Animate You: Create A Personal Animation in Illustrator, Character Animator, and AE.

1. Introduction: Animate You!: Hi, My name is David Dodds. I'm a Los Angeles based motion graphic artist. I currently teach animation at U. C. L. A. And I have over 10 years experience as a motion graphics professional. In today's class, we are going to animate characters. We will be using Adobe Illustrator Aftereffects and Adobe Character Animator, which is a game changing software that allows you to create performance based animation. So I'm really excited to get started with today's project with you guys. This class is ideal for new animators that want to create an animated version of themselves . No experience needed because I'll be there to guide you every step of the way. So without further ado, let's get started with my class. 2. Class Project: for the class project. You're going to choose someone disintegrating to design yourself as a character and animate your character and your message. Create a class project post who you're singing your greeting to, and post what your greediness and feel free to use my character and edit him any way you like and let me know if you have any questions at all. 3. Sketching Your Character: Hi, everyone. We are about to start doing some designs for a character, So I'm going to start up in Illustrator and just create a 1920 by 10 80 canvas, and I'm going to just create that canvas. It's a regular horizontal orientation canvas, and I am going to use. I like to use illustrator to sketch, but you could use photo shop, or you could even just use a a pencil and paper to do a sketch. I'm gonna bring in an image of myself. So I recommend working with an image or photo something that represents you. And then you can use that to create your character just is a little reference. I'm choosing this project to animate yourself because, you know, I think that we know ourselves better than anyone. And I also think with this project it could be really great to create an avatar character that you can then animate symmetric messages to her friends. That's how I use my. I use my animations a lot to send happy birthday wishes on Facebook, on instagram, on text messages and just lots of other messages. But for this class, we're going to just we're going to be doing a birthday message. So, um, for my characters, I keep them very, very simple. Using this basic design, we will add mouth shapes imported from character animator that happens to be in this basic style. This style is versatile for men, women or Children characters. When designing your character, look for traits in your personality and in your look that can really make your character stand out and make people know that it's you. You may have curly hair. I have a very unique hairstyle, so I definitely want to play that up. So I have an actual Mohawk. But I also have dreads, so that is a something that is really makes my character stand out, and the character doesn't have to look exactly like you. So this isn't like a realistic portrait in anyway. This is just something that symbolizes you so that we people see it. They'll they'll chuckle a little bit and go, Oh, OK, that's you. So for me, I spent a little time spending a little bit of time on the hair because that is, that's like a the one thing that people really recognize me for four is my hairstyle so I'm not making it super realistic, but I am going to make it. Give a little bit more detail to the hair as you're doing your sketch. Keep your shapes very simple, very basic, and I want you to think about as you're doing this sketch. Then you're creating your character. Who would you like to send a message to? So start thinking about that. Users use this sketch as a reference for the next couple videos when you're creating your character and once again we're keeping it very, very simple. Very basic. Keep in mind. You know, if you look at this, it's broken up. Just it's created with very, very basic shapes. OK, so you guys in the next video, bye bye. 4. Character Design pt. 1: here we are in Illustrator. Let's create a file 1920 by 10. 80 Hit Create. We'll start off with the lips tool to create the head and we'll create the eyes the same way. Just click and drag and I'm gonna turn off the stroke and fill in the color and I'll create the eyes. Track this down here. I'm going to duplicate it. Okay? I'm gonna use the rounded rectangle tool to create the ears, create a new layer there. I'm going to rename that here. I'm gonna choose that rectangle that I just made and put it in the ear folder. And if I click and drag on those little dots, I can round the ears out a little bit more. So I'm going to repeat the process to make the earrings. So I will select that shape. I'm gonna name that your ring and make it white, and then I'll move that over in the right position. Okay? I'm going to duplicate that whole ear with the ring and go here and choose on me. Make another shape here for the a little white dot there for the I, and I'll duplicate that and move that