Jared Smith
Using Cartoon Animator to entertain and educate young children, artist and animator Jared Smith talks about why he chose Cartoon Animator as his preferred software and how its tools and features help him create everything from music videos to interactive books in a professional way that saves time and money.
“There is a magic to seeing artwork come to life, and I’ve been looking for a user-friendly way to do this through software that allows me to quickly and easily animate my artwork. Cartoon Animator has done that by helping me unlock my creative outlet.”
Jared Smith – 2D Artist / Animator
Q: Hello Jared! Happy New Year, and welcome to our Reallusion Feature stories. Kindly tell us about the work you’re doing with Cartoon Animator.
Good day, and thank you for having me. I started with Cartoon Animator (CTA) as I needed a user-friendly way to bring to life my art, characters, sounds, music, ideas, story books, apps, games, and props, all while saving time. With Cartoon Animator I’ve found the key piece of software to base all my creative efforts upon. This Software allows me to quickly and easily animate artwork or almost anything for use in interactive story books, videos, and apps. Currently I am using Cartoon Animator as my animating software for children’s animated music videos, interactive story books, and apps.
Q: Why did you choose Cartoon Animator as the platform to create your content?
Well, I tried many 2D animation software to eventually come back to Cartoon Animator for its ease of use, super easy to use, and friendly GUI (graphical user interface). Especially the ability to create and save not just custom 2D characters designs, but also animation sequences to be reused over and over again! Those facts drew me into Cartoon Animator over other software.
Q: What is your favorite creative genre or theme to work with?
I’m heavy into stories, whether they be kids nursery rhymes, fun facts, stories for teens, or otherwise. I also am into doing interactive story books.
Q: Do you find the process of creating 2D character design and content for Cartoon Animator easy and enjoyable?
Absolutely! Working with Cartoon Animator has unlocked the creative outlet I have not been able to release, due to the limitations of animation skills, complexity of 2D animation software available on the market, but mostly the time it takes to animate!
Q: From your perspective, what advice would you have for inspiring developers that are looking to break into the Reallusion Marketplace and sell their content?
I would say that there is a learning curve to get from ground ZERO to animating with Cartoon Animator. It is a much easier learning curve than any other 2D software I’ve attempted to use thus far, however it is a learning curve. The software works the way the programmer intended it to work. Sometimes the programming team will make it work specifically in one way. You just have to understand that ‘one way’, and then you will discover your own unique approach to the one way the programmers intended for it to work.
There is a magic to seeing artwork come to life. The reaction I get myself is always refreshing when I see something static become full of life and movement in a matter of seconds compared to days and weeks with typical 2D animation software and other approaches.
Cartoon Animator has motivated me to animate, whereas before, I’ve given up many times, as there just was not enough time or patience to use other animation or rigging processes, due to the unfriendliness of the process, the painstaking frame by frame requirements, or the complexity of the rigging software.
Explore my offerings in the Reallusion Marketplace.
Q: Based on your experience, what advantages do you feel Cartoon Animator gives you?
Cartoon Animator allows me to easily tween motions. I can take the principles of animation and apply them in CTA to pre-made or memorized animation sequences. Rather than have to reanimate something again and again, I can do it right once, save that action or animation sequence and use it on any similar boned character, prop, or otherwise.
Do you have plans for future content in the works?
I am only limited by my own time and finding or training another Cartoon Animator to help me produce the content we have in our queue. Prior to this I come from a successful product development business world and attempting to create an animation studio, and so far, Cartoon Animator has become the foundational software of my efforts to create animations quickly and effectively so I can focus more on content, music, production, and quality of artwork.
I am working on 5 new animated music song videos for my kid’s channel, Family Life Studios:
I am working on animated story books (have 25 planned) which will also go on our kids channel. I am also working on a full tutorial series from start to finish using CTA4 as the animation software which will go on my creative channel, BOXELS: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCjW_2QO9iZnxCALe-4lETdg
Additionally I have planned on my first stories videos which will be shown on my stories channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCZjCarvvFYjIE0AgoPTIdWA
Learn more about Jared:
Website: https://jaredsmith.guru/about-me
