Animation and Video Life

I've been on the hunt for a while now for the best, free, open source, video editing application out there. In Shotcut, by Meltytech, which has versions for Windows, Mac, and Linux, I think I may have found a real front runner.
This won't be a feature filled review, rather it will be my first impressions after having used Shotcut on a few of my YouTube videos so far.
One of my key criteria for a video editor is the ability to import any video format directly into the project. This may seem like an odd focus initially but having convert video to something your video editor can use is annoyingly time consuming, and it creates a new generation of footage, potentially with a loss in quality if you don't really know much about video format specs (that's this guy right here!).
Shotcut will happily work with my OBS recordings (.FLV), and .MOV, .MP4 files that I get from two different cameras. Not only that but Shotcut doesn't hold me up making lower quality versions of my fo…

Learn 2D animation with a tutorial for beginners that is an easy to follow mini video course for busy people. Get started by devoting just ten minutes a day to learn the step by step plan you need to make it easy to produce your own 2D animations.2D Animation 101 presents a free 2D animation foundation course that runs you through the entire process of producing professional, cinema quality animation, from idea through to finished production using Cartoon Animator 4 as your primary animation studio.Each section of the course includes a few short videos that can be viewed in around ten minutes, with the whole course taking just five days overall (ten minutes per day). At the end of the course you'll receive three free printable workbooks to help produce your next animation using the step-by-step plan you just learned.If you've always wanted to produce your own animated cartoons but thought you couldn't simply because you can't draw this mini course will give you options…

One thing Cartoon Animator 4 still does not have in stage mode is the ability to onion skin previous and next frames. 
For those complete animation newbies among you, onion skinning is the ability to see through the current frame to your previous and/or next keyframes so you can see the progression of your character or object's movement as you create and adjust each keyframe. Usually the previous and next frames appear lighter so your current frame remains the key focus.
This prompted me to look for a tool that could overlay an image over my work to use as a reference while still allowing me to work on the app underneath the overlay. I had seen, and even used such apps in the past but it had been some time so I decided to see what was out there, preferably free and/or open source, with versions for Mac and Windows.
Overlay 2There are actually a number of apps that do nothing more than overlay an image but the only one I could find that has both Windows and Mac versions is Overlay 2.
Y…

XP-Pen, the makers of a range of pretty sweet pen display monitors, and Reallusion, the makers of some pretty sweet animation apps, teamed up for XP-Pen's very first Animation Challenge with the theme of 'Change'.
Any form of animation was acceptable with entries needing to be a minimum of ten seconds in length.
Entries closed on June 16th, 2020 (sorry, this blog isn't really a breaking news site, I probably should've mentioned it back in March when entries submissions opened) so it's too late to enter, but I wanted to tell you the tale of how I ended up creating my entry in a really late evening, the day before the deadline.
Watch my entry below. Remember the theme is 'Change' and XP-Pen suggested in the rules that including their mascot, Fenix, somewhere in the animation would be looked upon favorably.
The IdeasThis was not my first idea for the competition. That may not be a big surprise but what you don't know is I completed up to a full, finished s…

A journey into making young folk pay attentionToday's guest post is by teacher, musician, creator and father/husband, Barrie McDermid, who is the creative force behind, and host of The Punctuation Show.
Don’t we all want to be noticed more?  Aren’t we all looking for an extra ‘like’ on social media? Don’t we all just want to be loved?  
Maybe a bit dramatic…
As a typical business owner, no doubt you want to find an audience and engage them.  Think about the typical classroom teacher: they have a captive audience, who often don’t want to be engaged.  As someone who loves a challenge (or maybe as a bit of an idiot), I started a business that has both of those challenges.
After a few years in various sales jobs, I retrained as an English teacher and absolutely loved the job.  Working with young people is a privilege, because young people have so much energy and honesty.  The honesty does not always go in your favour.
For a number of reasons, after a moderately successful career in teachin…

Bat Storm and his Daughter, Bat Flash, cosplay for children's parties and other events by day and moonlight as crime fighters by night... well, not all night, obviously... they still try to get their six hours of sleep.
The all new, 3D, iClone animated, reboot of my popular GoAnimate series is coming. Below is my second teaser trailer after my Robert Pattinson Suit Test parody trailer.
This second trailer is a scene for scene remake of the original first trailer created for GoAnimate more than ten years ago.

If you like what you see here and want to help me develop Bat Storm into an ongoing animated web series check out my Patreon which helps to cover the cost of voice actors and other production costs.
Huge thanks to Barrie McDermid for voicing all the characters on this one. Check out his website for his voice work and other creative services at:
Ask Barrie  https://www.askbarrie.co.uk/
Behind the ScenesUsually I would give a detailed rundown of any points of interest in the creation o…