15 Best Tools to Make Your Own Animated Characters

Creating and using animated characters can help you in multiple fields like business, marketing, and the education sector. Animated characters can deliver your message more proficiently through their tone of voice, personality, and creativity. Instead of using conventional means for marketing and brand endorsement, people are now investing in reliable cartoon character makers that can craft captivating animated characters.

1. Doratoon

Doratoon is an advanced animated character creator that can build attractive cartoon characters effortlessly. This platform encourages users to show off their creativity and innovative skills by crafting unique animated characters. It offers more than 1000 animated characters that can move to engage the audience easily. You can add props and vibrant backgrounds to your animated video for interesting storytelling.

1.1 What Makes Doratoon Unique and Reliable Among Other Tools?

The key features offered in Doratoon make this tool extraordinary as it helps users build customized cartoon characters flawlessly.

• AI Dubbing: You can efficiently give voice to your animated characters through AI dubbing. This feature can convert your text to speed and automatically syncs the voice with lips movement. You can adjust the tempo of speech delivery and can change the respective settings. Thus, it will instantly grasp the audience’s attention, creating a professional impression.
• Path Animation: To entertain the audience, Doratoon offers the key feature of path animation. Through this, you can make your cartoon characters move from one specific location to another smoothly. Hence, it’s an advanced feature that will instantly influence the viewer.
• AI Intelligent Drawing: AI intelligent drawing helps the user to experiment with their innovative ideas in drawing the characters. This feature automatically eradicates the flaws in drawing and gives suggestions about the pencil thickness and color combinations. It makes smooth drawings and also provides appropriate animation effects for more enhancement.
• Templates and Props: Doratoon offers several templates distinguished by various categories. You can use the given templates and begin creating your animation easily. Moreover, it has multiple props, which you can add to the animated characters for more relevance. By embedding suitable props, you can make interesting scenarios related to your message.

1.2 How to Make Your Own Animated Characters Using Doratoon?

Step 1: Visit the Official Doratoon Website

Navigate to the official website of Doratoon using your web browser. On its homepage, tap on “Workbench” displayed at the top, and sign in to your Doratoon account.

Step 2: Choose Preferred Character

Now select whether you want horizontal or vertical orientation for your video. Afterward, a Doratoon editor will open, from which click on the “Characters” tab given in the left section. Click on the “All” button to explore all the available characters. From the given options, select your preferred character.

Step 3: Add Customizations

You can add customizations to your animated character from the given options. For example, you can change your skin color, body structure, clothing, accessories, and facial features with a few clicks.

1.3 What are the Pros and Cons of Doratoon?

Pros

• The user interface is friendly and easy to use as it includes a compressive tutorial for beginners.
• To fulfill your requirements, you can add accessories and outfits to the animated characters. Moreover, you can change their facial expressions to adjust them to the situation.
• You can also record your voice and synchronize it with your created animated character.
• This tool offers a wide range of animation effects that can be embedded easily to add more depth to your animation video.

Con

• To access the AI features of Doratoon, you need to buy its premium subscription plan.

2. Biteable

Biteable is an affordable animation creator that helps users design multiple animated cartoons easily. It has a built-in library of templates, animation effects, props, and templates that can be utilized for producing captivating animation characters. You can use cartoon templates from the library with the added music in your video flawlessly. It enables the user to make a cartoon character regardless of age and gender, along with additional options for customization.

Pros

• After creating a cartoon character, you can add background music from its built-in library or import it from your device.
• It’s a safe and secure animation character maker that does not require users to download any app or other files.

Con

• You can only add your business fonts if you buy their annual package.

3. Powtoon

Powtoon has a clean interface that encourages beginners to explore this software comfortably. This cartoon character creator has a good and trendy collection of clipart and media tools. It offers two modes to begin creating the animated characters: Quick Edit and Full Studio. By selecting either of these modes, you can effectively start building the animated characters by utilizing the respective options.