over. Now I'll use the path tool to create the mouth so I will transform. Reflect that. So it's the eyebrow shape and make sure that this is checked on. Okay, great. So I'm gonna duplicate that eyebrow and I'm going to reflect that. Now I'm going to create the hair and I'm going to use this tool to subtract for the hairline, and I'll duplicate that. And then I'm going to reflect that and select those shapes, and I'm going to join them together, all three of those shapes. And then I'm going to select the head and select the hair layer, and I'm going to subtract. So the shape builder. If I press the all key, it will subtract. Now I'll use the pin tool to start creating the hair, so just click and drag. So I am just copying and pasting these elements I like to create. My character is very simple, and it's a great way of creating a character that could be male or female, and I'm hoping that you will have inspiration and be able to use this basic design to create a character that resembles you. And one way to do that is to look at What is what are some of the features or things about you that really stands out? It's really different. And really try to exaggerate that with your character. Okay, so I'm gonna select that hair layer underneath there, and I'm gonna create a Grady int sold. It has a nice fade. Now I'll use this line tool to create the part. Okay. So I will increase the stroke on this by choosing the stroke and choose the type of stroke that I want. So we have created the head in Illustrator. 5. Character Design pt. 2: Okay, so now I am going to make sure that the stroke and the scale is on. So it will transform as I scale this down. Because now we're going to create the torso. I'll create the neck and use the rectangle tool to create a torso shape. And I'm gonna take these points and move them in a little bit. So it starts to come in at as the wastes will come in and I will round the corners the way I did for the years museum in here. And I am going to use the pencil toe klik and add some extra points here. Move that down. And now I'm going to get the pin tool, and I will add another shape here, and this is gonna be for the collar, and I'll add an additional point here and then click and drag that down for part of the neck area. Okay, great. So we've started on the process. We will come back and finish up the torso 6. Character Design pt. 3: I'll use the rectangle tool to add the biceps part of the arm. I'm gonna delete that point and I'll use the lips tool to add a little shake there at the end of this, and I sweat both of those pieces and use the shape builder. Click and drag. I love that tool. So that will connect both of those shapes together. And I'll use the rotate tool here to click, click to at the anchor point there and adjust the shape for the bicep. Click and drag that shape so it duplicates it and I rotate it like that. Position it and click off those points that we have a nice, crisp edge. I'll drag that down there and duplicate it. So now have another shape there, and I'm gonna use recycle that shape and use it for the fi. Duplicate that layer and drag that over. And I'm gonna name these now This is gonna name this thigh. This is caught my name this by and adjust it. Okay, so I'm going to duplicate that thigh shape and use that to make my calf and let me just move my anchor points and rotate it. Okay, so Now I'm gonna move that down there and I have my calf, and I am going to adjust the points like I did before, and I'm gonna name that calf and duplicate that layer, and I will drag that over and I'm going to now rename that and this is gonna be called bicep and I'll create another layer. And I'll name this one arm and I'll put the bicep in that arm and also the forearm in that arm in that arm. Lier. Okay, so let's zoom in here going to start creating the hand, and I will adjust this. So this is for the poem. I'm creating the poem shape and I'll click and drag. And this is for the fun shape. So click and drag for the pencil. And then I'm gonna close that path and adjust my points, - and I will adjust the point, therefore that some shape and I'll click and drag an start and create the shapes for the the fingers. So a lot of this is repetitive. Umm ous faras creating these shapes. After you have one, you could just duplicate it, copy and paste it and then just and reuse those shapes Okay, so now I'm gonna 12 that down, and I'm gonna create another layer here. I'm gonna move this into the forearm layer, select all of those shapes to make up the hand, and I'm gonna name that hand. Great. So now we've created the arm. 7. Character Design pt. 4: Okay, so now that we've created the hands and we created leg parts, let's go ahead and organize our files. But now I'm going to create the foot using the pin tool are just click and create an overall shape of my of the of the boot that I'm going to create. And then I can go in and adjust that later, and I will change the color of that to black and move this beneath the Catholic. Or so it looks like