Cartoons are not restricted to the entertainment world nor are they for kids alone. Today, cartoons have become an effective tool in education technology. Educationists now use animated characters to liven up their classrooms and improve understanding and assimilation.
When it comes to creating cartoon characters for educational purposes, many tools are available at your fingertips. In this post, we will look at the top tools to make animated characters. Let’s get right into the details!
1. Doratoon: The Top Cartoon Character Maker for Teaching
Doratoon is a leading cartoon character maker offering easy-to-use tools to create cartoon characters that connect with your students. Whether you want to create your character from scratch or select from a plethora of built-in characters on the platform, everything you need is available on the site.
You don’t need any design or illustration skills and experience to make a cartoon character. Doratoon offers you an intuitive platform where everything is made easy.
How to Make Cartoon Character with Doratoon
Step 1: Sign up for a Doratoon account for free
Step 2: Browse the animated character templates and select a preferred option
Step 3: Click “Edit” to modify the facial expressions and actions of the character.
Step 4: Preview your project and download it.
Doratoon helps you to create a stunning character that your students can connect to. You will find a plethora of characters with over 8000 facial expressions and actions to choose from.
Why Use Doratoon to Make Cartoon Characters
- Intuitive AI Drawing and AI Dubbing
- Over 8000 cartoon character expressions and gestures
- Over 10,000 2D and 3D animated images
- Intuitive drag-and-drop character editor
2. Visme
This is a cloud-based online animation maker that makes it easy to create cartoon characters, animated images, and infographics, among others. It features a host of animations and interactive features that enhance the creation of eye-catching animated characters.
Features of Visme:
- Customizable pre-animated assets, including characters, gestures, and illustrations
- Animated graphs, maps, and charts
- Interactive hover effects and call-to-action buttons
3. Animaker
This is a great tool for educationists looking to create interactive videos and presentations. Animaker comes with a huge library of pre-animated elements, such as cartoon characters, illustrations, and gestures. You can design a cartoon character using the different tools available on the platform.
Features of Animaker:
- Professional-level animation features, including Camera In & Out, Curve
- Huge library of animated assets and templates
- Unique video styles to remix and edit.
4. Biteable
If you don’t want to create your cartoon character from scratch but want a character you can edit, Biteable offers you many options. You will find a huge collection of animated characters and videos that you can edit and use for your educational purpose. You can explore a variety of stock footage clips, images, and scenes to create your animated character.
Features of Biteable:
- Thousands of animated characters and stock footage clips
- Hundreds of video templates
- Share the project with your team members
5. PixTeller
This is a great animation software tool you can use to make your own cartoon character. With PixTeller, you can create cartoon characters and animated videos. Simply set the frame-by-frame motions of your character and edit the features to create a whole character with attributes. You will find hundreds of pre-animated assets that you can customize.
Features of PixTeller:
- Over 100,000 shapes to create a character
- Unique text and visual effects
- Customizable frame-by-frame timeline
6. VistaCreate
VistaCreate has a huge library of pre-animated characters and objects to offer for your use. You can also explore its extensive library of animated templates to create your educational video. With VistaCreate, you can easily create animated characters; combine animated GIFs and videos with personal images.
Features of VistaCreate:
- A huge library of animations and animated characters
- Over 50 million royalty-free stock photos
- Access to an extensive collection of fonts and graphics
7. Adobe Animate
This is an improved version of Adobe Flash Pro. Adobe Animate lets you design cartoon characters using interactive vector graphics tools and 2D animations. You can easily animate avatars, characters, shapes, and many other assets with timeline controls.
Features of Adobe Animate:
- Intuitive timeline controls and advanced animation settings
- Vector brushes with pressure, velocity, smoothness, and size setting
- Typekit integration with premium web fonts
8. Blender
This is an open-source animated video editor that gives you absolute control over your animation design. The blender comes with advanced programming features and a command line for modeling, creating, and rendering 3D animations.
You can access a vast library of pre-animated cartoon characters that you can use for your teaching. You can also use the intuitive toolset to create your cartoon character.