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Pros

• It has easy options to export or upload the project file with a single click. Through this, you can upload your video containing the animated cartoons to YouTube, Facebook, and TikTok easily.
• While making custom cartoon characters, you can add your brand logo to their outfits for effortless brand endorsement.

Con

• In the long run, this software can charge you with costly subscription plans to continue its usage.

4. Animaker

Animaker is one of the professional software providing various options to make animated characters. Using its drag-and-drop option, you can instantly add elements, backgrounds, and props to your characters. You can easily adjust the position of added props and backgrounds to the animated characters for more accuracy. Thus, it provides the best effective tools to create appealing visuals through animated characters.

Pros

• Animaker makes it easier to give a human voice to animated characters. Through more than 200 voices and 25 languages, you can give a natural voice tone to the character.
• You can add 2D backgrounds, GIFs, stickers, and special effects from its built-in library conveniently.

Con

• In a free trial, you would have limited tools to create your animated character.

5. Renderforest

Renderforest can bring 3D and 2D animation visuals for an enhanced and modern experience. It offers various templates of animation characters categorized by different scenarios and situations. By selecting any of the animated characters from the template, you can type your text and add further elements. Moreover, you can also type your script, and the tool will display the related and suitable animated characters in front of you.

Pros

• Apart from creating a single animated character, you can use pre-made group characters such as casual or corporate office groups.
• Once done with building characters, you can add transitions to your project for a more smooth and professional look.

Con

• This tool puts a watermark on the project if you are using a free version.

6. Blender

If you are looking for a professional and modern tool to create animated characters, Blender can be a suitable choice. It has a wide range of animation tool sets such as pose editor, rendering, simulation,  multiple kinematics, and NLA. Using this tool, you can precisely build an animated cartoon character by focusing on its facial features, head shape, and expressions. Thus, it’s a professional and comprehensive 3D tool with many options for creating cartoon characters.

Pros

• The modeling feature allows the user to sculpt and transform their animated characters with high efficiency.
• It offers a “Grease Pencil” through which you can draw in a 3D space to showcase your creative skills.

Con

• Due to the comprehensive set of tools, the user interface can be overwhelming for beginners.

7. Doodly

If you want to make animated characters, especially for whiteboard animation, Doodly is the most budget-friendly software. By using drawing hands, you can sketch your animated cartoons in a unique and simple way that will effectively engage the audience. Using this tool, you have the complete freedom to build animated characters with unique whiteboard backgrounds and hand styles.

Pros

• It has a built-in library of Doodly characters, which are built by professional artists. From here, you can easily pick any of the pre-made doodly images.
• It offers 24/7 customer support to tackle the queries of users anytime.

Con

• It has limited audio editing options for animated characters.

8. Maya

Maya is a highly-advanced tool widely used by professionals to create realistic animated characters. It has numerous options to add natural and high-quality effects to your animated characters. Through its deformation effects, you can give life to your 3D animated characters, which will produce flawless visuals. It also offers 3D modeling, such as polygon modeling and NURBS modeling, through which you can build 3D characters using geometric primitives.

Pros

• It offers a graph editor through which you can edit animated characters using a graphical representation.
• It provides “Interactive Hair Grooming” from which users can create realistic hair using its powerful tools.

Con

• It takes extensive time to render the animation.

9. Cinema 4D

Cinema 4D is an easy-to-use and flexible cartoon character maker through which professionals can experiment by using their imagination. It offers advanced features such as the Quaternion Rotations and Cappuccino for motion paths that adds enhancement to the animated characters effectively. Moreover, you can create captivating facial expressions, deformations, and walk cycles of animated characters using modern technology.

Pros

• It provides a character component feature through which artists can create templates by defining the objects and hierarchies in a technical manner.
• Using CMotion objects, you can flawlessly create cyclical movements for your animated characters.

Con

• The subscription plan is expensive as compared to other tools.

10. Moovly

Moovly is a simple animation software that creates attractive cartoon characters in less time. The user interface is classic displaying all the necessary features in a structured manner. To begin, the user has to choose any offered template from the options that fulfill his demand. Afterward, you can start creating your cartoon character and can conduct the modifications. Users can easily flip, rotate, redefine and position the cartoon character in its timeline.

