Make your first cartoon in 5 minutes

This guide takes you from an empty browser tab to a short talking cartoon you can download. You need nothing but a web browser, and nobody will ask you to sign up.

1. Open the studio

Go to the studio. The first time you open it, two characters are already on the stage: Sunny, a person, and Grump, a dog, with a short starter cartoon of three lines. Press Play to watch it. It plays straight away, with no download.

2. Change a character

Each character's slot has a Change button. Press it on one of them and pick something else: one of the ready-made characters, an emoji, an avatar, a drawing or a photo, or a character you built in the creator. The new character takes the old one's place and its lines.

3. Write what they say

The studio starts on a simple view called What do they say?. Each row is one line of the cartoon: who says it, the words, and how they move while they say it. Type your own words over the starter lines. Keep them short: a line of five to twelve words is easy to follow when it is spoken.

4. Pick a move for each line

In each row, choose a move from the list. Talk follows the voice and is a safe choice for anyone speaking. Wave hello, Hop, Sad and Angry shake show a feeling. You can see every move playing on the moves page before you choose.

5. Make the voices

Press Make voices from the lines. The first time on a device, it downloads a free voice model of about 92 MB, once; the button shows the size before you press it. After that the voices are made inside your browser and the characters' mouths move with the words. If you would rather use your own voice, press Record my voice instead.

6. Play it, then make the video

Press Play to watch the whole cartoon. When you like it, press Make my video: the studio plays the cartoon and records it as it goes, so keep the tab open and in view until it says the video is ready. Then download it. It is an MP4 file where your browser can record MP4, otherwise WebM.

7. Save your cartoon to keep working on it

The video is the finished cartoon. To keep working on it later, press Save my cartoon to a file as well, and open that file next time. Your work is also kept in this browser, but a file is the copy that lasts.

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