Skip to main content

Animate Your ComiPo! Comics with MotionArtist

MotionArtist is dedicated composition software for creating animated comics, otherwise known as Motion Comics. That is, rather than create fully animated cartoons, it allows you to take static cartoon panels and add movement and audio to create a more engaging experience.

The type of Motion Comic MotionArtist can produce falls somewhere between reading a comic and watching a cartoon but generally, feels more like reading a very cool comic than watching a severely limited animated cartoon.



MotionArtist has dedicated tools for creating comic book panels with their own self contained animations. It also makes it simple to animate across multiple panels and even animate the panels themselves.

Everything is done using key frames displayed on your comic's timeline with individual panels containing their own timelines to control the animation contained within it.

There are three modes which you switch between that does take some getting used to.

My First ComiPo! Comic.
Director mode lets you edit the entire production as a whole across multiple scenes (a scene could be defined as each page of your comic if you wanted to maintain a traditional comic format). Camera Mode is specifically for key framing how the 'camera' moves throughout your comic. Panel mode lets you edit the animation within each panel.

As my first project I thought, what better way to test MotionArtist than to see if I could turn my ComiPo! comic, that I created when I reviewed that software, into a motion comic.

As a reminder you can see a small version of my comic on the right. You'll need to click the image if you want to view the full size version. You'll notice it's ideal motion comic material as the majority of the comic is the main character falling.

Below is the motion comic version which I think probably goes a little too quick to read all the speech balloons easily but you get the idea (you may need to watch it full screen). It should also be noted that you can output animations as either a video file (as I have) or you can embed them into webpages in HTML5 format. This allows added interactivity such as buttons for the user to click to move to the next page or panel.



Behind the Scenes

Getting Images From ComiPo!


MotionArtist will accept a number of different image file formats. If you have photoshop then you can import native .PSD files and retain the layer order. Potentially saving a lot of time as you could create your pages in Photoshop then import them to MotionArtist to add all the animation elements.

ComiPo! isn't photoshop but fortunately it can export transparent .PNG files of any object. In order to do that I had to break down my comic into its individual components - excluding panel frames and text balloons - and import each one individually as a .PNG file. Yes it was a little time consuming but certainly worth the results.

Exporting Images from ComiPo!
Enlarge to see the settings I used.
For all my backgrounds I exported the full background image and not just the cropped area you could see in each panel.

Once you've exported all your components you just import them into either your panels or scenes in MotionArtist as needed.

How it Looks in MotionArtist


Below is a screen shot of my comic assembled in MotionArtist. You'll notice I've followed the same basic layout as the ComiPo! comic. As this is frame 264 of the animation, which focuses on the largest falling character image (indicated by the red box outline that represents the camera's view), some of the characters in the earlier panels are missing, having already played through their animations.

My ComiPo! comic as layed out in MotionArtist

You may also notice from the image that my motion comic only has one scene. If I were to add a second scene I would then have the option to add transitions between the scenes.

Working in MotionArtist


It's really hard to describe how you actually put together a motion comic in MotionArtist. The basics are that everything is divided into scenes and within scenes you have panels.

Movement is achieved by placing an object at its starting point, scrubbing the timeline forward however long  you want a movement to take, then placing the object at a new location and/or angle. As you do this you'll see a motion path is created with dots indicating a key frame (or stopping point).

You can key frame panels and objects to fade in or out. Objects can be attached to the camera so they move wherever you move the camera (as I did with my comic's background image).

Panels that you've already created animation inside can be literally split in two (or more) sections and the animation will still work across the sections. You can even make the panels themselves move.

There are also plenty of options for speech balloons and adding text. I used none of my original speech balloons from ComiPo!, instead creating these in MotionArtist.

I believe you can make the camera automatically follow your sequence of panels but I found you get more interesting results if you key frame the camera movement yourself.

There is also a great a parallax feature that automatically gives your panels a 3D like effect. I did use it my comic but you can see a better example in the Introductory video below.



MotionArtist can also import video and audio files, though in the current version this isn't obvious how to do. I didn't come across anything in the video tutorials demonstrating it. Everything is imported using the same import button, just above the timeline. There's nothing to ask you what kind of file you're planning to import and no list of supported formats to give you a clue as to what you can import in the resulting dialogue box.

This is one piece of software that it pays to look through the PDF manual to fill in the gaps of what the video tutorials don't cover.

In Summary


MotionArtist is desktop publishing software for MotionComics. You create all your individual components elsewhere including PhotoShop, Anime Studio, Manga Studio, and any other software that at least can create transparent .PNG files (such as ComiPo!), then bring it all together in MotionArtist.

With the current explosion in low cost animated video creation tools you could use any of them to similar effect. However, if all you want to do is produce motion comics, then MotionArtist has the features that will help you produce a motion comic quicker than anything else.

It's certainly a good companion piece for ComiPo! if you want to produce more dynamic content whilst still keeping your feet in comic creation rather than animated cartoons.

