2D Paper Animation

2D Paper Animation Styled Animation Studio Based Near Glasgow, Scotland, UK

Sundstedt Animation was founded in 2010 by Anders Sundstedt, a talented Swedish handcrafted 2D Animation Film Maker and Illustrator, based near Glasgow, Scotland, UK. We love stop motion and cut paper animation. We make digital 2D paper cut-out animation, cut paper animation with flat characters and flat paper props.

The Lark and the Loon – The Old Red Rooster (Official Music Video). Animation Director, Illustrator & Animator: Anders Sundstedt. 2018

Our studio is small, and we do our paper cut out animation styled animations in a flat 2D style. Making 3D paper characters and setting up a paper film studio is challenging when you work from a home office. So instead we make our beautiful animations with the look and feel of paper, digitally. This gives us a unique, clean and modern approach to cutout paper animation. We rig our flat characters and cut-out illustration props in a similar way to traditional cutout animation.

We still get the distinctive look of paper cut-out animation, using technical skills to animate a digital paper cut out, including the scanning of paper textures, scanning or own paint textures, watercolour, oil paint and coloured paper. This makes our 2D paper animations flat, clean and very tidy. But if we want to add more noise, grain, grit or other imperfections to our cut-out illustrations, we can do this in post production.

Our characters are digital, handcrafted 2D puppets, instead of origami puppets. For our paper style explainer videos and music videos, we design all illustrated artwork from scratch. Because our characters are not origami, folded characters, our puppets never lose their shape or get damaged, which is great if you for example ever need us to make an updated version of your animation, or adding a new scene. We can always go back to the source files and project files, while keeping the distinctive look of cut-out animation.

We can still generate the look of multiple layers of paper, using digital lighting and shadows on the digital cut-out illustrations and props. We can also move the virtual camera, just like a real camera. For each shot in the animation, we illustrate and draw all the shapes for the props, backgrounds, foregrounds and characters. We then apply our custom paper-style textures, colours, brushes and painted details, to give a look of actual paper cut-out. We design the characters and then divide the characters into smaller segments, piecing together the individual cut-out shapes digitally. For example, the characters head with the neck, and a foot with an ankle.

Because it is all digital “vector” type of animation, we do use rigs, like in a cut-out flat character, but we don’t need physical wires rigs, instead we use maths equations and software to create our paper-style cut-out character rigs. Real paper puppets have benefits, because they can be quicker to make initially, but they also have disadvantages that 2D flat digital rigs do not have, such as a limited lifespan. This means we don’t need to have replacement body-parts or copies of our props and characters. Instead, our backups are digital backups on hard-drives or the cloud. We can backup our characters and 2d paper animations both locally and remotely. This is an important advantage and a great argument for hiring Sundstedt Animation to make your flat characters cut-out style of animations.

In our 2D animated paper animation style films, we can always go back to a previous shot in a film and make changes, such as moving a character or background, or even replacing parts and changing the paper texture, colour and the scene lighting. This is also something that is not feasible with physical paper animations, where the source / composition no longer exists after the project is completed. This is a huge advantage of using digital animation to imitate the distinctive look of cut-out shapes.

It is important to note, that real paper crafted 3D origami characters that are folded, are extremely difficult to try and animated on a computer digitally. So if your you are looking for origami characters and 3D puppets, then you should consider actual photographed paper animation instead. This is something we don’t currently provide, simple because we don’t have the equipment or origami folding experience.

Instead, because we have many years experience in making flat 2D animated explainer videos, marketing and and music videos, this makes us specialised in also making flat, 2d paper-styled animations of very high quality. We are specialized in animating cut-out silhouettes type of 2D paper animation. So if you did have a paper animation project or cutout paper animation ideas in mind for your video, then we can advise you how we can make this video as digital, flat 2D paper cut-out style instead of origami, filmed video.

Other benefits of making digital paper animations, is that things like camera-shakes and effects, is not an issue. We can apply camera-shakes, grain, noise, DOF and colour grading in post. But only when and if we want these “imperfections” or added effects. We can also apply specific grain looks like Super-8 if that is the look we are going for in our cutout animation.

We can also change the lighting and colour from day to night, without changing the lighting of a physical set.

If you have any questions please do get in touch. You can email info@sundstedt.co.uk to answer any questions you may have, or use the contact form.

If you’ve got a 2D paper style project in mind please feel free to chat with us in real-time using the chat app on the website.

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