Skip to main content

Start Your Own Animation Cartoon Business

Have you ever wanted to start your own animated cartoon studio business but thought such an idea would be too complex to set up and, besides that, you need to be able to draw, right? Well, not necessarily on both counts.

Recently animation sites GoAnimate and Xtranormal announced new Commercial Use Packages that include re-seller accounts i.e. accounts that allow you to create commercially licensed video animations with their studios for clients to use in their business.

GoAnimate is a site that specializes in allowing anyone to make 2D cartoons (e.g. such as Saturday morning cartoon style animation) easily with no drawing skills required. It relies on pre-drawn and automated characters that you simply drag, drop and position on pre-drawn backgrounds. There's plenty of room for customization to give your final cartoons their own unique style.

Xtranormal specializes in 3D cartoons (i.e. 3 dimensional characters and sets generated from wire frame models - not 3D as in 3D movies and television). Like GoAnimate it relies heavily on pre-made characters and sets but there is still room for customization - even more if you download their desktop application State. Again, like GoAnimate you don't need to know anything about 3D modeling to make an animation with Xtranormal.


Both sites allow the recording of human actors to voice their characters and feature auto lip-syncing with the recorded dialogue.

The commercial potential of GoAnimate and Xtranormal, as a low budget option, for businesses to incorporate eye catching animation into their marketing and promotion, is being discovered by more and more businesses that do not have the budget to employ expensive animators and animation studios to create fully customized animations.

Not only that but the fast turn around to make a GoAnimate or Xtranormal animation means it's very hard for commercial animation studios to compete with their high quality animation that will obviously look better but take far longer to produce at a much higher cost.

To become a GoAnimate or Xtranormal re-seller you'll need to sign up for a re-seller account. This is not free as effectively, with both sites, you're paying for a commercial license to use the site for commercial purposes yourself (i.e. your own Animation Cartoon Business).

At this time GoAnimate is the cheaper option with reseller accounts starting at US$199.00 per quarter (three months) where as Xtranormal charges US$75.00 per month. Both fees represent your main ongoing expense outside of maintaining an internet connection, computer equipment and utilities.

Optionally you could start a website to showcase your work but, since both sites allow exports to Youtube you may as well use your free Youtube channel as your portfolio.

After that it's just a case of showcasing what you can do with either or both sites, depending on which one(s) you decide to sign up with. Your first job should be making an animation to promote your animation cartoon service and posting it to Youtube. Make sure you use a good descriptive title and relevant tag words so people searching Youtube will find you.

From there you can then scout the many freelance job networking sites (such as elance or odesk) for animation job opportunities.

Find out more about GoAnimate for Business.
Find out more about Xtranormal for Business.

Hire TET to create your next GoAnimate or Xtranormal Business Animation. Click the link to see samples of my work and for more information.

Popular posts from this blog

Can You Learn Reallusion's Cartoon Animator 5 for Free Using Their 137 Official YouTube Video Tutorials Sorted Into a Logical Learning Order?

Or you could just buy The Lazy Animator Beginner's Guide to Cartoon Animator . While Reallusion's Cartoon Animator is one of the easiest 2D animation studios to get up and running with quickly, learning it from all of the official, free, video tutorials can be more overwhelming than helpful. With more than 137 videos totaling more than 28 and a half hours of tutorials, spread across three generations of the software (Cartoon Animator 3 through 5) it's hard to know if what you're learning is a current or legacy feature that you either need to know or can be skipped. Many of the official tutorials only teach specific features of the software and don't relate at all to previous or later tutorials. As a result there are many features either not mentioned or are hard to find. To make your learning easier, on this page, I've collected together all of the essential, official, free video tutorials and sorted them into a learning order that makes sense. Simply start at

AE Juice - Animation Presets, Motion Graphics, Templates, Transitions for After Effects, Premiere Pro, and Other Video Applications

Level up you video edits and animations with AE Juice's motion graphics and templates. Some days you just don't have the time to create flashy motion graphics for your latest video or animation. For some of us it's more a question of our own artistic abilities being a little less than the awesome we'd like them to be. Whatever reason a resource like AE Juice's animation presets, motion graphics, templates, and transitions packs for After Effects , Premiere Pro , and other video applications can really make your work stand out very quickly. AE Juice gives you access to an instant library of free, premade content elements and sound effects, which you can add to with additional purchases of various themed packs from their store. There are three ways to manage their content, all of which can be used in commercial projects . The AE Juice Standalone Package Manager makes it easy to browse previews of all your pack contents and to download and find just the elements yo