MotionArtist could also be used for creating more dynamic general presentations too. There's no reason to just stick to creating comics. This could well be an alternative to some of those business animation presentation tools that have been released lately.

All up it took me a couple of days to learn the basics and produce my first motion comic. That's not bad for such powerful software that could be a lot of fun in long run.

I like the idea of combining it with ComiPo! because personally I don't read comics but I will watch an animation. That's where MotionArtist can potentially give your work a new audience who are more accustomed to watching video.

Popular posts from this blog

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

Should You Buy or Upgrade to MOHO 13? *Spoiler* Yes. Yes You Should!

MOHO 13's New Character Set. Smith Micro released MOHO 13 , their all in one, 2D animation studio, this week. The question is should you buy or upgrade to the latest version? Obviously I've already spoiled this in the title, so the actual question is why do I think you should buy or upgrade? To be clear, I'm only talking about MOHO 13 Pro. If you're considering MOHO 13 Debut be aware that you're missing out on some of the new features, and a lot of existing features that are only available in the Pro version. Debut is fine if the budget doesn't stretch to Pro, but, if you never want to be disappointed about not having a feature, it's Pro or nothing! The other thing I need to be transparent about is I'm not, by any stretch, a frequent MOHO user/animator. However I took the time to learn MOHO 12 Pro fairly extensively, blogging about my process and sorting out 104 free MOHO training videos into a logical viewing order in the process. I think I ha

TimeBolt: Fast Video Editing for Anyone Creating Online Courses, Podcasts, or Vlogs.

I resisted making tutorial videos for a long time because I don't like editing. Specifically I don't like editing me teaching as I step students through a process during a screen record. I have a tendency to insert long pauses not just in the middle of sentences but between multiple words in the middle of sentences as my pace matches what I'm doing onscreen. This makes for very long and very slow paced video tutorials. To counteract this I have to edit out all the pauses. This can take hours, or even days on particularly long tutorials. For example, when I created my main course, The Lazy Animator Beginner's Guide to Cartoon Animator , I literally injured the thumb on my right hand, operating my mouse, as I spent weeks taking out all my pauses (seriously, I had to wear a thumb brace for a few weeks to fix the pain). Recently I came across TimeBolt , a very affordable, fast editing application with the featured purpose of removing all the pauses from your video (and even

Make Disney/Pixar Style Characters with Reallusion's Character Creator and Toon Figure Bases

The Extraordinary Tourist Classic Coat outfit created using Reallusion's Toon Designer for CC3. I've talked before how I've wanted to get into 3D Disney/Pixar style character animation since I first saw the animated cutscenes for the very first Tomb Raider game back in 1996. It's why I initially bought Reallusion's iClone 3D studio app as soon as I could afford a computer that would run it. But then Reallusion released their 3D Character Creator (CC) for iClone and I wanted to create my characters with that (and I did try with Bat Storm ). But the focus of CC was realism, even with ToKoMotion's stylised body morphs . Now with Reallusion's Cartoon Designer bundle for CC3 which features two packs, Toon Figures , and Toon Hair , designing Disney/Pixar style 3D characters just got a whole lot quicker. The two packs are the bare essentials for creating Toon style characters. Five body morphs (2 male, 2 female, and one adolescent body morph that w

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

Review: CrazyTalk Animator 3 vs Moho Studio Pro 12

Reallusion's CrazyTalk Animator 3 or Smith Micro's Moho Studio Pro 12. Which of these 2D animation applications is right for you? Regular readers of this blog will know I'm a strong supporter, and fairly proficient user of CrazyTalk Animator since version 1. It's a great piece of software for producing 2D animations from purchased content quickly and, with version 3, is easier than ever to create animations from your own art. Lesser known is that I first purchased Moho Studio Pro 12 (then known as Anime Studio Pro 9) back in October of 2012 and have been upgrading it to the latest version ever since because I believed in it as an application for creating great 2D animation to TV quality standard. As such, it's a much more complex application than CTA3 that I only got around to learning properly late last year. I'm still in the process of blogging my progress . Despite this I feel I've learned enough of Moho to compare it to CTA3 to help you determ

Creating a G3-360 Head From a Single Photo in Reallusion's Cartoon Animator

Source Photo from Generated Photos . Ever since Reallusion introduced the G3-360 Character Head into Cartoon Animator 4 I've wanted to see if their 360 Head Creator tool could be used to create an animated head using a photo. Part of the reason I've never given this a shot, until now, is that I just assumed it would be difficult, and require a lot of photo editing to blend out the sprite edges. It turns out, creating a photographic G3-360 head is not that much more difficult than creating a cartoon head, and can be done using a single photographic image using my own G3-360 head rigging system . While this article isn't intended to be a full tutorial, I'll run through the basic steps of how I achieved my photographic G3-360 head, shown in the comparison below, of a Cartoon Animator Morph-based head on the left, and my G3-360 head on the right. Pros and Cons Cartoon Animator's morph-based head system is ideal for animating photographic faces. It uses a semi 3D wire me