it's the pants are the boot is inside of the pants. Okay, so now I'll tweak these points to get closer and closer to the look that I want for this boot. It's not quite a Chelsea boot. I don't know exactly what this style of boot is, but I like it. Let me click and drag, and I'm gonna use the anchor tool there, and I'm going to adjust those points. Use the direct selection tool there and the anchor point tool, so I'll be jumping back and forth between those tools and then jumped back to the direct selection tool by pressing a and just adjusting those points. We're at a point here and pull that down. The great thing is, after you create one, you can just duplicate it. So I'm gonna move that into this layer and move it over to the correct position. Create another layer there. I'm gonna name that leg and hit. OK, now I'm gonna move all those pieces into the leg layer, and now I will duplicate that and I'm going now. Reflect the arm. There we go. And I'll copy the chest layer and paste it in place. And I'm gonna change the color of this toe white and use the pencil here too. And a another shape to, um, to this to this object. So I'll select both of those pieces and choose the shape builder tool to and subtract that those yes, attracted like this and subtract that part. And I'll use the rectangle tool to create the belt shape. Let me change that color, and I'm gonna at another little shape there for the belt buckle using the rectangle tool 8. Character Design pt. 5: Okay, so let's spend some more time creating this torso area and creating the shapes for the clothing here for my character. So this is gonna be like a suit jacket, and he's gonna be wearing a white shirt. So I need to create a collar. The shirt is gonna have a collar. Use the direct selection tool here to adjust these points. Okay, so I'm gonna use transform, reflect it so that it is flipped and use the direct selection tool to adjust these points to make it look like a buttoned up collar shirt. So now I'm going to create a bow tie using the pencil. Okay, It's looking. I'm looking sharp. Nice. And I'll use the rectangle tool to create the little center shape for the bow tie. I think it's called the Not I'm gonna change the color of the time to be a little bit a darker red color, and I'll just continue and continue to tweak this So the shirt is comprised of, like 123 layers, and I'm gonna just select the whole tie and adjusted like so and I'll use the direct the selection tool to select those two points and then just move them down. And now I'm gonna start organizing things. So I'll click on the layer here, and I'm gonna rename that torso and I'll click on that. This is this is the next. So I'm gonna take this and put this into the torso layer, and I'm gonna name this head and take those hearing those ears and put them inside of the head layer. Let's keep everything nice and organized, and this is a piece that should go into the torso layer, so I need to put that at the bottom. Okay, great. So we're almost done. I'm gonna take those. All those elements, that part of the face. I'm gonna put that into the head layer and I'll name this arm. Layer, Arm, right arm are an arm left. Okay, great. 9. Character Design pt. 6: we are in character. Animator are click on blank face Illustrator, Lead the instructional guidelines there Delete that layer And then I'm going to save this as, um I'm going to save this file and then jumped back into character Animator, go edit original. I'm going to save this as a new name. So I jump back into character animator, delete those files and then I'm going to import that new file that I named that. So I named it David Puppet when you import that and now I will create a a scene from that. Now I'm going to hit, edit original. I'm gonna name this layer called Face. I'll select all of these pieces and move it into the face layer and put that on the bottom so I'll copy the face layer, and I'll paste this here into this new layer. Okay, so I'm gonna be jumping back and forth between the project I created earlier and in this new project. So here I am, going to now paste these eyes that I already made. I'm gonna pace this here into this layer that's called left eye, and I'll move this layer on to the right eye layer. No, I'll delete that layer so I don't need those other eyes that it came with. And also let the right pupil and delete that or hit clear. And I'll name this I and duplicate that and move that into the left eye layer and move this over and I will clear that layer. We don't need those anymore. So turn on the left eye, blink here, and I'm going to move that over so that it fits reasonably well. Where My eyes. Okay, I'll take both of those layers. Both of those eyes. Layers are Select them and adjust them. Okay, I'll delete that. I don't need that old I layer that came with it, and I will adjust those layers. Let me jump back into this project, and I'm going to copy the eyebrows on. So I'm gonna just be copying and pasting into this new pop it and I am going to adjust this shape