Traditgital Animation Lesson 1 - The Bouncing Ball

1. Introduction: Hello, everyone. My name is Keith. I'm a freelance animator. I'd like to welcome you all to TRA Digital animation Lesson one. The bouncing ball during the course of this particular lesson we're gonna create is something very much like this. A simple animation of a ball bouncing in place. The hardware we're going to use for this easy there a mouse or a drawing tablet with a stylists. The software is Adobe Flash, CS five. If you don't have this particular program, no need to worry. There's a link included in the lesson description for the latest version called Adobe Animate Creative Cloud. Now let's get started. 2. In-program Tools: for this lesson. We're gonna need to know the brush to the keyboard shortcut is be fable right here. And you need to go to the brush size to bar here. It's like the smallest one co two properties set this moving to zero. Okay. And there's the eraser tool, which is e able right here. It's when we can leave. As is, we don't have to mess with the brush size. Then there's a select two, which is control mouse drag or stylist drag. Okay, so that's hit the control key. And then his dragon it is. If you're on Windows, okay, then there is the free transform two, or Q, which is available right here. What that does if you created something here is allows you to skew it any way you want. I don't even allows you to just rotate things as well. Just like that. Typical. This will just speed up the process when you're at a meeting very, very important to know. OK, then there's the undo button, which is control Z available right here. Or you could just actually go to the edit. It's Anglican. Uh, click. Undo here. Um then there is copy which is control. See, available right here. We can do paste and center or paste in place for the purpose of this lesson. We're going to use paste in place. Just gonna make the animation a bit easier, which is shift, which is control shift and envy. Okay, then there's a flipping of the frames. What this means is, if you're on this particular frame here, if you collect one of these two keys which is available next to the M key on your keyboard , what is gonna allow you to do is just go back and forth just like that. Okay, then there is I don't stake there. Then there's the moving selected frames or moving selected items in the frames, which is using these arrow keys on the keyboard. So you select this frame here if you go up and down using those keys. Very simple. Okay, 3. Squash And Stretch: Okay, so now we're gonna talk about squash and stretch So two very, very basic concepts you have a ball, and it's either going to squash for the purpose of this exercise. Always going to stretch you there. You okay, so, in animation, at some point in time, there's going to be some amount of squash and stretch on. It's also called exaggeration. So if you have a face, you know, I hear when he opens his mouth like that, especially if it's a really, really cartoony kind of like face. Or if it's, you know, if it's the scream, You guys like paintings. Oh, right. This is gonna be some element of squash and stretch and exaggerations, especially because you want to show that it's it's not live action thing. This is a specific medium designed to exaggerate real life aspects of real life and stuff like that. So that, in a nutshell, is washing stretch and where you use it. Do you remember? It's usually used when you want to exaggerate something. It's not used when you don't want to exaggerate something. Okay, so if Iraq falls off a cliff, you don't want t exaggerate the the fact that it's like a really squishing object or anything, unless that's what you want. If it's if it turns from a rock and do something like Jell O, it's a it's something magical happening, and that's obviously different case. But if you if it's a simple rock falling off a cliff, not gonna have a lot of squash and stretch OK? 4. Timing and Spacing: So next we have timing and spacing. Timing is basically the time it takes for this object right here to get from here all the way up to here. All right, now, let's say it takes Let's say this is on frame one right here. This is Frame 48. What does that mean? Supposing it takes two seconds to get from here to here is gonna take 48 frames. Why, that is is each second. Is there going to be about 24 frames, which is about right here? That's a standard rate. 24 frames, 24 of these. So two of these is just gonna be double that. So 22 seconds. That's 48 frames. Right? So that's timing in a nutshell. Spacing, on the other hand, is a space. Each object reach dry moves per frame. Right. So he goes from here to here to move this much from here to there didn't move that much, and so on and so forth until he gets about here. So the space on screen that it moves, and you could do a lot with this kind of aspect. What you're gonna talk about in the next portion 5. Timing Chart: Okay, so when you combine timing and spacing together, you get a little chart. Your call, the timing short. It basically just measures the timing and spacing all in one little chart. Right here. Um, So, uh, what you have is key positions, which are the basic positions or with the most important positions. And between those, you have either breakdowns or in betweens, breakdowns air slightly less important on the keys. They're still important. And the in betweens just