5+ best cartoon making software for PC [2022 Guide]

Watching cartoons is a guilty pleasure for many adults. But what if you took this interest to the next level and installed cartoon-making software on your Windows PC?

You can use it to unleash your imagination and relive childhood memories. Moreover, if you’re a parent, you can then watch your creations together with your kids.

There are various secrets about the animation universe that you didn’t hear about, so if you need to learn about how animation works or what tools are used, you will find out here.

Thinking about your favorite animated characters? With such animation programs, you’ll be able to draw and create lively characters and captivating stories for everyone to watch.

In this article, we’re going to list the best tools that you can use to make your own cartoons.

What are the principles of making a cartoon character?

In order to create outstanding cartoons and build famous characters, there are some principles to follow in order to succeed.

First of all, everybody loves a good story. If you want to have memorable characters, it’s beneficial to develop a story where they are interacting with each other and offer real-life actions or emotions.

Here are the practical steps to help you create amazing cartoon characters:

• Doodle shapes and lines – Loosen your wrist and start drawing sketches with different shapes using your pencil. This is also recommended by designers as beginning steps in creating your cartoons.
• Refine the shapes – The next step is define your character with visible shapes. To do this, you can use C or S basic shapes to draw your doodle from the previous step.
• Add character details – Visualize the details or expressions of your character and add them accordingly. You can turn the character shapes into bigger or smaller ones for a better look.
• Check the silhouette – See if your character’s silhouette is discoverable and can be guessed by the viewers.
• Add the last details and finish – Draw your character last details like freckels, big nose, ear rings, hats. Clean all the lines and add color to fully create your cartoon character.

How to make cartoon characters on a PC?

First things first, if you need to create animated characters on your own PC, it’s quite essential to use drawing software that is dedicated to lively cartoon creations.

So, the first requirement would be to download a cartoon-making tool and learn how to use it properly on a PC. You’re in luck here, just pick one of the solutions listed below.

After you are all warmed up and ready to create your cartoon characters, open your drawing software and start a new project or open a file.

Depending on the software, there are specific steps you will use to draw like selecting a brush or pencil, changing colors, adjusting brush size, or using shadows.

Adobe Animate CC is a powerful animation tool that you can use to create a variety of animated content, including cartoons, ads, games, and other interactive content.

You can then export your creations and publish them on dedicated platforms, such as HTML5 Canvas, WebGL, or Snap SVG.

The software offers a bevy of animation tools that will help you create impressive cartoons. Also, since this is an Adobe product, there are various Adobe tools built into the software that will come in very handy during the creation process.

Let’s quickly look at its key features:

• Adobe Stocks integration (allows you to access millions of high-quality photos and vector graphics)
• Modify the path of a stroke after it’s been drawn
• Scale your drawings to any resolution without losing image quality
• Quickly create complex animations with adjacent frames and different colors
• Supports 4K+ video export with custom resolutions for the latest Ultra HD and Hi-DPI displays

Adobe Animate

Enhance your cartoon-making skills with industry-standard motion graphics and visual effects software.

This is the second cartoon-making software from Adobe that we added to this list. Indeed, this company offers users quite a few useful tools to create 2D animation.

After Effects is a complex and powerful animation software that you can use to design professional graphics and visual effects. If you’re not planning to create intricate animations, you can also use this tool to create cartoons.

Using this animation tool can bring you infinite advantages in this field due to incredible motion graphics. Hence, you can design animated personas, have visual effects, 2D animation to 3D modeling using Cinema 4D Lite.

Plus, you have motion graphics templates that can be used in video editing or animating characters in real-time using Character Animator functionality.

Let’s quickly look at its key features:

• You can use your webcam and own facial expressions to animate your characters
• The tool is part of Creative Cloud, allowing you to access and share all your creatives across your apps and devices
• Design interactive animations with a simple frame-by-frame process
• Simplified tools for rigging and modifying animated characters

If you want to see After Effects in action, check out this page and launch the video.

Adobe After Effects

Enhance your cartoon-making skills with industry-standard motion graphics and visual effects software.

This animator solution from Adobe helps you create lively characters with human-like expressions and movements.

You can actually create live performances using the webcam and microphone on your PC to animate your cartoons in an imaginative manner.

The body tracker functionality can follow your movements and transmit them easily to your animated characters.

If you need to bring your characters to life, there are professional tools like character customization where you select puppet templates.

Moreover, you can set up different triggers for your characters and determine their reactions using the keyboard. In this way, you can select their reactions or emotions in seconds.

Let’s quickly look at its key features:

• Add transcripts for better lip syncing
• Timeline navigation tools
• Puppet Maker interface
• Predefined cartoons templates
• Integration with other Adobe apps

Adobe Character Animator

Imagine the most expressive cartoon characters and animate them using professional tools from Adobe.

This tool helps you create studio-quality cartoon videos using nice backgrounds, thousands of animated characters with built-in activities and expressions, loads of properties, a huge database of sound effects, music, and tons of features.

Animaker is an animation studio on the cloud that you can use for free with a limited video length and exports per month. Upgrade plans are available at an affordable price.

This complete video-making software can offer qualitative animation live-action tools to create professional presentations.

Using the character builder, you will create animated cartoon characters with extensive facial expressions, lip-sync functionality, or Smart move for more complex actions.

That being said, Animaker will be of great help if you need to create complex animations on your own PC. Let’s quickly look at its key features:

• Cartoon Character Maker
• Character Movements Pack with motion presets and adjustable speed
• Cartoon Background Pack (over 130 elements)
• Photo to Character over 140 Animates and 55 samples of cartoon characters

Animaker

It all starts with easy drag and drop, and ends with a plethora of sounds, features, and animated stories in one place!

Visme is visual presentation software that helps you create animated decks with different graphics, characters, and design elements.

With this design platform, anyone can make valuable presentations using visual icons or animated cartoons to better transmit your deck slides.

There are multiple templates you can use to build infographics, social media graphics, or mockups and thus present your business projects right to the Boardroom.

Plus, you can benefit from a variety of charts and professional animated icons or characters. Using such tools, the advantage of the visual component will boost your presentation sky high.

This being said, consider Visme as your presentation tool if you need video and animation support for your professional projects.

Let’s quickly look at its key features:

• Branded document templates
• Statistics and figures data widgets
• 10,000 vector icons
• Interactivity templates
• Videos & photos elements

Visme

Develop your visual presentations using animated icons and characters to promote your brand ideas.

Renderforest animation is an online platform that works like software. You can use it to create different animations for different purposes.

You can create small cartoons and explainer animations as well as whiteboard animations.

This choice is the go-to method to create video animations to present concepts or stories for anyone to understand. It’s also a fun and joyful way to build your business presentation in an effective way.

You only have to select a template, start your animation from scratch or choose constructed stories. Create or choose your cartoon characters, attribute their specific actions, select the scenes, and you’re all set.

Plus, you can customize the design how you prefer and choose fonts, colors, visuals for the final show to be flawless.

Let’s quickly look at its key features:

• Wide variety of templates to get you started
• You can also add your own images, videos, and sounds to the template
• Interactive guidelines (an assistant and the right comments from the developers will be right beside you to help)
• Create whiteboard animations and 3D animations

Renderforest

Renderforest is a fantastic and free online tool to create amazing movies, slideshows, animations, and intros.