for the eyebrow and position that correctly. So it's roughly where the other eyebrows were. And I will name that right eyebrow and I'll clear the old eyebrow there and clear that eyebrow. Okay, so now I'm going to duplicate the eyebrow, and you probably guessed it. I am going to rename that left eyebrow and I'll move that and I'll reflect it so that it's in the right position and I do the same for the mouth. All copy it and then paste it into the mouth layer. And I'm gonna rename that neutral and you guessed it. I'm going to delete the old mouth shape, and I will adjust the sizing of that mouth. Now what I need to do is take all these old all these mouth shades that came with this blank face, and I'm going to move those in the correct position because some of them might be a little low or whatever I wanted to roughly fit in the same space is my mouth that I've put here. 10. Character Design pt. 7: Okay, let's finish up with head here. So I'm gonna turn off the I the blink layers. I want to create another shape for the mountain. I want the my smile to be a custom, a custom designed that I'm gonna make myself right here. Um, so I'm just going to click and drag to create a smile shape, and then I will create a stroke for this and hit OK, and change that stroke to black hit. Okay. And then I'll use the, um, the stroke. I'll get the stroke options and increase the weight and then changed the make the fill white, and I'll move that up and change the size of that so that it fits into this face appropriately and use the drought direct selection, tool toe, adjust these points like so. Okay, now that I have that mouth shape that that shape, I'm going to don't duplicate it, and I'm going to click on this to reverse the fill and stroke, and then I'm going to turn off the stroke, so I just have a black shape like that. I'm gonna just this so that I have a shape where it looks like it's just teeth there and the bottom half of the mouth is filled in, and I'm going to use these lips, tool the lip shape to create a shape for the tongue. So I'll join these together, and I'll turn that to a pink color. I'll make it pink, and then I will tell Select those shapes like that. I'm gonna position it in the mouth like that and select the bottom piece of the mouth like that while the tongue pieces selected and use the shape builder tool, so to subtracted. So if I had the all key while those both are selected and drag over, it will subtract from that shape. Okay, so now I have the tongue shape, and I'm gonna just the eyebrows, the weight of those because they look a little thick to me. And if I just used the eyedropper tool, it will make the other I brown the exact same weight as the one that I selected with the eyedropper tool. And I'm gonna delete those shapes right there that I don't need. And I'm going to check my art board here. So click on this. I'm going to click on our board options and I'm going to see. Okay, it's 800 by 10. 80 and I'll turn all of those things on and make sure all of those pieces are in the correct position. Because I'm going now reduce the size of this head. The reason why I wanted to turn those all those layers owns. I want to make sure they're in the right position when I move them. But then also, look, I can see here that this is down a little low so I can adjust that shape. I don't want anything going outside of the head or getting close to going outside of the head. So now I will turn all of those off except the neutral position. Jump back into character, animator Jump and I'm going back in the hillside and I'm gonna name these appropriately and I'm going to create a sub layer that's called Body and a sub layer inside of body. And I'm gonna name that torso and I'm gonna go back into this project here, and I'm going to select the torso layer, copy it and jump back into the David Puppet Project. I'm gonna paste it in the torso layer. So everything is all set up. Now I just have to copy and paste things. Okay, so I'm gonna just the head shape a little bit, and I will adjust the body layer so the torso is in the right place. 11. Rigging: Okay, now back into illustrator. I am going to create a sub layer here for the body, and I will name that legs and created a sub layer in the legs and I'll name that leg. Jump back into my project here, and I'll copy the calf, and I will add a sub layer into the legs into the leg layer, and I'm going to name that calf and then I will pace the calf layer into that layer. So let me move this down to around where the calf should be. Okay, so now on this layer, I'm going to name this by and I'll jump back into my project, select the thigh layer, jump back, and then I'm going to paste it into the thigh later. So it's It's pretty much I'm gonna repeat, keep repeating myself here, but this is pretty much how you do this. It's a kind of repetitive process. After you've created the layers in the original in the art project, I will then copy and paste it into the puppet project. So now I'm going to duplicate that whole leg layer, which