2D Animation with Pencil2D

Kids discover how their favourite cartoons are made! They'll learn what animation is, watch fun examples, and open Pencil2D for the first time to explore the buttons, tools, and canvas.

• What is animation? How do cartoons move?
• Activity: Explore Pencil2D and draw your first doodle on the canvas

Time to get creative! Kids learn to draw characters using simple shapes — circles for heads, rectangles for bodies, triangles for hats. They'll explore the brush, pencil, and fill tools and add bright colors to their creations.

• Using pencil, brush, and shape tools to draw characters
• Activity: Draw and color your own character using simple shapes

The magic begins! Kids learn that animation is really just lots of pictures shown quickly. They'll create their first 3-frame animation — like a character waving hello — and see their drawing come to life.

• Understanding frames and the timeline in Pencil2D
• Activity: Create a 3-frame waving hand animation

Kids practice frame-by-frame animation with classic exercises: a bouncing ball and a simple walk cycle. They learn how changing a drawing slightly in each frame creates the illusion of smooth movement.

• Frame-by-frame animation basics and timing
• Activity: Animate a bouncing ball and a character taking steps

Discover the secret tool that real animators use! Onion skinning shows a ghost of the previous frame so kids can draw the next one in exactly the right position. Animations will look much smoother after this lesson.

• What is onion skinning and how it helps animators
• Activity: Redo your bouncing ball using onion skinning for smoother motion

Every cartoon needs a setting! Kids learn to draw backgrounds — a park, a bedroom, outer space — and discover how layers work to keep the background separate from the characters moving in front of it.

• Drawing backgrounds and understanding layers
• Activity: Create a colorful scene with a sky, ground, and objects

Kids master layers by putting their animated character on one layer and their background on another. They'll see how their character moves across the scene while the background stays still — just like a real cartoon!

• Using multiple layers to combine characters and backgrounds
• Activity: Animate your character walking across your background scene

Great animations tell stories! Kids learn the basics of storyboarding — planning what happens at the beginning, middle, and end. They'll sketch out a simple 3-scene story for their final cartoon project.

• Introduction to storyboarding and planning a short animation
• Activity: Draw a 3-panel storyboard for your own cartoon story

Using their storyboard as a guide, kids start animating their final cartoon. They'll combine everything they've learned — drawing, frames, onion skinning, layers, and backgrounds — into one complete animated story.

• Animating your storyboard scene by scene
• Activity: Complete at least 2 scenes of your cartoon with characters and backgrounds

It's showtime! Kids finish their cartoon, add any final touches, and learn how to export it as a video file. Then comes the best part — a class screening where everyone watches each other's cartoons!

• Final touches, exporting your cartoon as a video
• Activity: Export your animation and present it to the class