What software do you use for animations on your webcomic?

[Yonetee]

Hello,
I'm thinking about adding some minor animation effect in my future web comic.
What software would you suggest?
I don't have much experience with animation. But I'm very interested to learn.

[J.Lovelace]

I'm using PhotoScape, it has a mode where you can make neat gifs from already existing images. I draw them in Sai and then throw in that program. I can resize all I want, set animation time to each panel individually, add minor effects, doesn't kill the quality... it's very comfortable (at least for me).

[Yonetee]

I checked out your comic. Looks cool.
Thank You for Your suggestion. It might be what I'm looking for.

[J.Lovelace]

Thank you kindly, and no problem ^^
The program has other very useful mods you can check out, like the Editor with various cool filters
Definitely worth checking out

[Kayke]

I think most people use photoshop. You can see more details here in this thread:

How do you add animation to a comic strip?

[glennsong]

I've done some animation in the past for my comic, although you have to see it on the main website to get the full effect. Bits and pieces are mirrored on Tapastic but here's a full page: The Miracle, Page 6 and there are a few more pages if you look through that chapter.

I actually did a bunch of keyframe animation using Manga Studio 5 -- which is a bit of software that isn't well suited for doing that, but I don't have Photoshop (nor use it anymore). I draw each frame on a different layer and then you can painstakingly export a PNG for each layer and use EZGIF or GifMaker to combine them together.

I actually wrote a python script in GIMP to do that for me. You have to do some leg work to build the animation timeline in a spreadsheet, but once you got it the python script can go through and flip the layers ond off and output a GIF. You can even do some optimization in GIMP using other built in plugins.

Here's a link to how I animated on my blog: Animating with Manga Studio and GIMP FYI, It's a long read.

[Yonetee]

Wow, that animations in your comics looks SO COOL. It's awesome! I'm not aiming to such a difficult stuff. It looks like it have a lot of frames. That hair animation must have been difficult to create. I would like to just some small kind of abstract effect to deepening atmosphere. (Like noises, fizzing, lightening etc.)
Thank You for that blog post. I'm going to read it later.

[Yonetee]

Thank You.
Wow, Photoshop is actually only of this programs that I have!

[bakasama25]

Now that's interesting. I do notice you have three different images to give the illusion of being a single page. I've seen people upload pages that whole pages with the animation in a small part of the image but they animated the whole page even the static parts.

I've seen webcomics done in flash with animation and sounds.

For example, THIS is an example of using animation and sounds.

[Yonetee]

I would also did so. Like - whole page in animation program, even if animation would be just in small part. I can't imagine, how to do it otherwise.

Yeah, I know this creepy comics. It's quite famous. I thing I first saw it years ago when I was on basic school. It's really terrifying.

I would like to do just small effect. :"D Animation like this is really complicated and I'm not even animator.

[bakasama25]

Yeah, I think it's better to start small like blinking eyes, Japanese style sweat drops, or fade ins and outs.

[J.Lovelace]

That's quite a hassle to make a whole page with just one part animated, especially when you find an error and have to fix it. That would mean redoing the whole thing and then wait for rendering again.
Breaking it up in parts gives it more flexibility. Luckily, Tapastic doesn't divide the pages with a gap, but "fuses" them all together, so I made use of that feature to create my illusion.

I've done comics in Flash before, gifs, animations, I've even done two Visual Novel (demos) in Flash too, etc. It has its advantages and disadvantages. I've started combining gifs and static images just recently, initially I didn't plan to animate SAB, (otherthan the Visual Novel) but then I was like "hey why not".

[glennsong]

Yeah lightning and stuff will be a lot easier. All of that stuff was keyframed and inbetweened and took weeks. If you got any questions on the blog post (if something's unclear or you just have questions) PM me.