Animate for FREE on iPad: FlipaClip Beginner Course

1. Class Introduction: welcome to my to Z animation class. In this class, we will be using a free app called Flip a Clip, which is available on apple and Android devices. By the end of this course, you will know everything you need to use. Flip a clip effectively. You'll understand all of the tools. The color panel layers key frames, copy and pasting. Using onion skin, the frames fewer adding sound to your animation and more to top it all off. At the end of this course, you will know enough to animate along with me and make this relaxing ukulele animation. I hope this course helps you to become a better animator. Have a swell day. 2. Starting a New Animation: Let's learn how to start a new animation. First thing we'll need to do is press the giant plus button in the corner. Here we have all of the project settings, so the first thing we'll do is name our animation and then press done. The next thing we can changes the background, suppress, choose background. Here we have a lot of presets to choose from that flip the clip comes with we also have three options on the side. We can go into plain colors and choose any color from the color wheel that we want. You'll notice in the corner of the screen. Right here, we'll get a preview of any of the colors that we're choosing. Let's go with the light blue color for this one, and then you compress the check mark. There were two other options in the backgrounds. You could choose a picture from your photo library, or you could take a picture with your camera. The next thing that we can change in our animation is the canvas size. Here were given a few templates that we can use based off of YouTube, Instagram video, Facebook and Tumbler. We can also put in our own pixel measurements. I usually use YouTube 10 80 p. The last thing that we can change is the friends per second. I really like this because it gives an example of a bouncing ball off to the side. You can see if you put it on the lowest setting. It's a very slow animation, if you put it off the highest, the very smells and not necessarily faster animation, but they're definitely more frames that need to be drawn. Industry standard for animation is 24 frames per second, but I usually draw in 12 to save some time. And there you go. All we need to do is create a project, and we're on our way. 3. Tools: The first thing that we should take a look at is the tools and Flipper clip will come over here to our tools and click on the brush. Here we can choose which type of brush we're gonna use, whether that be a pencil, paintbrush, pen or highlighter. I usually stick with a pen for smooth lines, but let's go ahead and take a look at what these look like. So this is the pencil. It's hard to see, but it's a pretty soft line. This is the paintbrush. It's more thick with soft edges. This is the pen more of a solid, crisp look. And here's the highlighter. With each brush, you can change the size of the brush by clicking and dragging on this circle. Soon I will have a very large pen stroke when you bring all the way down for a very thin pin stroke. We can also change the color in this box. We can return to all of our tools by clicking the cup of tools at the top. To get into the eraser settings, you need to press the eraser twice now. There were in the studies for the eraser. There are three different options that you can change. This one is for the size. She will click and drug to adjust the size like you did before. The 2nd 1 is for how soft the edges are by default. The racer has very soft edges. I always bring the erasing tool all the way to its hardest level start way. I could have a very clean your A stroke in this last one is opacity. If you lower the opacity, you'll race less. You'll still have some black there. If you bring it all the way up, you'll race all of your paint stroke. We'll go back to the other tools by pressing. They raise your at the top, and then we'll click on our lasso selection tool to use this tool. It's pretty easy. All you need to do is trace what you would like to select, and then you have a selection on the side of the screen. You'll notice a few more options have appeared. You can delete your selection. You can flip it vertically. You can flip it horizontally. You can also use the novice on the side of the selection to adjust it. You can make it skinnier. You can stretch it where you can resize it and rotate it when we have our selection. How we would like it. All we have to do is press off of our selection. The next tool is the paint bucket tool. The only option for the paint bucket tool is the color, so you can go in and change it to any color you would like. Then, if you would like to change some things color, all you have to do is press on it. The next tool we're going to talk about is the text tool. So I'm gonna make a little room over here so I can show you how this works. Press on the text tool and then tap the enter text. You can type anything that you would like to say in here and press insert while this selection boxes still around it. You can edit it however you like. You can click here to adjust the fonts and flip. The clip comes with a lot of fonts. All you have to do is click on them to test how they look. You can also change how big your font is by