How to Create Kid-Friendly Educational Animation Step by Step

AE Script Animation Cartoon Cartoon Animator Education

Prosenjit Biswas

Hi, my name is Prosenjit Biswas, and I am a freelancer from India. Since childhood, I have been captivated by animation, superheroes, and anime characters. This passion inspired me to pursue a career as a freelance 2D animator. Additionally, I teach digital graphic design at my local school, where I enjoy sharing my knowledge with aspiring animators and educators who want to create educational animations for children or personal YouTube channels. I am here to guide you through every step of the animation process, making it easy and enjoyable. Let’s get started!

1. Finding Your Idea

Identify Your Target Age Group: Determine the specific age group you’re targeting.
Incorporate Educational Elements: Consider teaching numbers, letters, moral values, or social skills.
Draw Inspiration: Use classic fairy tales, children’s books, and fables for timeless story ideas.
Ask “What If” Questions: Generate unique scenarios, such as “What if animals could talk and had their own adventures?”
Develop a Simple Plot: Create an engaging story with elements of adventure, mystery, or problem-solving.

2. Writing Your Script

Turn your idea into a story. The script needs to be easy and understandable for kids. Include funny and engaging lines to attract them. If you don’t know how to write a script, use AI software like ChatGPT to generate one quickly.

3. Voice Recording

I usually use Adobe Audition for recording, but you can use any software you like. Audacity is a great free option. If you don’t want to record your voice, you can hire someone or use AI voices, which are now very human-like. Some AI voice tools include ElevenLabs, Play.ht, Speechify, and Murf, with various free and paid plans.

4. Collecting References

Collect references for your ideal character and scene. This helps in defining the character style and personality. Develop a unique art style that distinguishes your educational animations, whether it’s whimsical, cartoonish, or realistic. Use sites like Behance, Google Images, Pinterest, and ArtStation to gather references for your project.

5. Storyboarding

Storyboarding is crucial for complex projects. It helps plan camera angles and character interactions with props and other actions. For simpler animations, a storyboard may not be necessary. I use Clip Studio Paint for storyboarding and composite in Filmora. You can use any drawing software or even simple pen and paper.

6. Character design

This is a kid’s video, so I focus on creating happy and energetic characters that evoke joy and have cute reactions. Chubby characters are also adorable. Kids typically enjoy videos featuring colorful, engaging characters with vibrant personalities. Popular types of characters include:

Cartoon Animals

Fairytale Figures

Friendly Robots

I draw all my characters in Clip Studio Paint. I start with simple, easy lines and then add some details. I focus on the hand and leg joints because these parts need to be movable. I always create easy-to-animate characters.

For coloring, I use the Adobe Color website to choose my palette, then apply the colors to the characters one by one. Character color is very important as it represents various moods and situations. After coloring, I place the character on a premade template, putting all layers into the premade character folder. Then, I adjust the bones, especially the hip joint, which is essential for cartoon animation because it changes the character’s body weight. Finally, I recheck the bone names and export the character as a PSD file

7. Head Turn

Cartoon Animator has a very useful feature called the 360 Head Turn. This allows you to take a character and make the head turn easily, as demonstrated in my tutorial video. The 360 Head Turn transforms 2D art into 3D-styled characters with up to 360 degrees of motion for deeply rich performances. Additionally, it offers Photoshop round-trip integration for editing multi-angle characters in and out of the 360 Head Creator.

8. Animation

For some scenes, I use premade walk motions, but mostly I create custom motions. Using the IK (Inverse Kinematics) and FK (Forward Kinematics) features, along with the End Effector, I place keyframes to pose the character, then apply easy ease to the character and adjust the timing.

Motion Pilot

Motion Pilot is a great tool that adds a new dimension to your animation. With the help of your mouse, you can animate anything in a minute. Simply select the object, open Motion Pilot, adjust the slider, click preview, then press the spacebar. Now you’re ready to animate.

Motion Path

Motion Path is a line that helps you animate anything along your preferred trajectory. Just create a line, select the object, then select the path and adjust the path progression bar. It’s that simple.

9. Export

You can export images in BMP, JPG, TGA, PNG, and GIF formats. For videos, you can export in WMV, AVI, MP4, popVideo, MOV, and WAV formats. I use After Effects, so I export as a JSON file with all PNG sequences.

10. After Effects Script

The After Effects script is a game-changing step for Reallusion. Many users rely on After Effects, and now they can edit in After Effects with ease. Simply import the JSON file into the Cartoon Animator AE script. Once the file is fully imported, you can begin editing the scene. I added some blur effects, motion blur, glow, and layer styles before rendering the file in MP4 format.

11. Compositing

When all scenes are ready, I bring them into After Effects. Here, I add various effects, transitions, masking, and time remapping. After applying these enhancements, I export the final render.

12. Sound Design

The final video is then imported into Filmora, where I add all the necessary sound effects and voiceovers. I also include an intro and end credits before exporting the final ready file. There are many websites where you can collect sounds, such as YouTube Studio and FreeSound.com.

Conclusion

If you’re an individual animator or a teacher with limited animation experience, Cartoon Animator is the perfect tool for you. I hope you now understand how I created that video, so you can start making your own as well. For more information, visit the Reallusion website and check out their social media channels.

Facebook – Cartoon Animator Users Group

This group comprises many professional animators who are always willing to assist beginners. You can ask any questions you may have and also view our animations on the page. Feel free to join our community and become a part of our growing family.

Learn More

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The original article was written by Prosenjit Biswas and also featured on Cartoon Brew.