I always liked to draw and was thinking of becoming a cartoonist as a kid, but the tedium of the technique at the time (1980s) drove me away. Now we have computers and everyone is making flash animations. Flash attracted me because you don't have to redraw the thing every frame, you just move it's pieces. However this severly restricts the expressiveness of ones creations. Also, you have to draw on a computer using a mouse or drawing tablet, neither of which worked ever gave me the results I wanted. So I tried claymation because this allows expressiveness without having to redraw the character each frame. Problem with this is the clay is hard to work with and a pain.

Finally I came up with a very easy and fun way to do animations which can be both expressive, do not require redrawing of the whole character each frame, and allow very easy modification: without messy erasing and without having to use a computer mouse or computer drawing tablet. For this method all you need is a 'dry erase' board ('whiteboard'), a usb camera, a computer, and some free software.



