Were you originally interested in animation before going into comics?

[smokesalty]

I'm curious since I've heard a lot of people who originally aspired to be animators turning to comics!

For me personally, I never wanted to be an animator I've tried animation before and just didn't really see it as for me (not to say I might not return to it in the future) Idk- mainly because I'm aware of how much work it is and also because I never felt it was the right medium for telling my stories.

I'm always amazed at how people can create animations themselves, I think it's super cool! But I think I'm just more into making comics because I like being able to put detail into my work without worrying about the fact that it can only be seen for a second or so. I just like crazy shading tbh

I've actually wanted to get into learning 3D animation though I know people trash on it quite often, but I have mad respect for 3D artists especially since I'm now into 3D modelling and such. I think it's super cool.

[Kelheor]

I actually started drawing after watching Sailor Moon and wanting to become an animator because of it I only ever tried to do a bit of animation myself though. I do follow some animators who make sakuga, it's an absolutely amazing skill that I'll probably never have, but I started doing comics pretty late after so many years of just wanting to do it, so I want to believe I still have a chance in animation

[Lady_T_Musings]

I've always loved telling stories. I used to make up the most random shiz to tell my sibs and cousins growing up and have always had an active imagination and love of art and creating in general. Growing up with cartoons being the easier to access in my home, I believed that was the best way to combine my art and stories so I thought I wanted to go into animation as a kid, but then I realized how long it takes to animate when you are not on a team... and then I realized getting a job in animation would 9/10 times mean I'd be slaving over animating someone else's creations, and even though at the time I didn't realize I was pretty selfish about what I gave my creative juices too, this helped me come to a better understanding of that.

I got REALLY into comics in middle school and learned what I actually wanted to do was sequential art and storyboarding. I really enjoyed the sound of that so I stuck with it through high school, but choose to go to a liberal arts college and study art and design over a straight-up art school. I had to really get hands-on with shaping my college experience to give me what I wanted and needed to know, and I got a log of independent study time in since a lot of what I wanted to do wasn't traditionally taught on campus, but resources were mega available.

By the time I graduated from college, I was enamored with comics and my cancer was in remission and I was like no time like the present to start putting my selfish desires into reality and make my own art and stories a combined thing! So with some organizational and motivation help, I got on it and now I'm here drawing a comic about a magical black fat gal and socially unavailable wizard of sorts catching feelings in magic college and loving every bit of it.

[IndigoShirtProd]

I guess so, I've always like animated cartoons and modeled my art after they styles I watched aa a kid. I did dabble in animation a little in high school, but realized how time consuming and arduous it wold be to keep up with. I got into comic making shortly thereafter. And yes while comicking is also time consuming and arduous, at least after spending a year on a comic, I could have a chapter, with animation I would only have a minute (if even) of fully rendered animation. It's a great skill, but it's not for me.

[CommissarTarkin]

Yes, in fact, my current comic project grew out of a pitch bible for an animated series. Our artist is interested in animation as well, so it is our dream to eventually successfully pitch an animated show.

[BoomerZ]

Yes, but the return on animation is so small for the time invested it's not really a one man show. I have an animation degree but instead draw comics.

[GumshoeComix]

yea actually, I used to use the website toonator to animate cause I could never afford a program and it was like baby's first steps into animating. but now that flash is gone it's just like an archival site now and the animation feature is gone ;w;
I've been trying to look for a program like toonator but with no luck, animating was so fun.

Its nice to have something creative to do that isn't like a job even if all I could really do was the basics like walk cycles or falling flower sacks, I think that's why I liked it so much
I also have some missing animations from when I was a teen that I spent literally all day on
and those ones were actually really nice.

(if anyone has a good recommendation for an animation program that's simple and easy to wear id love you forever)

[igneriss]

No, though now when I'm drawing comics for so long, I would like to try animation as well it would be so cool to animate some scenes from my series or do a short clip like an opening song or a music video with my characters! Unfortunately I already have lots of other projects & irl stuff to do, so I don't think I'll have time to even try learning animation anytime soon

[TheGentleArtist]

I'm still interested in doing animation. I went into comics to bring some ideas to life, but I'm still working on my goal to do great in animating.

[bronte448]

Yes. Still am. I actually made some cool stop motion shorts with some really frustrating software.

[powerplantanimations]

I wanted to be better than Steven Universe. I had this weird obsession over being better than Rebecca Sugar that it was weird. I was 12 then and now I have a weird obsession with being better than Modern Disney. Some things... don't change.

[CloudyMagpie]

Oh yea. When I was a kid I used to make animations on MS paint. I would draw everything with a mouse and save. Then move something slightly and save another file. It was painstakingly tedious but it didn’t bother me at the time. Then I would stitch it all together in moviemaker. I still like doing rough animations of things. Even if it’s only a few seconds long, seeing a character come to life is so satisfying to me.

[NickRowler]

I actually originally wanted to be a cartoonist. I was told there was no future in that, so I switched to focusing on animation instead. However, I ended up going to a college that had a really awful barebones animation program which was more interested in teaching software for web-animation than animation techniques or character design. It ended up making me spiral into a deep depression because I felt like I spent years studying up on animation only to not have a school which would provide for me. I ended up focusing on my minor in Film Media and I was able to get some work with that.

Now I mostly do comics, what I should have been doing this whole time. I don't really do animation now a days but I still love watching stuff like Corridor Crew.

[UrMom]

Yes! I want to do animation, comics where the next best thing since I didn't have the skill or patients at the moment to animate my current story. After it's finished I actually want to get into it, I did a tiny bit to see where I am. My line and character consistency are pretty good now, and I feel like once I'm finished if I had the patients to work on a comic for 13-15 years I'll have the patients to animate.