make everything smoother of this from the traditional animation perspective, By the way, not going into the more, um, three D versions of anything with my and stuff like that. Okay, eso say this is your key position here. This is your key position here. The breakdowns would happen in somewhere in between. And it just varies the animation a bit or something like that on then the in betweens air. Just kind of. I see. So this is a big break, right? So it's called a breakdown. Okay. I mean, betweens just again. Just make everything on this a little bit smoother, okay? 6. Ease in and Ease out: So now we're gonna use the timing charge to talk about seasons and he's outs. So ease in Very simple. It's when it goes fast, Too slow. Now, the further apart these frames are all these lines are The markings are it's gonna move faster, closer they are. It's gonna move slower so fast to slow easing He's out, On the other hand, is the exact opposite. It goes really slow really, really fast, and you can even combine them together. In this case, he's in tease out season so really slow. He's out really fast, easing again too slow again right now, If you put animation on this, you get something that looks a lot like this fastest load. So I started to slow too fast, too slow, Um, and you get slow too fast and then fast, too slow. Now, I want you guys to try all of these anyway. But as part of the homework, what I'd like you to try is the exact opposite of this. So he's out to ease in, ease out again. So what that means is fast Too slow, too fast. So these are gonna be more branched out apart like this, and the middle is gonna be more like that. Okay, 7. Bouncing ball demo: So what? Timing shorts. You're not gonna need to know too much of that with the bounds involved. When you're dealing with something more complex, like a face where the entire thing is moving the hair, the mouth, the tongue, the face, the head, the shoulders are moving on various times in spacings. Then you're gonna need to have something like a time in short, just to keep everything um, organized. Okay, so now we're gonna talk about the basketball to go to file new action script. Okay, I label this what I did there was just double clicked it, selected it and calls it line and go to frame 20. Either hit at seven. Well, rather five. Or where you could do is you could right click that and insert frame. Okay, I click it inside frame we're going to do here is we're gonna go to brush hey, and hit shift and drag it across the screen. But does it give you a nice, smooth line? Or you could just go here the line, do with the same thing. Same thing. OK, I didn't set it properly. Those so we're just We're just gonna stick with the brush do for now. Right? Let's go here. Shift is gonna do that right? Next, we're gonna make sure that we lock the layer. That's what these two buttons this is, Lock the layer. But that means I can't. I can't actually do anything right on the next is this is the hidden button, So you just you just can't see it anymore. This is gone. If you're doing a lot of layers, it might sometimes be beneficial to lock of the layer as well as make it hidden right here . We're gonna do is every two frames gonna hit either F seven or we're going to right click the layer and hit. It's a key frame. What this is is something called animating on twos, which means that instead of 24 frames per second, we're gonna end up with about 12. And this just speeds up the process of animation just because it holds the frame for for two frames instead of just one. Right, because if you do that, if you do that, it's animating on ones. But for the purpose of this exercise, we're gonna do something called animating on twos, which is? It just holds for one frame. It's which is the next drawing holes. For one frame of this, which the next bit I'm gonna call this rough. On top of that, we're gonna put this as clean up and select these frames here. A copy paste. Okay, walk this letter here and now we're going to start with the animation, so just whatever you want and that on the top, just make make a ball a rough aspect of a ball and make sure you have onions getting on, which is here. Okay, that allows you to do is it allows you to see the last frame however much you select here just so you can keep track of with the all is heading. What I'm doing here is I'm just kind of feeling it out as to where the location of the ball would be next. Kind of going a little bit quicker now. It's not really perfect. Obviously, this was one of two things you could do here because we need to know. And this is gonna be a looping animation. So you're gonna need to know where it goes from here to here. You're gonna need to know how it lines up. Okay, so we're gonna need to do is either copy this face of year, right? But that allows you to do is it allows you to keep track of things. Okay. Or what you could do is you could just flip from here here, just like that, just to keep track of everything. Now, first thing that can see is that it's not lining up properly, right? So I'm just gonna move this for the arrow key Keyboard was gonna move it to the lift. That's like this to the left that left for this, you know, have toe. He's out for this particular animation. What? I I wanted to I want to show that like when the ball bounces when it first falls, it usually eases out, and then it it goes down really fast, and then it