Animation​‍​‌‍​‍‌ is essentially the process of making an artist’s dream come true by giving it the element of motion, which includes any sketches, shapes, or digital frames being converted to living stories. If you’re making just a short clip for social media or you’re fantasizing about your first animated film, having the right animation ideas can only fuel your creativity and accelerate your learning process.

Newcomers to the field, the trick is to initiate with something small and keep going. It is a good idea to familiarize yourself with simple animation ideas that can teach you concepts of movement, timing, and feeling before you draw characters, animate them or make cinematic scenes. Such works might include a ball that bounces, a pair of eyes that blink, or a walking stick figure. These prompt exercises both enlarge your base and make you feel sure.

In case you want fun, sensible, and easily doable animation ideas for beginners using today’s simple tools, then this guide will meet your needs. We will discuss simple animation ideas for inspiration that can lead you through the stages to become an animation master — without any prior ​‍​‌‍​‍‌experience.

What Are the Best Animation Ideas for Beginners?

Let’s travel a few years back into the 90s. Animation is the new name of art and drawing in this digitalized era. We have seen numerous short animation films, animated cartoon series like Rugrats, Ducktales, Doug, and Animaniacs; they are the best animation examples we can get.

Now, not just kids’ television cartoon series but almost everything is wrapped in animation. You’ll find animated logos, designs, ads, commercials, and even educational videos if you look around.

In this digital age, people have more opportunities to learn and create animation.

Animation is not hard to create or design, but sometimes it is really tricky to make. This blog shares some of the creative and easy animation ideas for beginners.

• Begin with a story: first, figure out what to animate and select a story that you want to showcase in your animation. You can pick a scene or chapter from a book to bring it to life.
• An old drawing or piece of art: if you have a drawing or figurine on which you can build a story, use it, as they are cool things to animate.
• A moment from life: try to sketch down any memorable moment or day from your life, or shoot a video forthe  best animation project ideas.
• Get inspired by nature: go to a park or garden, observe greenery and try to draw plants, trees, or nature scenes to get ideas to animate.
• A time travel: you can create art from history or imagine a scene from the future and draw basic animation ideas. Let your imagination flow, make something different and unique.

P.S.: Don’t draw a scene or character with a lot of features or details because it will be a lot critical for you to replicate it in the digital 2D or 3D environment.

What Are Some Simple Animation Ideas for Your First Project?

Practice makes the man perfect! It is an old but practical quote. If you want to excel in animation and make your mark like Walt Disney, William Hanna, and John Lasseter, then you should start practicing.

After sketching and building a story, the next step is simple animation ideas, but for beginners, it’s challenging at first, so follow the list below to master the animation skill.

Before proceeding, do you know that the Global animation market size is growing exponentially and expected to reach over $500 billion by 2029? Well, that’s great for a beginner to know as it really helps boosting charisma.

There are 45 excellent exercises that can help you create your own animated series and improve your work as an animator.

Easy Animation Ideas: Beginners Level 1

The following are the tricks and 2D animation ideas for beginners that have helped famous animators to become who they are now. These exercises are simple but extremely effective.

• 1) Bouncing Balls (vertically): Bouncing balls are among the simplest animation ideas yet effective for beginners. Start with the simplest exercise, draw a ball on the paper first, and then move the art to the screen. Practice for bouncing vertically.
• 2) Bounce the Ball (Across the screen): Now spread your work to the whole canvas, bounce the ball across the screen.
• 3) Object falling: after practicing the bouncing ball, go for an object: a brick, a feather, or a plane. They could be easier things to animate for beginners.

Sketch image: Source

Animated image: Source

• 4) Draw a character’s head: the head is usually shaped like a ball, and shifting from ball to head will be easy.

image source

• 5) Make the character’s head turn: once you have the grip over the facial features, you can now make the character’s head move left and right.

image source

• 6) Make eyes blink: most crucial facial feature is eye blinking. Perfect blinking makes it similar to reality.

image source

• 7) Make the character think: add expression to the character, sketch the character, and give a thinking expression.

• 8) The Flour Sack: if you are an animator and want to define the weight of the animated object, you can follow the famous flour sack example and implement short animation ideas. Draw the pose of the sack and add a bouncing ball effect to it.

Image source: animatorisland.com

• 9) Make Flour Sack jump: Add the expression of flour sacks are jumping, it will create an atmosphere of movement to the scene for easy animation.

• 10) Make Flour Sack fall
• 11) Flour Sack kicking the ball

Simple Animation Ideas: Beginners Level 2

• 12) One of the Animation drawing ideas is adding or changing the character’s emotions: add emotion to your character, make it happy, sad, crying, or angry.

• 13) Make the character jump.
• 14) Stand the character over a table or chair.
• 15) Make the character walk.
• 16) Character jumping on a pogo stick.
• 17) Character Laughing.
• 18) Character sneezing.
• 19) A character is reaching out to any object over the shelf.
• 20) A quick movement of the object.
• 21) A character is taking a deep breath [sigh].
• 22) Make a tree or plant fall.
• 23) Hit the character with an object.
• 24) Making the character run in cycles.

Basic Animation Ideas: Beginners Level 3

• 25) Open hand to the fist.
• 26) Hand movement to pick an object.
• 27) Hand lifting the heavy object.
• 28) Character overlapping action.
• 29) Character is drawing or painting.
• 30) The character is hammering the nail into the wall.
• 31) Stirring or cooking.
• 32) Blowing the balloon.
• 33) Juggling.
• 34) Zipping the jacket or wearing clothes.
• 35) Characters are standing up.

Simple Animation Ideas: Beginners Level 4

• 36) Eating food.
• 37) Falling or diving into the water.
• 38) Playing tug-of-war.
• 39) Dealt the deck of cards.
• 40) Teeth brushing.
• 41) Feather or paper falling.
• 42) Character running in a different direction.
• 43) Character opening/closing the door.
• 44) Character changing clothes.
• 45) Character opening a box and giving a reaction.

But if you want some detailed tips & tricks for animation, you can learn more about the animation process.

Keep Some Things in Your Mind

• Only reading will not bring any good to you. Try to practice how to animate for beginners from the above exercises and move them to the animated phase.

P.S.: Go for motion animation.

• One of the famous animation quotes is: “You are not supposed to animate the drawing. You are supposed to animate the feelings – Ollie Johnston”. Keep this quote in mind and try to focus more on animating the expressions, feelings, and emotions.
• Don’t complicate your animation with your drawing, try to keep implementing simple animation ideas at the start, and once you have a firm grip over the animation, animate the world.
• Don’t give up on your practice. Keep practicing the exercise. It will take time to become a master of it, and animation won’t turn out the way you want the very first time. It’s ok. Keep trying.
• Animation is all about fun and there are lots of fun things to animate.

How​‍​‌‍​‍‌ BuzzFlick Sparks Creative Animation Ideas for Beginners?

At BuzzFlick, animation is not only a visual change, but a whole new way of expressing the idea. A beginner animator will be making mistakes at first, and the success is all about discovering easy animation ideas that inspire your creative side and don’t confuse your imagination.

If you are just starting out with 2D animation exercises or you want to try some motion graphics, small steps will help you to get the right timing, feeling, and continuity, the basics of every excellent animation.

Our team at BuzzFlick is always ready to support new artists who want to experiment, verify, and gain knowledge through practical work. Therefore, if you are looking for animation ideas for beginners that are feasible, inventive, and enjoyable, you are in the right ​‍​‌‍​‍‌place.