pressing on the knobs off the sign to adjust them or by clicking and dragging here. And finally, you can adjust the color of your text. The textual is pretty easy to use, but just to remember to make all of your adjustments that you want to make to it while the selection boxes still here. Once I click off of it, I could no longer adjust this. The last tool that we will talk about is the ruler tool. So I'm gonna go back into my brushes, and then I can select the ruler at the top of the screen. The ruler has three options to use. You can use a straight edge, a circle or square. Each of these tools can be adjusted by dragging on the circle knobs and moved by dragging on the square knob. Once you have a ruler, it's pretty easy to use. All you have to do is start drawing anywhere on the document, and it will be in a very straight precise line. I could start more inside of the ruler to make a smaller square in all of the ruler tools work just the same as this. You can change your ruler, adjust the size of it and begin drawing. All of these tools are very easy to use once you understand their settings. 4. Color Panel: Let's talk a little bit more about how we use the color panel in flip a clip. I'm going. Teoh, get rid of my ruler tool by clicking on it and then in the brush tool. I'm going to click right here. Toe open the color panel. The color panel gives us a lot of great options for how to choose color. If you want to see the purest, most saturated color, you need to come to the top right corner. Then you can move around and see all the colors that you have. It's a very wide spectrum, and you can adjust it using the square in the middle. If you want your color less saturated, you move the color to the left. If you want it more saturated, you move into the right. If you want it darker, you move it down. If you want to keep your black, you move it down to the left corner. If you want it to be pure white, you bring it all the way up to the top. Left off to the side of the color wheel, we have something called opacity. Oh, Cassidy controls how opaque the color is that we're using. If you bring it down to less opacity, you can see the color less, and if you bring it all the way up, you can see it more. Another great tool to have in the color studio is the color picker, so you just press on the color picker to use it. And then you can click and drag on these crosshairs to put it over whatever color you would like to choose when you lift up that color is selected. The color picker tool is great to use when you have many frames of animation, and you would like to borrow a color that you have used in previous frame. But we'll get into that later. Another great thing about the color studio is that you can use watches, swatches or another way to save a color. If you don't want to use the color picker every time you want to go back to use a color, their presets watches and flood the clip. Already, retro animation fund sketch pop is everything you can use any of these swatches at any time . If you would like to make your own Swatch, simply click here and now you have a new swatch. If you want to rename your swatch, you can click and hold, and then you can rename it here. You can clone it if you want to duplicate it, or if you're no longer using it, you can remove it. Once you have your noose watch, all you have to do is choose a color that you would like to save and then press here now that color is saved in your swatch. 5. Layers: Let's talk about layers before he began. I'm going to do a quick trick with the lasso tool. I'm going to select everything that I have on this layer and then I'm going to press delete . Now we have a clean, fresh layer. I'm going to draw on this layer and then I'm going to go into my layer studio here. You can have multiple layers to your document. I'm going to add one more and that I'm going to draw on it in a new color. Now, if you go back into your layer studio, you can see that you're drawing on layer number two ah, little tips that might help you when working with layers is knowing which layer your drawing on. So here I was, drawing on layer to and down here on the layer icon. It had a number two. If I begin drawing on layer one, that number will change to a one in the layer studio. You can move the layers around. If I drag this one on top, then the purple is now on top of the red. You can also change the opacity of the layers by clicking and dragging on the 100% to make it lower opacity or the highest at 100%. You can also click to rename your layers, and you can slack your layers for more options. Here you can lock your layer in place. This means that you can no longer a race drawn or move this layer around to unlock it. Simply tap the lock icon. You can also slide to delete a layer. If you choose to delete the layer, it will be removed on all frames. So be careful if you need that layer for other frames. The last important thing to talk about in the layer studio is merging layers. Flip a clip on. Lee lets you use a limited number of layers, so merging might come in handy to merge two layers. All you need to do is click and drag it on top of another layer. Then you will see an overlay that says Merge. Keep in mind thought whichever one you were dragging on top will become the top layer. So if I emerged this