goes up slower, right? So he's out to goes just really, really fast. And then but he's is in the top. He's out teasing. Essentially. Okay. So now what I'm doing is I'm just tweaking it a bit. You're there, And then what I'm gonna do is hit control. Ault, enter. And it just exports the movie so you can just test it out. It's working. Not so bad. So what I'm gonna want to do is with this frame here just because, um, the enemy she was gonna hanging on the top, I So that's looking a little bit better now, okay? Eso what I did There was I just went to test scene, which is controlled. Enter. That's what I did there. Okay, um and what I noticed actually, was that it's gonna hitting the top is Well, it's like bouncing on both sides, right? So I'm just gonna try and see what I can do about that. A lot of what animation is is just putting something down on paper and just testing it out . Testing? I'm testing it out until you get your desired result. And it's a lot. A lot of it is just based on feeling and just looking at a lot of good animation, you know, like the Disney movies and stuff like that. Just watching it frame by frame, which I am one of covering in later videos. But essentially, it's just it's just looking at it And how the animation changes basically frame by frame, you can study a lot of animations. Just by doing that, you get really, really good at it, too. Okay? No, it looks like it's hitting the top. Okay, 12 years and just got a using the skew tool here, right here. Free transform deal or this you tool, as I like to call it, and that's looking a lot better. Okay, so the next stage and this is not perfect by any means. Obviously, the next stage is to lock this later. Um, and you hit this button right here that does is allows you to see through it so you can draw on the frames above. We just got clean up, and it doesn't mess with the frames underneath. And you could actually see it, too. The benefit of doing this on the computer as opposed to doing it on paper, which I had to do when I was first starting out and let me tell you is it was not fun, because this is just like nine frames, right? Imagine doing 100 of them. If the draught out every single time, when all you really have to do that allowed us to do it on. You know, the computer was just copy this. I just shift control V or control shift V and is moving down like that. All right, look how easy that is. Honestly, it is just ridiculous, because control of E move it down. Do you know much time the states, right, Control de I don't recommend doing this for everything. Just because it's a simple exercise. That's what Were you gonna you be using? This? Because it can affect the quality of the animation. It can kind of look as if everything is not really moving. It's just kind of Okay, here's another thing to, um you could do one of two things here. You can either at the free transform do and do that, right? Simple, simple. Or you can just drawing out on top of it. Gonna wait for me there. We can just draw it on top of that. Just like that, you're gonna be running into this problem a lot of clean up where you have to get the line down, and it's just not it's not cooperating, just just guesstimating kind of thing, right? And then you can even skew it a little bit as well. Okay, let me move on to the next thing. Now again, you can either draw over like I'm doing. Or you could just copy paste it and then just skew it so that but again, when you when you look when you do this right, you can kind of see that it's just you can tell that it's been modified, right? You could tell that this is the original and it's been modified, and I really like unpleasant kind of way, as opposed to If you just drew it so again, whenever you can see of time, obviously copy, paste it, but try not to do it too much for the purpose of this exercise. Just a show. You know, your friends and family. Look, I mean, a ball bounce looking me absolute awesome. For the purposes of that, this would work really well, okay and has started to stretch up here. And what this is is I was looking at a ton of reference and just exaggerating it. So when a real ball balances, it doesn't squash that much, obviously, right? I mean, depending on what kind of ball it is, if it's like made of flubber, we're, like, really loose kind of substance. Then obviously it'll squash more, but in general, the squash is not going to be as exaggerated like this. But since it's animation, you want to kind of exaggerate everything. Otherwise it looks It looks really like everything's floating for some reason. So that's why squashing stretches is really important in animation, right? And for these now, you can just just copy this. Here we go. Okay. Testing off the movie. Oh, no. It looks like everything is all covered up. That's a shame. I do want to do things. You can either delete this. Um, or what I like to do anyway is move this all the way down and top of this running. This is gonna call it background or BG and making sure the other layers are locked. We're gonna go to let's see. Where is it? Here. Yeah, it's gonna is. You're gonna be here when I click the rectangle tool. Make sure you select the color of your background, whatever it is and just drop box. What that does is it just makes that thing disappear. Now, have you tested out okay? Not bad. Is a little weird thing going on here. And what this means is at every stage of