Scratch

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Idea/Story

Now, in every cartoon there is a story and an idea. The idea is kind of hard to come up with, but with a little information on better strategies you can have ideas flowing through you easily. Of course if you want to make a cartoon, you have to be creative. Creativity is the most crucial part of a cartoon's story. Now if you want an idea you have to be creative.

Idea*
Now an idea should come naturally to you. You shouldn't think to hard or the cartoon will be boring, dull, or just not what you want. Thinking too hard on a cartoon can ruin your creativity. So just let the idea flow through your head. When you need inspiration, flick that switch and watch T.V./read a book. When watching T.V./reading a book, you should try to think of the idea and the making of that cartoon to give you some ideas. Like maybe think of a scenario in your head that you think is funny. You can also try just exploring ideas that you can remix in your head, kind of like the idea of warping. Warping is when you travel from one place to another at the speed of light. Maybe make it so that when you warp you see another dimension and go back to your dimension. Something like that can really get your brain going.

Story*
The story is the fun and easy part of the process. Well, you already have an idea you just have to "edit" that idea to make it a story. So when you have your idea the story should be easy to come up with.

Drawing/animating
The name says it all, drawing and animating your story.

Drawing*
When drawing your character, you want to capture his/her personality. You know, what is his/her personality? Then draw a few shapes and see what kind of character you can make out of them. When you have found your favorite looking character just circle him/her.

Animating*
This is the most longest part of the process, animating. Animating is mostly composed of frames going by really fast to create the illusion of movement. So to create that illusion requires skill, but don't worry with some practice you can acquire that skill and seize it. What you want to do when animating is create the atmosphere of the cartoon. If it's a random cartoon you probably want it to be fast and short. So to create that effect you probably want to use less frames. When it's a dramatic scene, you might want to slow it up a little. What do you do? Why, you use MORE frames of course. So to summarize this...

MORE FRAMES = SLOWER SCENES
LESS FRAMES = FASTER SCENES

Pretty simple huh?

Frame-By-Frame
This is the fun part of animating. You get to create flip books and animate to see what you get! Haha, I know It's not that fun, but it's for the well being of your cartoon. If you can, find a window and use that as a light table. For more on the window click here Drawing Animations

Scratch
This is the part most you scratchers recognize, the scratching of course! You just put all those things together into that cartoon of yours.

Have Fun
The most CRUCIAL part of cartoon making is JUST HAVE FUN!! That is the most crucial part of any cartoon, if your mood is bored, than the cartoon will be boring or not as good as it could be.

Aftermath
Now that you have animated your cartoon you might want to watch it to see what you think, just to briefly brush over it. And when you finish you can see the results of your hard work