on top here and click merge now, the red layers on top layers are extremely useful to use inflicted clip. As we go through our final project, you will see even more how important layers are to your animation 6. Key Frames: Let's talk about some key frames. Basics throughout a new blank key frame. Simply press on the plus button. Now you have a perfectly blankie frame to continue drawing on. But this isn't the only option for key frames. I'm going to go back to my first key frame, and then I'm going to click and hold on it. Now you have a lot more options for your key frames. Here you can copy your Kiefer. I'm using this button. You can paste it by using the clipboards to the left or to the right. You can put in blank frames by pressing the plus button icons, or you can delete a frame completely. Don't worry too much about accidentally deleting frames. Every time you click the trash can, a warning will come up. That says, Are you sure you want to remove this frame and then you click removed to permanently remove it? These are just the basics on how to navigate the key frames in the main interface, but a little bit later, we'll talk about the frames fewer. That gives you even more options for your frames. 7. Copy and Paste: Let's learn how to copy and paste like we learned in the last section, you can press and hold on any key frame to bring up more options. Once you hit copy, you can paste the frame to either side. Say you want to move the frame from this side all the way over here. All you have to do is copy it, moved to that frame and then paste it. Now you have to frame from the beginning all the way over here. You can also copy and paste from the top of the screen. Here, you can copy the entire frame and paste it, or you can copy just part of your frame by making a selection. See, I just want this part of the flower in my next frame. All you have to do is hit copy. Go to your next frame and paste. In this example of the animation of the flower. This might not make perfect sense, but as we go on to our final project, you'll see more uses for the copy and paste features at the top of the screen. 8. Onion Skin and Grid: Let's talk about the onion, skin and grid features and flip a clip. Onion skin is completely necessary to use when making an animation. It shows what came before and after a frame, and it helps you know where to draw. Next, you can access the onion skin by going up to the menu at the top and then clicking at it. Here you will see your options for the onion skin. I typically use one frame before in one frame after, but you can adjust these. How you would like it gives you a preview here as to how it will look. I also like to use traditional colors. If you turn that off, you will see your colors in black and white. Traditional color helps me because I know where it's pink that happened before and where it's green that happened after back in the animation, you can see that the frame before is red, and the frame after is green. The onion skin outlines will not show in your final animation or when you preview it. It is just a guide. To help you while you draw the grid is another helpful feature. Using the grid can help you with proportions. If you turn it on, you'll have a great across the screen. While you animate, you can choose how dark your lines will be and how far apart they will be. Just like the onion skin. The outlines of the grid will not show in your final animation or when you preview your animation. It is just a guide to help you while you draw. The grid might not always be necessary in your animations. I strongly recommend that you use onion skin whenever you were animating. 9. Frames Viewer: Let's talk about the frame issuer to get to the frames viewer, go to the men. You have to talk and then click frames fewer. The frames viewer is very helpful when you just want to skip ahead to a frame in your animation. If you have a very large project, it can be very useful to go to this view and then click on the friend you want to go to back in the frames. Fewer. You can also select multiple frames to copy and paste. To do this, Click on this button at the top, and whatever is highlighted in the red outline is what is selected. If I go to the bottom, I have options for these frames. I can copy these frames and I can pace them over and over. If I want to expand my animation to de select thes frames, all you have to do is click on the red outlined frames. Once you can also copy and paste single frames. If I select one frame and then carp eat it, I can pace that wherever I would like. In the frames viewer, you can also add new frames and to move friends around Another feature of the frames viewer is you can export a single frame as a J peg to save one frame as a J paid, make sure that only one frame is selected, then go to the bottom and save the frame. The frames viewer helps you get a more expanded view of your animation and can be very helpful when you're animating large projects. 