UPDATE: Please upload your video file to Google Drive or as an unlisted YouTube video and share the link in the post, videos and gifs haven't been loading properly in the project gallery.

You will be creating a piece of character animation of a single character doing a simple A>B motion. Using ONLY 3 base keyframes, you are going to optimize them through the techniques taught in this class.

Throughout the process, you will:

Brainstorm your character’s action
Storyboard/plan out the animation
Draw no more than 3 base keyframes of your character - Starting pose, main inbetween, finishing pose (in real world applications of course you can have as many keyframes as you want/are able to create in time, but doing too many here will defeat the purpose of this exercise)
Utilize the 12 principles of animation to draw and separate layers on small but crucial details, such as hair and clothing
Manipulate your current drawings to give illusions of motion like x, y, and z

You can choose your own motion, or choose one of the four prompts outlined in the class project video:

A character dropping down from the top of the screen
A character catching something
A character startled by something
A character falling over

Your Objective

The idea is to make these 3 frames look as fluid and full of life as you can, without locking yourself in a room with your pen and tablet for 4 years.

By doing this, you will begin to train yourself to look for ways to save time and effort while still keeping an engaging and dynamic animated look.

Resources:

If you are new to Adobe Animate, here is a link to some good fundamentals of the program - https://helpx.adobe.com/animate/tutorials.html
If you want a refresher on the 12 principles of animation, please either read this guide: https://www.creativebloq.com/advice/understand-the-12-principles-of-animation
- Or watch this video - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uDqjIdI4bF4 - this will help you get a better eye for making quick decisions with these techniques.
- For some good supplementary material, this GDQ talk shows some of these techniques in action: https://youtu.be/Mw0h9WmBlsw
I’ve included all my project files, such as:
- My main final finished animation (Animate)
- All my simple prompts (Photoshop)
- All my example demonstrations (Animate & Photoshop)
- My character reference sheet & storyboard template (Photoshop)

Post Your Progress & Final Project

Please feel free to post your progress below in the Project Gallery, and please don’t hesitate to ask me or your fellow classmates for feedback.

When you have finished your awesome animation, please upload both the exported movie file and your original working file in the Project Gallery, either through Google Drive or YouTube.

I can’t wait to see what you all come up with!

Mari Alvarez

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