is great. It's already set up. I could just duplicate that and jump back into this project, and I am going to jump back over here, and I'm gonna, um, create a sub layer for this. And now this sub layer is called arms and I'll create a sub layer there. And I will name that bicep, and I'll create a sub layer for that. And I'll name that, uh, forearm. Okay, so I'll copy the bicep from that and then paste it here into the bicep layer and copy the forearm and paste it into the forearm lier and adjusted, like so. So see how you have that nice circle down there in between where the elbow would be. That's how you want to position him. OK, so I am going to I'm going to rename this. Yeah, I think I'll leave it. Arm copy. So I'm going to now move this arm copy over and reflect it just like that. So, actually, I am going to rename this to arm left arm l and I'll move the legs into the leg folder me jump back into character animator. Okay, now, if I hit the reset pose while this camera icon is on, it will move with may, so as I move forward, it moves forward. How cool is that? Say, look at that Now they're still. We still have some ways to go with it. But this is the beginning. See if I open my mouth, it opens its mouth. Okay, let me jump into the rig section first. Take this anchor point here. This is body. I'm gonna move that up there near the naval, and I'm going to get the pencil and I'm gonna click right there right about there. And that will fix that point. Now, I'm gonna go and grab my, um, my sticks. Use these this tool right here to create these points at the feet. Okay, let's jump back into record. And now when I go and click on the camera and I move around, let me hit the set. Re pet reset notice it stays planted on the ground. Okay, This is the first major step to creating your character. 12. Cycle Layer Animation: Okay, let me jump back into Illustrator Hit Edit Original. This will take me back to my puppet in Illustrator. We're going to set up something called a cycle cycle layer animation. So it's basically animating your images from the top to the bottom. And utilizing this animation style is really similar to old school frame by frame animation . So it's really exciting way to enemy. Okay, let's get started. The first thing I'm gonna do is put all of the pieces that make up the hand. I'm gonna put them in their on their own layer. So I'll select the four arm copy layer and I'm going to make a sub layer for that. And then I'm gonna take all of the pieces that make up the hand and put them all in their own layer like that. So I do the same. Move that down underneath that layer for the arm, and then I'll do the same thing for the next arm. I'll take all of the pieces that make up the, uh hand and put them all in their own layer just like that. And I move that down. They're like that. Okay, so now the next step is to create another sub layer for the arms group. And then I am going to rename that arms neutral just like that. And then I'm gonna take all of these pieces, these two arm layers. I'm gonna put them in the arms neutral. Okay? I'm gonna make another new sub layer in the arms, and I'm gonna rename that. I'm gonna name it. Um, arms one. Okay, I'll put that underneath the arms neutral. So now I'll duplicate the arms neutral layer, and I'll put that inside of the arms. One group. Okay, so now I'm gonna twirled this open, and I have my arms group. So now I can start animating this. So this will be the equivalent of my first frame of this behavior that I'm creating, and I'll just select this other arm, and I'll just rotate it slightly, so I'm using the rotation tool to do this. Okay, so now and notice I locked the arms neutral as well. That's something else. It's good to do to lock it because I'm gonna drag down the arm and I'm going to create a copy of that, and it's called arm copy to. So what? This layer. Now, this is like another frame. So with this, I can go and start rotating the arms, so I'll get the rotation tool and I'll just start slightly moved slightly, rotating the arm. And I'll make sure the anchor point is in the right place so that it will the anthem. It'll be rotating around the correct points on putting it right there near the edge of the shoulder. Okay, so I'll duplicate that layer, and I will move it down. So remember these were going to be animating from the top to the bottom, so we want to make sure that it's in order there. So I'm gonna lock that previous layer that I was working on. And now I'll do repeat the same process. I'll go and get the rotation tool and then start rotating the arm. Like so. Okay, I'm gonna duplicate that layer, lock the previous layer, and then move this copy down beneath the previous copy on a lot. That layer. Okay, so now I'm going to repeat the process. Just start animating those limbs. Just rotate the limbs like I did before. So I moved the anchor point and start rotating them, rotating them. And also, you can reposition them to, um that's what I'm doing, so that they're all kind of like they look like