each of the sky options. Experiment and see what suits your taste.

Pick A Background

Pick A Sky

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2
To continue; click on the clickable orange Next option below
.

Click Next
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3
Select A Plot
.
After successfully completing the first 2 steps, you'll be sent to the list for the next step - selecting your Plot. There are 4 plots that you can choose from.
1. Rendez-vous.
2. Pick-Up.
3. Chase.
4. Soliloquy.
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4
In this sample, we used the Rendez-vous sample
.

Pick A Plot

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5
To proceed, click the Next option on the lower part once again
.

Click Next Once Again
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6
In the next section, there will be two options for characters; Character 1 and Character 2
.
You need to pick one for each of the options. In this sample, we used the first option for the character 1 and the third option for the character 2.

First option for the Character 1

Third option for the Character 2

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7
To continue, click Next again
.

Click Next for the third time.
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8
You will then be taken to the next list of selection
.
This time, you'll be creating a scene, and to make it possible, you need to put scripts or lines for the Character 1 and the Character 2. In this sample picture, we provided the lines with instructions so that you'll be able to understand what to do.

Insert Some Texts.

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9
After providing the fields with texts, click the Next option again
.

Click Next for the fourth time
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10
Select the Background Music
.
In the next step, you'll be taken to another list to select a music theme for your scene. In this sample, we chose Latin-Beat. You may also pick the No Music if you don't want background music for your animated cartoon scenes.

Select A Background Music
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11
Lastly, there are three orange-colored options at the lower part; Back, Add New Scene and Finish Movie
.
To finish creating your animated cartoon, click the FINISH MOVIE option, but if you want to make some changes, to go back, click the "BACK" option. If you have more of a story to tell, move on to scene #2 by clicking "ADD NEW SCENE" option.

Finish Movie
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12
If you opted to finish the movie, you will then be taken to the final page
.
Here you'll be asked to choose a Title Design. Once you've decided on a title design, add your Movie Title and Director's Name. In this sample, we used the fourth option for the Title Design, added a title relevant to this article, and included the name of the author of this article as the Director.

Pick A Title Design, Insert Movie Title and Director's Name
After this, click the orange-colored PREVIEW AND SEND MOVIE at the lower part.
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13
Voila
!
You now have your own animated cartoon created by Dvolver! Here's the finished product of the steps used in this tutorial together with the fields provided with instructions. Click the box beside the Yes option if you want to join DFilm Mailing list, or No if you do not want to. After this, click Send.

Send it To Family and Friends
Congratulations on completing this tutorial! Enjoy your own animated cartoon, and show it to your family and friends. When sending via email:
1. Make sure that all the emails you inserted on the emails field are correct for your movie to be successfully sent.
2. After 50 seconds, if the Sending prompt is still continuing, click Back and re-enter all of the email addresses.
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Voki

This is another free service that lets you create a custom avatar, add your own voice from your microphone or text to speech. It's very easy to use. Visit the website at HERE.

Zimmer Twins

This is the closest free alternative to GoAnimate and it's totally free. But there are only two characters available to use. Try it HERE.

Tips Tricks & Warnings

If you want a decent cartoon animation to promote your business presentation, go to the GoAnimate Website, and subscribe to a GoPro account.
If you are making a cartoon animation for fun, subscribe to GoPlus or stick with the free plan.
Monetize your YouTube channel by creating cool and stunning cartoon movies.

Questions and Answers

Best way to design cartoon animation?

The simple and best way to design cartoons is by using the GoAnimate because it has many features and it's user-friendly. There are simple tutorials and hints on how to create your own animation.

There are also plenty examples for you to get ideas from.

The best way is not always the easiest way, so if you really want the best design tool for cartoon animations, you should learn how to use some professional animation software, such as Toon Boom, Anime Studio, Adobe Flash Professional and Creatoon.

Here are links to some really good animation software.

See more questions like this: Any animation tools that works similar to GoAnimate