How to create a short cartoon
How I did it: I first came up with the general idea. I picked the music to pair up with the cartoon, because I knew I wanted it to be a musical short with no voices since I was opting for a classic feel. I then designed the characters, using MS Paint since I work best when doodling when using a mouse rather than pen and paper.
Then, I took the rough design idea and smoothed out the edges to create the final characters. I created a simple scene in MS Paint, with the foreground objects and with my main character, a chef, behind the counter.
Then I set out to start the fun process, animation. First I made three simple title screens. Then what I did was cut the entire scene I created above, opened a new MS Paint project, and pasted that scene into the new space. I kept doing this until I got the bulk of the first part done, which in my case was having the chef pick up a cherry from a plate and then put it on a cupcake.
Once I had that much done, I started a new project in Windows Movie Maker. I added my animated scenes, which were saved as bmp's, and then I added the music track wav. I played the animation, and decided how much time was needed for each frame by playing it again little by little, and dragging the slider for the time of each frame until it matched up with how I wanted it to look.
Now that I had that first part down, and got to know a little bit about how to use Windows Movie Maker, I went to my next scene, which was harder than the last. This scene required a bird to fly in from the left, pick the cherry off of the cupcake, and then fly off to the right. I drew a bird in MS Paint, and then cut it. Then I pasted it so you could just make out her beak.
I went through the process of cutting and pasting, by opening up new MS Paint projects, just as I had with the chef. When I got to the cherry, I pasted the bird in the corner of the screen, then cut the cherry and pasted it in the bird's mouth. I cut and pasted the bird over the cupcake, and then saved the scene opened up a new MS Paint project.
This required a little bit more effort, since I had to redraw the cupcake without a cherry. I did this, and then I saved the scene. I cut the scene, opened a new MS Paint project, and pasted it. Then I cut and pasted the bird farther away, saved it, and continued cutting and pasting until the bird was out of the right side of the screen.
I then reopened Windows Movie Maker, and once again went through the process of making sure that the music matched up with the action. This time, in order to make it flow better, I set some frames to be a little bit longer than others. It worked to my liking, so I saved the project and then took a break.
The break ended up being three months, because I couldn't get myself to get back into the swing of things. But this was fine, since it's better to take a break between projects rather than get burnt out and toss it away forever because you took on more than you could handle all at once.
The next part was pretty easy, since I had the bulk of the animation done. I just kept cutting and pasting the first scenes, but making sure that the correct numbers of cherries were gone from the plate once the chef picked them up.
Once I was done with that, and set the scenes to the music in Windows Movie Maker, I took another 2 month break.
By this time, I was determined to get it finished. I drew the chef's arm out so it looked like she was walking, and then cut her and pasted her where I wanted her. I opened up a new MS Paint project, and pasted the chef there. I pasted her a little bit farther down the counter and drew her opposite arm out to the front to give the allusion of walking. I continued cutting and pasting like this until the chef left the right side of the screen.
Then I went back a few scenes, to where the chef was completely in the scene and cut the scene. I opened a new MS Paint project, pasted the scene, and drew a cherry cart in front of the chef. I continued the animation I did earlier, except in reverse, until the chef reached the cupcake.
I then opened up a scene where the chef facing forward in front of the cupcake, and saved it as a new bitmap. Now I opened the scene with the cherry cart, copied the cherry cart, and opened up the newest scene. I pasted the cherry cart in the scene, opened Windows Movie Maker, and set the music to the scenes the way I wanted it.
When my mom came home, I let her see what I had, and I got some much needed constructive criticism. She couldn't tell what the cherry cart was, and thought it was corn. Since it's important to the story that you know what's going on, I decided I'd try something different.
I took a break, and thought about what to use instead of a cherry cart, and a couple of weeks later I came up with a net. I gave the chef three directions by using her side views from the walking scenes, and her front view from the cherry scenes, and made sure that she was holding the net each time. The different directions gave her the illusion of spinning.
Now I needed her to fall down, so I copied the scene, and opened up Paint Shop Pro. I pasted the scene here, and rotated the chef about 30 degrees to give her the illusion of falling. I continued this until she was under the counter, then saved three files where the plate faced front, and where the rotated the plate 9 degrees on each side so it looked like it was hit by the chef's foot. I cut and pasted the final cherry so it looked like it was flying through the air onto the cupcake.
I then made a simple The End screen, and set it all to the music in Windows Movie Maker. Now all that was left was my last scene after the end, with the bird getting the last cherry. All I did was use the bird animation I already had, but erased the cherries on the plate and the chef from the scene.
I set that all to music in Windows Movie maker, and my goal of creating a short cartoon was finally finished! :)
Resources: MS Paint, Windows Movie Maker, and Paint Shop Pro
