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This is amazing. Thank you so much! I posted this on 11secondclub, and your tips are consistent with a comment someone left me there. Time to recut this demo! :D

The sheep shots are from a film, yes. It's not my favorite thing I've ever done, but you can see it here: https://vimeo.com/23187952

You can do 2D animation in blender, there’s a bit more of a learning curve but like the other poster said there’s tons of great learning resources for free. You could also give Autodesk SketchBook a try where you can create a “flip book” which allows you to make frame by frame animations, it’s very basic in its features but more approachable than blender for playing around with.

EDIT: There's also Krita which is a free open source painting software similar to photoshop that also lists 2D animation capabilities, though I've never looked into it, you can probably find videos for it too.

If you're completely fresh to image manipulation or painting software, SketchBook is probably the best one to start with for practicing, and then once you're more confident and working on bigger projects, learn to use Blender.

While I may not know about many other subreddits besides this and r/animation, there are plenty of tools out there that can help you get started.

In terms of software, I got started by using Macromedia Flash 8 (which unfortunately isn't sold anymore). But, in my college, I hear a lot of people use Krita when they animate, and that works well for them. It's even better since it's free. If you wanted to move up, you could also try Photoshop and Adobe Animate if you wanted to subscribe to the Adobe Suite. Anything higher than that would just be the high end like Toonboom Harmony or TVPaint.

In terms of online tutorials, Alan Becker has a nice series about the Principles of Animation that I'd suggest. Aside from that, there are lots of popular videos out there to help you get started. But if you're going to go the extra mile, I'd also suggest Richard William's The Animator's Survival Kit. It's a great tool for anyone who is interested in animation.

As for some tips, I'd say practice makes perfect. It's going to take a while to get the hang of animation, but keep at it, and you will definitely get better as you go! Also, don't be afraid to stop and retry a project if something doesn't look right. Trust your senses when it comes to recognizing what looks "realistic" or "natural".

I hope this helps!

My favorite lite yet perfectly functional program is both great and it has it's older version free! It's called Plastic Animation Paper often called PAP. It deals in old school frame to frame drawing and a light box along with them futuristic capabilities of dem computers with copy paste and zoom and other nice functionalities. Check it out! Hope you like.it as much as I do! http://animationpaper.com/old-pap-free-download/

To start I would simply suggest you use Pencil2d or the old PaP which are both free.

Beyond that you have Flash and Toonboom Animate for vector or TVPaint for raster based (mimics real world mediums).

https://wonderunit.com/storyboarder/

This has been pretty good for me. If you like drawing on paper like me, you can print out their layouts with a special QR and take a picture of it with your phone, then import that back into the app and it’ll automatically import the boards so you can use them in an animatic.

Or you can draw all digital, and send individual frames to photoshop to the app for more advanced drawings.

For camerawork I’m not sure there is any easy solution, maybe blender with grease pencil as some face suggested.

This book is a great start: https://www.amazon.com/Animators-Survival-Kit-Principles-Classical/dp/086547897X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1528737707&sr=8-1&keywords=the+animators+survival+kit+by+richard+williams

Animating on paper is a lot of fun, but it can get expensive. If you can afford to get Adobe Animate and a cheap tablet like the Bamboo, you can practice a lot of different animation techniques.

There are great youtube channels like BaM Animation that have helpful tutorials.

All you need to be an animator is a strong reel and great work ethic. As long as you work hard and practice your animation, you can make it without drowning it debt. Good luck!

XP-Pen Deco 01 came with 8 extra tips. The replacement tips are on XP-Pen and Amazon. The tip's life depends on how hard you press when you draw. I put about 70 hours into my first tip and I think it'll last another 70 hours.

I checked out some of his videos. They're great! I'll be using this to supplement my Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain run. Thanks for this!

And cool! I'll try to find some local meetups; this will also most likely help a lot with networking.