Artbreeder - Using AI created Character and Background Content in your Animations

A selection of User/AI generated images from Artbreeder. If you're looking for an endless supply of 2D character and background images for your animations then Artbreeder , an online Artificial Intelligence (AI) that generates image mash-ups you can tweak as much as you like, could be the ultimate content library. What is Artbreeder? Artbreeder is free to use though there are various paid plans, that give you additional features, such as higher resolution download images or more settings to play with. All images created on the site are Public Domain (CC0 License) and can be used in commercial projects. Using Artbreeder's online app you can generate head shot portraits, full body characters, landscapes, and other scenes simply by choosing two or more existing images to mash together then, using a series of sliders, to select which traits from each image you wish to lean toward in the final image. Photo Comparison - Top is my original uploaded photo. Bottom is Artbreeder's ap

Jarrad Wright, The Big Lez Show - Who Would've thought Animating with MS Paint Could Take You So Far?

A friend of mine recommended I should check out The Big Lez Show after I mentioned to him I make animations for living. He said the show's creator, Australian animator, Jarrad Wright , just makes episodes from his home using MS Paint. Somewhat shamefully I hadn't heard of The Big Lez Show, but the fact that it was being made with MS Paint absolutely hooked me into checking out. If you've never heard or seen the show then you, like I was, are probably thinking how good could it be? MS Paint has kind of a cult following of hardcore animators but no one would use it as their primary animation tool on a series, right? WARNING - before going any further, you need to know The Big Lez Show and its humor contains some pretty strong language. By strong I mean it's peppered very liberally with the 'F' and 'C' words and is very every day Aussie, blue collar speak. Unapologetically, all of that, is part of why it's so good. There's a good chance you've

Moho 14 Released - Still the Best 2D Animation Software for Indy Animators on a Budget

Moho 14 Released. Regular readers know I am a Reallusion, Cartoon Animator advocate through and through. Hands down I would recommend Cartoon Animator 5 first over Lost Marble's Moho 14 to anyone who is just starting in 2D animation, is a team of one, or just needs to animate as quickly as possible. However, feature for feature, Moho is, arguably, the best 2D animation software for the rest of us who can't justify a Toon Boom Harmony , or Adobe Creative Cloud subscription (and even with their applications Moho is very competitive on features). You can get started with Moho Debut for just USD$59.99 which is a cut down version of Moho Pro but it still has the most essential features needed for 2D animation. While Moho Pro is a whopping USD$399.99 (Cartoon Animator, which only has one version, is just USD$149.00) upgrades to new version numbers come down to a quarter of the price at USD$99.00. Even though Reallusion just released features like Motion Pilot Puppet Animation and

Reallusion Releases Cartoon Animator 5 - One Version, More Features, Lower Price!

If you're serious about producing 2D animation as quickly as possible, while still achieving professional results, Reallusion's Cartoon Animator 5 makes the most compelling case yet as your animation studio/tool of choice. Cartoon Animator's point of difference has always been its ease of use and accelerated workflow. Creating fast, 2D animation using puppet, bone rigged based characters and props, on a stage with 3D depth for easy scene parallax effects. As it has developed Reallusion has incorporated more advanced features like motion capture for both face and body as well as being able to export scenes to post production tools like After Effects with the addition of plugins. After moving away from Flash based vector image support for a few years, Reallusion is back with full .SVG (scalable vector graphics) support for resolution independent graphics. They've also added Spring Dynamic physics and Full Form Deformation tools, both of which make it ridiculously easy t

Cartoon Animator 5 and G2 Characters - Why You'll Probably Never Use Them Even Though They're Great

Since I've previously covered how to get the most out of your purchased G3 and G1 characters for Reallusion's Cartoon Animator 5, it would be remiss of me not to look at the greatest character rig of all time, G2 characters. G2 Characters have been mostly relegated to legacy status since Cartoon Animator 3 but, as a rig that let you create fully 360 degree turn-able characters that moved in 3D space, animated with 3D motion files, and were mostly vector based, there was nothing else like them in any other 2D  software. The problem was, even with the templates provided by Reallusion for both Adobe Flash and Serif DrawPlus , they were complex and time consuming to make from scratch. They were also difficult to customize because there was no way to export and edit individual parts. G2 characters just weren't easy enough for the casual Cartoon Animator user to customize so they fell by the wayside. However they're still fully supported in CA5 with all the same functional