animations. So rough. Usually this up is a stage in between called tie downs, where everything when you're not dealing with the ball, we're dealing with something more complex, like a character or a car or something like that. You're gonna want to move from rough to a slightly more finalized version. Usually, um, it's gonna be, you know, directed by the by the director of the film or whatever you're working on, and he's gonna finalize it. And those who called break this recalled Sorry. Um, what they called tie downs, Right? So everything is tied down, locked down, and then you move into clean up in color. So in this particular case, obviously there's something going on here that we want. Take a look and see why that happened. Make sure you lock this layer of the BG layer, go to clean up, and there's a problem right there. Hey, that's not too bad what I did there was just one here and selected the color here. Oh, here we go. That's weird. Make sure whenever using flash to save, like every 10 minutes or so because there was a time when I lost about 10 hours worth of work, and that was it was not pleasant. If you save and you save in different files, like every every half hour or every not. Not much for different files, but you just save every every half hour or even 10 minutes, for that matter. You don't want to lose work. Trust me. At this stage of the animation, you can do several things. So you can either. You can either fill this this thing in right here by going to this paint bucket tool right here and just filling it in. We're filling it with a different color. That's what you want. Okay. Just so you can actually see the outline, if that's if that's something you that you want to actually go for it. I like that. If that's what you want or in my case, I'm just gonna leave it blank. Um, okay, that's not too bad. Okay, so that's essentially worth what the bouncing ball demo is. 8. Pose to Pose: Well, you've just done is something called straight ahead animation. So what that means is it just which is straight ahead went from from frame to frame to frame to frame to frame, right, so to speak. Um, there's another style of animation called Post Oppose. What that is is you just go. So you make sure being set up, obviously, And then you just go from this post on whatever you want. Your breakdown to be remember, breakdowns there basically the most important frames between the key poses where there is a huge significant change. Anything in this case is a complete squash, right? And then you have your key pose again, and then you just sort of fill in the blank spaces. So for this, if I wanted to ease out, I could just say OK, well, where would I want this position to be? Maybe it will be here. All right. This would just be even be here. You gotta fill in the spaces, that kind of thing. You tested out. That's not looking too bad. There's a lot of changes. Obviously, you could make to it. Another thing is the reason why I chose to say control all enter or test the movie this way is because this allows you to see what happens when you export it, right? There's another way of checking the animation. Um, you just have to go to control and Luke, playback on what that allows you to do is if you click enter. It just looks the playback, right, so that's another way of doing that. 9. Bouncing ball variations: The next thing is we have a lot more of the variations of the bouncing balls. Okay? And all I've done here in this particular in this particular file or exercise is just duplicate the same ball and just vary the timing and the spacings. They all have the same keep. They all have the same. They also started one and ended 20 obviously. But during the course of that, they change how fast they fall. How fast, how much they squashing the bottom, how much they stretch all that stuff just from making tiny little variations. And you can see how even the tiniest of the variations can have a lot of a lot of changes. So what is the reason why this is important is because you have, ah, more complicated scene, the Chinese of variations going out a lot more feeling and a texture, so to speak, to the to the scene so it can have a lot of visual of variety and visual interest. Whatever, you're on a meeting, right, And that's something to keep in back your mind so that you can give so you can give more to your audience or give more to whatever piece that you're creating. Okay. And the way they created any of these is just selected these frames here, and I just right click them coffee frames. Did you layer facing the frames. And then when I did, Waas made sure all the other layers were locked. I went here, which is edit multiple frames. Okay, so it clicked. That well, that allows you to do is see all the frame, especially if, um, all this is selected. It allows you to just select the all of them and then just move them just like that. I see. So, so easy, so simple. And then from that point, make sure you turn this off and then turn onions getting back on. And you could just vary it up a little bit here and there. Like, if you wanted Teoh experimented with it. Going up here maybe further up here. Come here and so on and so forth. Right. This one. Just beloved to decide. Okay. I can't really see that on the frame. That's OK. We'll just loop it here. This is a few issues here and there. With these primarily being I feel like it's squash is a bit too much, and