How To Create An Animated Show

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There's something special about cartoons…

Cartoon videos have always attracted people young and old. From the earliest Disney classics to the animated shows aired on Cartoon Network and Nickelodeon today, the adventures of animated characters grab our attention and keep us hooked.

In the early Disney-days, creating cartoons was a timely and strenuous process. It required a fine amount of detail, skill, and above all else, money.

Fast forward to today, creating cartoon videos has never been easier . With online video creation tools, you can put animated stories together in a snap.

Want to learn how you can make your own animated cartoon video for your business? Keep reading!

How to make animated videos with a cartoon maker

Step 1: Choose a powerful animation/cartoon maker

To make great— and quick —animation, you need a powerful cartoon video maker. Without a cartoon maker, you'll waste time, money, and feel incredibly frustrated while trying to figure out how to animate videos by yourself.

Cartoon makers have libraries of premade animated characters and elements, letting you find exactly what you need without spending hours trying to create animations by hand.

Moovly ( that's us! ) is a cloud-based animated video creation tool. You don't have to download any software and can start making animations and cartoon videos as long as you have a computer and an internet connection!

Here's an animated cartoon video one of our users made using Moovly:

So, what makes Moovly the best cartoon creator?

For starters, you can make a cartoon for free with Moovly . Unlike many other animation makers out there that cost a fortune, Moovly has a free plan you can start using today.

Moovly's free and paid plans.

Moovly has different plans to suit your needs

You can sign up here to start creating your animated videos right away—no credit card required.

Moovly also has many unique graphical libraries home to over one million free images, sounds, and videos to use in your animations.

Moovly's video editor with the media library highlighted.

Use Moovly's immense library to find animations and characters to make your own cartoon video

We're confident you'll find exactly what you need to make cartoon videos, but if you don't, you can browse an additional 75 million media objects and purchase images or stock videos at the lowest industry prices.

You can also access your content on the go with Moovly's video maker app, letting you create animations no matter where you are.

Step 2: Pick a template for your animated video

After choosing your cartoon tool, it's time to make your animated video.

Using Moovly, you'll get access to a range of animated templates to use and fully customize.

Our templates let you put together animations quickly, so you don't need to create every scene from scratch.

And our template library has more than cartoon templates, so if you plan to create different types of business videos , you can find different templates for various video styles.

However, if you want full control, you can always start from a blank canvas and build scenes the way you like them— sans template .

On top of templates, Moovly users can also access a range of cartoon clips. Cartoon clips are small scenes created with objects from the Moovly's libraries in different styles. Add these clips to your cartoon videos to further customize your message.

A screenshot of the different premade cartoon elements you can use with Moovly.

Different cartoon clips give you access to animated characters, so you don't need to create them from scratch

You can pick the clips you like, put them in a sequence and modify their content to fit your story. You can change anything you want in these clips like:

Colors
Illustrations
Text
Sounds and music
Size
Timing
Animation effects

You have complete freedom to compose your content in any style, using the millions of graphical and media objects in the Moovly libraries. Just drag and drop them from the chosen library to the video stage like so:

A GIF of someone using Moovly's video editor to drag and drop.

Drag and drop your content to make your animated video

Step 3: Animate and synchronize your content

After dropping an object on Moovly's stage, it also appears in the timeline below.

Moovly's video editor and video timeline.

Easily move and adjust elements around in your timeline

Here, you can easily shift, shorten or lengthen the appearance of your object, so you can decide when it appears and disappears in your video. This way, you can synchronize objects with each other or with sound, music, or voiceover.

The timeline is also where you will apply animations to every cartoon image, photo, or illustration you are using. You can decide how it appears, how it moves, rotates, or resizes, and how it disappears. Choose from different animation effects for every object you're using like:

Fly
Fade
Bounce
Wipe
Wedge
Pop
Slide
Flow
Move
Zoom

If you prefer whiteboard-style animations , you can apply hands to drag, shift, present, write or draw your objects on the video canvas. Choose between hands of different genders and skin tones to fully customize your video!

Step 4: Add a music track or voice-over

Advertisements with music perform better than those without , and choosing the right song or music can have a significant impact on the success of your video.

Is your cartoon video sad? Is it a happy one? You want to choose a piece of music that reflects and sets the mood.

Also, think about supporting sounds for your video: an explosion, a ticking clock, applause, or a whoosh sound for motion.

These added details can really bring your video to a higher level. Just make sure the timing of these sounds aligns with what viewers see!

Pro tip : try out different tracks before choosing one for your cartoon video and make sure your music is royalty-free to avoid any legal headaches. Moovly's Storyblocks library has more than 100,000 royalty-free songs and soundtracks to use in your videos so you don't need to worry about infringing on someone's copyright or intellectual property.

Step 5: Publish, share and download your animated video

After creating your video, it's time to share it with the world!

Within Moovly, you can directly publish your video creations on a variety of social platforms like YouTube, Vimeo, or Facebook.

You can also download your video HD quality to upload to your website where your customers can watch it anytime they land on your site.

It's easy to create cartoons using Moovly's video editor

Whether you need to make animation for YouTube or promotional videos on your website, using Moovly makes it easy to make cartoons for free.

Use Moovly's library to find cartoon video templates and customizable Storyblocks to help take your video from imagination to creation in minutes.

Ready to try it for yourself? Sign up for free and make your next cartoon video with Moovly !

Start making your own cartoon video now