If you have an interest in animation, videomaking or anything in-between, there are countless websites out there that provide free content with no drawbacks to you or your creativity. Whether you’re a beginner with just a passing interest or an experienced artist who can manipulate Photoshop, After Effects, Flash and the like with no trouble at all, the following resources have a whole bunch of stuff to offer you:
Archive.org
On their front page, Archive.org boasts that they have an entire “…library of millions of free books, movies, software, music, websites, and more,” which you’re welcome to peruse for free. Certainly one of its most popular sections is the Prelinger Archives, which is a collection of old-timey, amateur, educational, cartoon-y films that are available for download and any and all modifications/manipulations afterward.
Of course, the Prelinger Archives are under video, but there are tons of texts, books, audio, software, pictures, etc. right there at your fingertips. Right away, you can play around with your editing software of choice and make some really cool videos.
Archive3D is a great resource that caters moreso to artists that like to manipulate with the 3D--maybe those who like to dabble in video game design even. With nearly 50,000 models, from people to animals to plants to furniture, Archive3D will most likely have something that fits your needs.
Download the object, put it right into Photoshop or other editing software and start playing around with the transform tool, the lighting, the coloring, the movement and more. You can even add more than one or some free pictures from Google or Flickr to give more depth.
Creative Commons
Creative Commons is a great website that filters through a number of other sites (like YouTube, Flickr, Vimeo and more) in order to give you content that's free to use and modify. Google has a similar capability as does Flickr, but with Creative Commons, you can rest assured that the content you're using in your projects are 100% legally free.
Through Creative Commons, you're also encouraged to share your own work so that more and more artists are privy to the very best when making their portfolios.
With a few quick clicks, a beautiful painting by artist Arturo Espinosa on Flickr is found, free to use! Check out the rest of his paintings to see more like the one above.
Magazine, Papers, Photographs
Cut-outs and stop motion animation will always be someone's favorite. Not to mention, it's a whole lot of fun. By cutting out objects and people from the things noted above, you can make one fantastic animated short or even movie as the South Park creators can show.
This video shows Terry Gillian, famed for his part in the Monty Python series, details his own process with this type of animation below. You can cut a person's photograph in half and make them say just about anything, cut out whole pictures and move them around in all sorts of ways--there's really no limit.