it kind of destructs the I a little bit. So again, you always be editing always, always, always, always be editing. Always be trying to figure out how you can push the poses some or maybe add a little bit. Here, look, but they're always try to find a reason as to why you're doing things or just go with feeling. You know that that words to So he did find reasons. Or just go with your gut feeling on the feeling thing. You just developed by doing a lot of animation and just studying. Like films like Disney films or Musacchio films or even Looney Tunes. Looney Tunes are very famous. We're doing a lot of post oppose animation. They just do a bunch of keys and then they just fill in the poses. What is his name? Chuck Norris know Chuck Chuck Jones? I think. I think that's his name. Jacek Jones, the guy who directed a lot of a lot of the Looney Tunes shorts and he always did, was he just did the keys right. And then you made sure the other people knew what they were doing with the in betweens on, then, uh, this other guy named Maurice Noble. You just drew the backgrounds around that, and that's basically how their show kind of work for a long time. Okay, And back to this exercise. That's basically how you can have variations just from shifting the ball around. And this is part of your homework, but it's more to try it for yourself. Just experiment as much as you possibly can. And I really want you to focus on just exploring not so much on listening to me. I want you to listen to me just for fundamentals. And then I want you to experiment, exploring own. Figure out what you can do. What you can learn is well, because the more you experiment, you'll be surprised how much you can learn just from experimenting on one simple exercise. And when you when you get further on, if you do decide to, you know, take more courses and stuff like that, you will figure out that if you come back to the fundamentals and you re learn it, you open up more avenues that you never knew where possible before. It just it just really weird thing that happens. But That's why the fundamentals are so important and why it's important to revisit the fundamentals on a regular basis, not a not a not a daily basis just on a regular basis. 10. Review and Class Project: Okay, So for this final part of the lesson, we're going to talk about the homework that I'd like you guys to try out as well as a class project. But you're handing in. Okay, So for the homework that you guys are just trying out, it's gonna be all of these easiness. He's out seasons. Um, you're gonna do all three of these as well as he's out to ease in, ease out again. So it's gonna be the exact opposite of this is gonna be further apart here, closer together here and further apart here again. Right? And it's very simple to create. This is on one layer. There's not another layer. We just space it out so it's closer or further apart. And you make sure, uh, the make sure the spacing is gradual if you want to ease its right. Um, as for these particular, um, objects that you want to move in this case of ball, I just copy Pasted it from one frame to the next. Were you can you can draw it again, if that's what you want. Okay, So I'd like you to try to that. I'd like you to try out the various bouncing balls again is very simple. How to make it? You just copy a layer. These frames. Make sure you call, you call it. They're five, I suppose. Would be a good idea. Right. And hit multiple frames. I'm sure the other layers are locked. Move it. Okay, then make sure this is turned off. This is on. So the onion skin is on and then just move it up and down as you go forward. Okay? Just just experiment with it. You don't have to do four. You could do three if you want. Do four, though, if you If you feel up to it. And we try to vary the amount of squash and stretch when the ball actually bounces so that you can you can even change the timing, the spacing as well as the break downs and in betweens so you can change when the ball bounces. You can have it be further or later, but I want you guys to stick to the constraints of this is where it starts. And this is where it ends. Okay, so it starts in frame one. It ends and frame 20 and 12 frames per second. So in those parameters, you could do as much variation as you want. All right. So just try that out for homework. Um, for the what you're gonna be handing in for the class project. I'd like you guys too. Do the bouncing ball. I change the color to black and white. I think the color from blue to black because the image that I'm exporting Sorry. The image that I'm importing right now, just leaving. Just labeling this BG, um, importing the stage here. Okay. And you can have whatever kind of background you wanna have. Just make sure the colors don't interfered too much. Unless that's what you're going for. And just trying Try and make it as appealing as you possibly can, because this is where you gonna be handing in. That's what people are going to see. It's just a nice personal touch. Okay, then you go to file export export movie on. It's like quick time. Save it, and then we'll export it now. I already did it, so I'm just gonna replace it. And then you just upload that to skill share for everyone else to see. Thank you guys for checking out this lesson. I hope you learned something. Be sure to keep tuned in as I'm gonna upload more lessons for you guys. Um, and thanks again.