I've done a lot of research and actually want to go old school with it. Traditionally painting all my backdrops, doing the animation on cels and either scanning everything in and putting it together on a computer, or going all out and using a camera with a glass setup. Who knows. It definitely won't be perfect, it may even be terrible, but I'll have fun at least.

[DokiDokiTsuna]

Short answer: YES

Long answer: Animation is in my blood, I think. I'm always thinking about it, all my comics are animated in my head; the little animation I've done has been surprisingly easy to learn.
Like, it's one of those things I could probably be really good at, perhaps legendary, if I didn't HATE THE ACTUAL ACT OF ANIMATING WITH EVERY FIBER OF MY BEING

...Which makes me think maybe I don't hate animating, just my current process. Maybe if I got myself some proper animation tools and things it could actually be fun for me...but it's hard to feel justified in that kind of investment considering the way I feel about it at present. ^^;;;

Of course, I've said before that my animations are really the only thing that I do that has a decent-sized viewership, and this is still true today...maybe the universe is trying to tell me to get off the animation-lover-to-comic-artist pipeline and start going in reverse. We'll see...

I've actually wanted to get into learning 3D animation though I know people trash on it quite often, but I have mad respect for 3D artists especially since I'm now into 3D modelling and such. I think it's super cool.

I think you should go ahead and try it! Because it's really hard, and the sooner you figure out how you feel about that, the better!!

Seriously, 3D animation is like 2D on steroids. There are 5x as many little considerations to make, especially if you want to stylize (I assume people 'trashing on it' comes from very harsh criticisms of stylization gone wrong, like in some recent 3D anime...).
The benefit of going 3D is supposed to be 'oh, now you don't have to draw every little thing; you can just make models and get the computer to move them!' But in reality, actually GOOD 3D animation usually requires a human hand to go in and fine-tune everything, even simulated movements.

The one place where that benefit applies is when you're just starting out, though: you can just grab pre-rigged models and play with them, exploring all the fundamentals in a low-effort way that doesn't really exist for 2D. ^^; So yeah, the sooner you figure out how much that appeals to you, the sooner you can decide if you're ready to continue on to the tough stuff.

But don't take it from me, someone who doesn't even do 3D animation. ^^; Someone I subscribe to on YouTube made a little video about their experiences learning Blender, and it was really informative. Almost made me want to try it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NfaN0GEEdsQ

[Fuzzyman818]

I dabbled a little bit into animation. I even took a course on it in trade school. Though we kind of focused more and Film then on Animation. My parents even got me an animation program, but it wasn't as good. Don't get me wrong, I have no grudge against people that do animations. But I understand how hard it is to animate. The reason I got into comics was so that I could get eyes on my DA page which would then traffic into my YouTube channel. But then life threw a curve ball my way and I had my eyes on it. But I still would like to get back into animation on day.

[Shanny8]

I was interested in animation when I was a kid, but then I found how many frames it would take to make one movement, and how long it would take to make a cartoon, and I was discouraged...aside from wanting to do animation, I liked comics as well.

Then I found out you can't really make a sustainable living off of BOTH careers without some degree of suffering...but I'm pretty much good where I'm at right now, working a gig that pays me enough so that when I do make comics, I don't have to stress about paying bills coz the RL job takes care of that issue.

[XiuLyn_12]

I was surprised when I saw your thread because, yes! I used to put interested in animation. I even pay attention to animation movies, 2D and 3D.
I planned to study animation in college, but I'm not allowed to learn outside of my country. I had to forget whatever plan I had, haha.
But that doesn't mean making comics is a second choice, though. Because I have always been interested in making comics as well. I just thought that animating might bring me to a better future lol

[TheLemmaLlama]

I wouldn't say I ever wanted to be an animator - I got the impression pretty early on that animation meant either drawing a billion drawings over and over again or relying on annoying vector shenanigans, so I noped outta there pretty quickly

But as a medium, my heart's just always been with animation in a way it never really has with comics. Seeing everything on a big screen at every moment and having the camera move continuously through the environment gives it that feeling of immersion, while with comics I'm just constantly reminded that I'm reading a story. I've seen very few comics nail the feeling of 'epic' that I love about full screen media like animation and video games. So even though I gave up* on actual animation, I find that I've always been experimenting with comic formats and trying to replicate that 'cinematic' feel in a more static visual medium

---

* I'm actually more open to doing animation these days than I was when I was young. I realized the human eye is more easily tricked than I thought; it can infer motion from only a few pictures and even a choppy 6fps animation can be pretty charming, so the number of pictures I have to draw, while still a lot, is actually a fraction of what I thought it entailed.

Also, a lot of those pictures can be achieved by copy-pasting previous frames and making minor edits, so while 'drawing 60 pictures' sound daunting, it's really more like 'draw 5 pictures and tweak some of them 20 times'. It's not like 'draw 60 completely separate and original pictures', which is indeed a monumental task.

It also helps that I've significantly loosened my art style compared to when I first started drawing, so that now drawing a character in the middle of a dynamic motion feels relatively trivial. Before it would take me 2 hours to draw a stiff-looking bust shot, and when 1 drawing => 2 hours -> 60 drawing => 120 hours and that's just a shitty head turn or something, naturally I'd feel like animation was something completely inaccessible :'D

That being said, I still don't think I'm interested in doing any 'big' (>= 5 min) animation projects by myself. I think a strategically placed animation of a charming moment in your comic can 'prime' your reader's brain sufficiently to bring them in the zone and let them almost experience your actual comic as if it were animated. If you look closely at anime, for instance, often the OP is of higher quality animation than the body of the show, but we don't notice because our brain has been 'primed' by the OP. So I kind of want to do comics, then like some 10 second 'teasers' as advertisements of sorts

[KiabIce]

To be honest yes! I wanted to be an animator when I was little. Then I learned about comics in middle school.