Features of Blender:
- Exceptional modeling, sculpting, and rendering tools
- Draw and edit cartoon characters in 3D mode
- Realistic and powerful simulation toolset
9. Adobe Character Animator
This is another animation software tool from Adobe. Adobe Character Animator allows you to use motion capture to make live animation of the 2D cartoon character you create. You can use personalized facial movements with your webcam. You can also create a character in Photoshop or Illustrator and then import it into Character Animator.
Features of Adobe Character Animator:
- Integration with Illustrator and Photoshop
- Real-time motion capture with automatic facial tracking
- Character line movement with the mouse
10. Canva
If you are looking for one of the easiest software to use to design cartoon characters, Canva is an option to consider. It offers a huge library of stock images that you can edit to create your cartoon character. It lets you design graphics and posters for your teaching aid and you can easily download your project in full HD.
Features of Canva
- Hundreds of pre-animated characters to customize
- Customizable frame-by-frame timeline
- Over 100000 shapes and drawing to create cartoon characters
11. Animatron Studio
This is a feature-rich cartoon character creator that offers users a huge library of pre-animated assets and templates. You have a variety of ways to customize your characters. You can choose from the thousands of ready-made characters and objectives to customize. All tools on the platform are easy to use.
Features of Animatron Studio:
- A huge collection of pre-animated characters and objects
- A plethora of customizability options
- Built-in sound and music features
12. Pencil2D
This is another open-source animation tool that allows you to create 2D cartoon characters with traditional animation workflows and vector drawing tools. It is easy to use and works on popular platforms, such as Windows, Linux, and MaOS.
Features of Pencil2D:
- Easy-to-use interface
- Customizable toolset and toolbar
- Versatile drawing tools
13. Procreate
This is another intuitive and powerful software tool designed for animation and character designs. Procreate lets you create and recreate characters with pencils, paint, or pen on paper, making it a great software tool for beginners.
Features of Procreate:
- Draws perfect shape with QuickShape feature
- Unique FX to add stunning finishing to your character
- ColorDrop to select any color in seconds
14. Powtoon
This is an online cartoon character maker that allows you to create an interactive and fun animated character for educational purposes. It also features premade graphics assets that make your design easy and seamless. Apart from using it to create a cartoon character, you can also use Powtoon to make your whiteboard animations or explainer video.
Features of Powtoon:
- A huge library of premade templates
- Built-in animated characters and graphics
- Advanced character customization and animation controls
15. Clip Studio Paint
This is an all-inclusive animation solution that offers the platform to create 2D animation, general illustration, and comic characters. Although it has a technical user interface, Clip Studio Paint is a great tool to use if you get a hang of it.
Features of Clip Studio Paint:
- Flexible pen pressure to create high-quality and natural lines of pen on paper
- Drawing frames in-between keyframes
- Automatically reduce the start and end of brush strokes and minimize wavering and shaky lines
16. Synfig Studio
This is a robust software tool that offers advanced management of character creation to help you create top-quality animation. It offers great features that make it easy to create cartoon characters in minutes. Using its digital sprites and digital tweaking, you can create a stunning cartoon character for teaching within a short time.
Features of Synfig Studio:
- Easily convert any vector shape into a new vector tweening feature
- Over 50 filters and layers to make complex animation
- Extra Skeleton Distortion layer for complex deformation on bitmap character
17. CelAction2D
This is another powerful cartoon character maker that offers the quality of hand-drawn animation. The platform offers four different editions, including Studio, Professional, Educational, and Animator.
Irrespective of why you need a cartoon character, you will find the perfect tool to create your need on CelAction2D. It is worth mentioning that the software integrates well with other design software tools.
Features of CelAction2D:
- Has a dockable tool panel for multitasking
- Over 60 special effects for enriching cartoon characters and animation
- Advanced Inverse Kinematic tool for posing characters and models
18. KeyShot
This is an advanced but easy-to-use animation tool that lets you create scientifically accurate and photorealistic cartoon characters and animations. It supports over thirty types of 3D animation rendering and also comes with texture mapping, interactive labeling, and physical lighting, among others.
Features of KeyShot:
- Over 750 animation templates
- Over 30 3D file formats
- Interactive touch-enabled character design tools
Conclusion
These are the top 18 cartoon character makers for teachings you can use. While some require some level of skills, others are for beginners and do not require any skills. You can get started with Doratoon to see how effective and easy it is to make cartoon characters for educational purposes.