Pros

• This tool does not have a restriction like a video length limit which makes it highly reliable.
• It has multiple affordable subscription plans, unlike other tools.

Con

• The customer support of this software is not timely responsive.

11. KeyShot

KeyShot is a 3D rendering tool for creating appealing animated characters. It’s not a time-consuming tool and produces high-quality animated results instantly. It has more than 750 templates in its cloud storage which will give inspiration to the users. The tools embedded in KeyShot are scientifically accurate, which generates more realistic results.

Pros

• It has a fast rendering speed due to the use of advanced algorithms.
• It creates high-end and natural results with the help of scientific properties like IOR and subsurface scattering.

Con

• The file sizes in this software can get extremely large.

12. Harmony

Harmony is a 2D animation tool that makes animated characters in a professional ecosystem. With this modern animation software, you can draw your characters and can adjust the opacity of the pencil easily. You can manage your color palettes and painting brushes on this software to add an artistic element to animated cartoons. You can also utilize special effects and compositing features to add more depth to your cartoon characters.

Pros

• You can control the movement and timing of animation through the onion skinning feature.
• The keyframe animation of this software automatically fills the gap between two paths.

Con

• The price of the tool increases every year, making it expensive to use its paid features.

13. MotionBuilder

MotionBuilder is a unique tool that produces realistic movements for animated characters. Many users prefer this tool to make their cartoon characters more human-like and realistic. In its interface, you can create and modify your characters’ animation movements comfortably without complications. Thus, it functions at a fast processing speed in an interactive friendly environment.

Pros

• You can create and manipulate animation and the imported human skeleton through Control Rig on this software.
• The animation layers and non-linear multimedia functionality makes the animated characters more special.

Con

• The interface of this tool needs more organization and improvements.

14. Pencil2D

Pencil2D is an open-source cartoon character generator that works on major platforms like Windows, Linus, and Mac. It’s a lightweight tool so that you won’t face any hurdles while creating cartoon characters. For creating animated characters, this tool provides a simple and friendly user interface for non-professionals. It has various options to edit and create, like brush, custom colors, eraser, and bucket tool.

Pros

• To optimize your speed while creating animated characters, you can create and use shortcuts on this software.
• It’s a completely free tool to use and can be used without any restrictions.

Con

• It does not offer pre-made templates on its interface.

15. Anireel

Anireel is a popular animated character creator that makes flawless cartoons with a few clicks. The character builder of this tool enables the user to make custom cartoon characters in a safe environment. It offers a wide range of options through which you can craft the character of your choice. You can choose facial features, accessories, footwear, clothes, and hairstyles through this tool.

Pros

• There is a huge variety of animated templates in this tool which can be suitable for multiple scripts.
• You can import assets on this tool that can be blended with your cartoon character.

Con

• This tool does not work on Mac operating systems such as Intel and M1 Mac.

How to Choose the Best Cartoon Character Creator

To choose the best suitable animated character creator, make sure to consider the following points:

• Easy to Use Interface: You must consider a tool that has a clean and simple interface. If you choose an intimidating or extremely professional tool, you may find it complicated that can affect the process of creating cartoon characters.
• Offers a Wide Range of Outfits: The reliable animated software always offers a wide variety of outfits and accessories. It should consist of the outfits of different regions and backgrounds so that you can use them for multiple projects.
• Cost-Effective: Cartoon character creators are often expensive, but you may find a suitable tool in the market that has affordable plans. Make sure that your preferred tool is budget-friendly so that it won’t overburden you in the future.

Conclusion

Do you want to make attractive animated characters? This article has highlighted many cartoon character generators with their advantages and drawbacks for your convenience. However, if you want to make animated characters without any hassle and with a friendly user interface, use Doratoon. Doratoon offers multiple distinct features that will help you to display your innovative skills in a professional manner.

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