10. Sounds: Let's learn how to add sound to your animation at the bottom left corner. There's a music note once clicked on. It will open your sound studio toe. Add sound to your animation. Press the giant plus button at the bottom right corner. Here we have three options. You can import a file from your files up or from iTunes. You can use a sound effect that comes in the app but cost money. Or you could record the sound yourself to record the sound yourself press and hold on this button and then say what you want to say. Hi there you can play it to preview Hi there and then check it and driving in to your animation these different places that you can drag your sound to, or kind of like layers you can lay or your sounds on top of each other. Once you have your sound in place, you can lock it here. This lock icon and a sound icon belong to this layer of sounds. If I were to lock down here, this would not be locked, so make sure that you're working with the lock that's directly across from your sound by clicking and dragging on the sound icon. You can adjust the volume of your high there clip that you just recorded, and if you decide that you no longer want to listen to this while you're animating, you can always click, and that will turn it off temporarily. If you press on your sound clip twice, you have a few more options. You can copy your clip. You can cut your clip. You can delete your clip or rename it to get back to your main screen. Click the arrow at the top left. Now, while you animate, you might be hearing some of this. I said, There, that doesn't sound for a good while you're animating. So what I like to do to turn off the sound is pressing and holding on the sound studio icon . Now the sound is again temporarily turned off. There are many options on how to add sound in Flip the clip 11. Make the Movie: Let's learn how to make the movie and slip a clip to make the movie go to your menu at the top. Right then click Make movie. Here you have a few options for making your movie. You can alter the name of your movie. You can change the format by reducing the quality or adjusting the size ratio. You could change it from an MP four to a Jif or a PNG. You could turn on the flip a clip, watermark and then make your movie. Now that the movie is made, you have a few options on how to share it. You can share it on YouTube on Facebook, save it to your device or have more options. I usually save my animation to my device toe work with later, but you can use any of these options as you need. 12. THE PROJECT: Drawing, Part One: Let's get started on her ukulele animation. Any time you have an idea like this, it's a good idea to have a reference. I have a ukulele, so I based this one off of that, and I watched myself strum it in the mirror a few times to see how my hand looked. But for this project, you can just use my animation as a reference as you follow along. The first thing that we need to do in the settings is choose a background color. I'm going to choose a dark blue feel color, increase your canvas size to YouTube 10 80 p and then create your project Before we get started. I'm going to make three layers to help us keep this animation straight. This first layer I'm going to rename body, I'll make a new layer, and I'm going to name this one arm. I'll make one more layer, and then this one shading. You'll see why, as we go click on the body layer and now we'll get started drawing our first frame while drawing you sure to close all gaps so the fill bucket tool can work when we color. - I have now completed drawing the first mainframe without the storming arm. No, that her foot on the floor is angled in an upward position in preparation for a tow top that will have in the next video will draw her arm as well as the next frames in this animation. 13. THE PROJECT: Drawing, Part Two: get started withdrawing her arm will first copy this key frame and then paste it to the right. Now we'll go to my layers and go to the arm layer. I'm going to zoom into where I'll be drawing the arm and then to make sure that I fill the arming all the way. Without any gaps, I'm going to lower the opacity of the body layer by clicking and dragging on the 100%. This will help me be sure that I have closed all the gaps in my arm. I can see that I've closed the gaps in the arm, he ensured to close the gap by the sleeves. I will now draw the final frame of the arm on the next key frame. I'm going to turn on my onion skin so I can see my last frame and then I'll begin drawing the last frame of the arm. You can see that it's pretty tempting to just leave the arm like this, but make sure that you always fill in the top of the arm where the sleeve is, so that when we paint with the bucket tool that will get perfectly fielding. We now have the first and last frames of the arm. That's some pretty serious storming. So I'm going to add in some in betweens. I just adding these three in betweens. This looks like a beautiful strum. I'm now going to add in some extra details to make this strum really stand out. I'm going to go back to my body layer and then on the third frame, I'm going to erase the toe tapping foot. No, I'm going to make this foot flat. I'm also going to raise the opacity of this layer again. I think that foot looks great. I'm going to copy it to put it on the next layers. To do this, I'm going to take my life. So selection, tool, draw selection around the foot, press copy at the top of my screen and then go to the next layer before I can paste it. I need to erase this foot and now I can paste it. That looks great. I'm going to do that for the last layer to it looks like our animation is really coming together. The last thing I'm going to add for emphasis is moving the head back a little on the third frame to do this, I'm going to erase her head now. Using the onion skin is my guide. I'm going to draw her a new head that slightly tilted back. I think this new head looks great, so I'm going to copy it and paste it on my next three layers the same way that I copied and pasted the foot. I'll get the lasso tool, trace her head, press copy, and then I'll go through that same process again, erasing her head and pasting it back on. We've now completed the main drawing of this animation. Let's get ready to color this in the next video. 