they're moving from the shoulder point there. So this movement is gonna be like he is. Um, my character is gonna be moving. Uh, arms are gonna be moving up. Okay, So I'm gonna duplicate that layer, and I move that down beneath the previous layer. I'll lock the previous layer, um, and then start moving the hands like I did moving the arms like I did before. I'm locking the layer so that I won't accidentally choose a previous layer and start moving it. That happens sometimes. So on this next move, what I'm gonna do is I am going to just move the arms just slightly so that it will have a little bit of an ease into the movement at the end of it. So with animation, you typically have an ease at the end of a movement. So the way we accomplished with that with this type of animation styles, you just have more frames or more images near the end of the movement. So, as you can see as we get to the end of this movement. I am making more more copies of it and just moving it slightly, so that will give the look of, like, an ease. Okay, so we're almost done with this animation style. I'm really excited to show you guys how this is gonna look, So I'm gonna turn off the lock for these layers and I'll see you guys in the next video. 13. Triggers, Cycles, Behaviors: okay in character, Animator. I'm going to turn on my camera and move my head around so I could just test my movement Hit , set, reset, pose. In this way, it will move with me as I'm moving and those little tracker points that is tracking my facial animation. Okay, great. So let me jump back into the rig part. So up here at the top, I cook, I'll click on Rig, and I will now jump back into this and I will drag the arm one under, create a trigger, and this is so that I can set up my trigger so that I can create my my animation so it will cycle through those layers. So now I'm going to give this a shortcut and a so a is gonna be the shortcut that I use. So be sure you put a shortcut there, and I'll go here under the under behaviors and choose cycle layer, and I'll click on hold, Click on forward and reverse. It's gonna go from top to bottom. That's good. And I'll click on hold on last layer and click on high others and group. And here I'll give it, um, a keyboard shortcut, which is a Okay, so this is ready to test out. So I'll jump back here into controls and hit generate controls for David puppet. And look, it gives me a little trigger button. How cool is that? And now I can click on the camera button and set, reset pose, and I could move and look, I can talk and it will move with me. Look at that. 14. Adding A New Cycle Behavior: Okay, now we're back. An illustrator. I'm going to create a layer here in the legs. Uh, Boulder, I'm gonna put both of those leg pieces into the leg folder and this leg, these legs, I'm gonna name this layer neutral. So we're gonna always have a neutral layer if we're gonna have, like, some more animation in this so duplicate the the neutral layer. And I learned Name this legs one. And I'll create a sub layer in the legs one and take both of those legs and put them in that layer. And I named that legs. Okay, so let me twirled the legs open, and now I'm going to start creating animation for my legs. So now I'm going to start adjusting my leg so that I have a movement. So I have my second key frame. So the first key frame will be the neutral pose. And the second key frame, the second frame is going to be the movement that I'm creating right here. Okay, I'll select that, and I'm going to duplicate that. And now this is gonna be my next frame, and I will name that legs to and let me select that and now So each step of the way, I'm going to be moving the legs where I want the next frame to be. So I select this other leg and move that and adjusted. So So the movement, I'm going for us. He is going to I am going to be jumping up and down and saying Happy birthday. So I will be. I'm gonna be adjusting these legs so it has the look of me jumping up, and now I'm going to Okay, So I select this and duplicated and let me navigate to the correct layer so I can now use the rotation tool to move this leg going up like that and I'm role rotate that calf like that and I suggest that calf like that. So that's basically what I'm doing for each layer. Each new group that I'm creating, I'm adjusting it just a little bit so that it's moving in the direction. I want the movement to go in and see. I can turn this off. Turn these on and off to double check my movements to make sure that each frame that this is going to cycle through each one of these groups would be considered a frame. So, for example, with this layer, I'm gonna turn it on and just suggested So this is gonna be the final. This is the last layer in this group. So the last frame let me now turn on this grouping and see what the legs look like. They're so I want them to be fairly consistent. So they're kind of in the same rough position. The legs should be in the same positions. So look, now, I'm gonna just this here because I want the legs to be