r/animation: The Internet's Largest Animation Community

r/animation is Reddit's premier community for animators, motion designers, and animation enthusiasts, bringing together over 500,000 members who share original animated work, discuss industry developments, recommend software and hardware, and support each other through the demanding but rewarding process of bringing images to life through motion.

The community spans every animation discipline—2D hand-drawn, 2D digital, 3D CGI, stop motion, motion graphics, and experimental animation—creating a cross-pollination of techniques and perspectives that enriches every member's understanding of the medium. A stop-motion animator might discover digital workflow solutions from a 3D artist's post, while a motion graphics designer might find inspiration in traditional hand-drawn animation techniques.

What Makes This Community Valuable

Cross-Discipline Exposure

Unlike forums dedicated to specific animation software or techniques, r/animation encompasses the full spectrum of animation methods. This breadth exposes members to approaches and aesthetics they might never encounter within their own specialization, fostering creative flexibility and broader artistic appreciation.

Industry Intelligence

Members regularly share industry news, studio hiring updates, festival announcements, and career advice that help aspiring animators navigate the professional landscape. Discussions about working conditions, salary expectations, and studio cultures provide transparency that the animation industry often lacks.

Software and Workflow Discussion

The community provides extensive software recommendations and comparisons for every animation discipline—from Toon Boom and TVPaint for 2D to Blender and Maya for 3D, plus specialized tools for stop motion, motion graphics, and compositing. These discussions help animators choose the right tools for their specific needs and budgets.

Feedback and Critique

Members share works in progress and completed animations for community feedback. The comments on animation posts tend to be specific, technical, and genuinely helpful—addressing timing, spacing, weight, anticipation, and other animation principles that determine the quality of animated motion.

The Disciplines Represented

2D Animation

Traditional and digital 2D animation remains a vibrant part of the community, with members sharing hand-drawn frame-by-frame work, digital 2D animation in Toon Boom and TVPaint, Flash/Animate-style vector animation, and hybrid approaches that combine multiple techniques. The 2D animation community within r/animation is particularly passionate about preserving and advancing traditional animation skills that many feel are undervalued in a 3D-dominated industry.

3D Animation

3D animators discuss character animation, rigging, motion capture, procedural animation, and rendering workflows across software platforms including Blender, Maya, Cinema 4D, and Houdini. The growing accessibility of 3D tools—particularly the free, open-source Blender—has expanded the 3D animation community dramatically, and r/animation reflects this growth with an increasing volume of 3D content from independent creators.

Stop Motion and Experimental

Stop motion animators, claymation artists, and experimental animation creators find a welcoming niche within the broader community. These specialized techniques often generate enthusiastic engagement because they showcase the handmade, tactile qualities that distinguish physical animation from digital approaches.

Motion Graphics

The overlap between animation and motion graphics/motion design creates productive cross-pollination within the community. Motion graphics artists share work that applies animation principles to typography, infographics, UI elements, and brand content—demonstrating how fundamental animation skills transfer across creative disciplines.

Career and Education Guidance

r/animation provides some of the most honest, experience-based career guidance available for aspiring animators. Members working at major studios—Disney, Pixar, DreamWorks, Sony, Netflix, Cartoon Network—occasionally share insights about hiring processes, portfolio expectations, and the daily realities of production work. These firsthand accounts provide crucial information that recruitment marketing and school brochures typically omit.

Discussions about animation education help prospective students evaluate schools, online courses, and self-study resources. Community members who have attended specific animation programs share honest assessments of the education quality, job placement rates, and whether the investment justified the outcome—information that prospective students desperately need but rarely receive from schools themselves.

Festival Culture and Independent Animation

The community actively promotes animation festivals, short film screenings, and independent animation projects that showcase the art form beyond commercial production. Festival announcements, submission deadline reminders, and discussions of award-winning shorts expose members to the breadth of animation as an art form—experimental work, artistic shorts, documentary animation, and personal expression that differs dramatically from the commercial animation most audiences encounter.

This festival culture helps maintain the artistic identity of animation within a community that could easily become dominated by commercial production discussion. By celebrating independent and experimental work alongside studio animation, r/animation reinforces the idea that animation is both an art form and an industry—and that both dimensions deserve attention and respect.

Resources and Learning Paths

The community serves as a curated gateway to animation learning resources. Members regularly share and recommend specific tutorials, courses, books, and practice methods that have proven effective for different animation disciplines. For aspiring animators navigating the overwhelming volume of available educational content, these peer-vetted recommendations provide a reliable guide to resources that actually deliver results.

The Bottom Line

r/animation is the most comprehensive and active online community for animators across all disciplines. Its coverage of 2D, 3D, stop motion, and motion graphics, combined with honest career guidance, software discussions, festival culture, and constructive technical feedback, makes it an essential resource for anyone creating animated content or aspiring to enter the animation field.