Final Cut Pro - Simple Animation

This is Cynthia Martinez from Hartnell College, working as a Digital Media Intern of Salinas Public Library.

Final Cut Pro can be used to animate your own cut-out images. You can even draw a character in real life, cut out its arms, legs, torso, head, and then scan and animate it! There are other ways to do this as well, you can create the character digitally, and not only characters, you can make objects too. Be creative with your ideas!

If you'd like to make your very own animated creation, a storyboard of what you want to do with your Animation is always helpful, it doesn't matter how short it will be. You can create the storyboard by physically or digitally drawing it. Make sure you have your creative ideas all set and written down before you start to animate.

Here is an example on starting to animate the pieces. It involves an animated figure walking on the moon! This is a tutorial on how to make a 2D Cut-Out Animation using Final Cut. It will show you the tools you will need on Final Cut to do this.

If you'd like to follow along with me in this video tutorial, here are two files you will need.

(If RoboPartsCharacter.psd is too big in size to fit inside the FCP canvas, you can resize it in photoshop by Height: 250 pixels, Width: 195 pixels)

Click to download RoboPartsCharacter.psd

Click to download Background.psd

Here is an advice as a beginner in Animation: While Animating your images on Final Cut, it's always best to be very sure about the way you want every piece before moving on to the next step while modifying, or setting key frames on the movements. Most of the time, it can be a distraught when trying to go back to edit one thing all over again. That's a reason why a storyboard is always important in any kind of Animation.