14. THE PROJECT: Coloring: we're now ready to color this animation. Grab the fill tool and let's select a color for the skin. Make sure that you're on the right layer and now you can fill in the face and the arm. But don't feel in this arm yet. We're not on that layer to fill in the other arm. Go to the layers in, select the arm by filling in the arm. We can no longer see the body layer because the arm is on top of the body layer. That's exactly what we want. And now we can choose colors for the rest of her body, filling in the colors with the same process. That stool was a little tricky to fill in, so I'm going to grab my lasso tool, circle it, copy it and paste it on the other layers. Our animation is now fully colored. In the next video, we'll learn how to shade this 15. THE PROJECT: Shading: because we're shading now I'm going to go to my layers in select the shading layer or shading layer should have an opacity of about 40% so click and drag on the 100% to bring this down. May favorite color to shade in is dark blue, so I'm going to go to my paintbrush and select a dark blue color. When shading, make sure that you keep a consistent light source. I'm going to pretend that the light is coming from this direction, so all of the shadow should be on this side of her body. For this first key frame, I decided to shade everything except for the arm. That way I can copy and paste the shading on to the next layer, but I still need to shave the arm so I will go back and do that. Now things next part gets a little more tricky. I'm going to go to the next frame and paste the shading that we had before. It mostly looks good, but remember that we moved the foot to go down and correct the foot shading, and then we might need to erase the head since we moved it back away again. I shaded everything except for the arm. So I'm going to copy this and paste this on my next key frames to finish off shading. I'm going to go back and shade the arm. Now that our animation is shaded, it looks great. I have one more additional detail that you can add to this animation. Add one more layer, lower its opacity a bit and then painting a yellow color and use a really big brush toe. Add a spotlight to this animation. To me, that seems a little bit right. So I'm going to lower the opacity a little bit more on this layer because the shadows are on this side of her face. The spotlight looks great. We've drawn the spotlight effect on one key frame. Now, making sure that that layer is still selected. I'm going to copy it and then paste it on all of the other frames. Now our animation is pretty much done. In the next video, we'll learn some export options 16. THE PROJECT: Finishing Touches: you have a few options when exporting your animation in this first option is how to export your animation as a Jeff, go to the menu at the top and then click make movie Click MP four and then click Jeff, then make the movie. If you save a tier device, then you can see that the Jeff format means your animation will repeat over and over. There are a few other things that we can add to this animation now that we have finished animating. The first thing that I'm going to do is to go into the frames ewer, press this button here, and then I'm going to copy all of the's frames and then paste them a few times. I'm going to click the check mark and then go back to my animation. Now that I've duplicated my animation a few times, I can add music that will go along with my animation. I'm going to go to my sound studio, click the plus button and and then click the import music option. I have a song saved in my files up called Ukulele Beach. This song can be downloaded for free from the YouTube audio library across the check mark, and now you can drunk this sound clip up to the top. I want this to start right away, so I'm going to drag it in and then drag it over. Now, if you press play, it looks like she's playing the ukulele. You can see that we ran out of animation right here. If you want to fix this, you can continue to duplicate it back in the frames viewer, or you could trim it here and then delete the extra. If you think that you're strumming looks a little too fast or slow, you can go back to the settings and change the frame rate. Now I'm going to export this as a movie. To do this, you could go back to the main screen and click on the menu. Or, since we're in the sound studio, you can come up to the top right and click the make movie button. Congratulations on completing this course. You have learned so much in this course, and you can now animate on your own. I hope this course helps you to become a better animator. Have a swell day