kind of a line with the suit jacket , Move it over like that. 15. Performing And Recording: all right, we're back. An illustrator. I'll select the arms neutral layer, and I will duplicate that and move that down and rename this layer toe arms to and I'll create a sub layer and select both of these arms layer and put them inside of the arms layers. So I'm starting off with the neutral layer, and then I'm gonna now start animating the arms going up. So with this, when the arms are gonna be going straight up So it's a little bit of a different movement from before, so I'll duplicate that arms to layer, and I'm going to start moving them adjusting these I'm going to reflect the hand so that it is now facing in the other direction. Okay, so I'll select that forearm, and now I'm going to adjust it. So the arms were going up like that, and I will rotate that other arms and move this and do the exact same thing I did with B. With the other hand, I'm going to reflect the hand, and I will rotate it, so that's in the right position. Okay, So I moved that layer into the arms to layer and put that at the bottom because we're cycling from the top to the bottom. Okay, let me save this. And now I'm going to go jump back into character animator going to the rig section, and I will take the the legs and I'm going to give that a short cut a Z and create a cycle layer behavior. Click on that, Make sure Fort Reverse is selected. Hold on. Last key frame is selected, and I'll do the same for the arms to drag that down there, create a trigger, give that a shortcut and do cycle layers. And I'm going to select Ford and reverse Hold on last layer. So everything before just like the same way we did it before and I'm gonna click on controls and I will hit that little refresh button. And look, if I click on down there and click both of those two, I have my two movements so you can click on both of them and do two movements at the same time. Okay, so I'm going to click on the head, and I'm gonna choose behavior and click the plus sign, and I'm gonna choose auto blink, so this behavior will make it blink automatically without me having to blink, it will just natural just blink on its own. So let me just make sure that is on auto blink. Okay? So just to do recording, I will need to hit this little red button down here. So I'm gonna just some of the facial properties here, Okay? And when he hit the record button and I'll speak into my microphone and hit my behavior keys, hit that square button right there to stop the recording. So these call takes in character animator and play this back looking good. So I go to file export PNG sequins and wave file, create a folder for this PNG sequence and wave file and save it in it and we come back. I'll show you how to open it in after effects. 16. Animating Type in After Effects: Okay, We're in after effects, and now I'm going to go up to file. And I'm going to import the PNG sequence that we just rendered out of character animator. So navigate to that folder and then click on PNG sequins and then hit Import. Okay, so I'm going to create a composition, make it 10 80 but 10. 80 hit. Okay. And I will drag that sequence down into that composition. Okay, so I'm gonna click on that boulder down there and create a folder. And I'm gonna name that, um, composition or camps. You don't have to do this step. This is just what I like to do to stay organized, creating folders and then dragging things into the appropriate folders. So I am going to bring in audio, so I know for sure I'll be put. I will need to put the audio in that folder, But you don't have to do this step. But this is just what I like to do to stay organized. Okay. Now that everything is organized, I'm going to import the wave file. So go to the very bottom of that folder. There's something called wave file. That's the audio file. So I'm gonna drag that into the audio folder and I will drag that audio file into my happy birthday com. Okay, so I'm gonna save my project after importing, uh, things into after Brexit. Be sure you don't move them. OK, so I'm going to go toe layer new text, and I'm going to create a ah text layer, and it's going to say Happy birthday. So I just click and start typing just like this. And I'm gonna change the color of my happy birthday to be that right? The same red is my bow tie, so I can use the eyedropper for that clicking on this right here. This allows me to adjust the stroke, and if I select individual characters here, I can change the colors of them like this. So just by clicking and dragging, I can select specific, um, characters and change their individual colors. So also, let the B and then change that Phil to a white color. Okay, so I'd like to add a text preset to this. So go to the began the timeline, go into the effects panel over here and type in twirl. And if I click on that I'm gonna choose twirled on each word. Click on that double click on that. I don't add it to the text layer. Okay, so I'm going to create a background layer. So I goto layer new, solid. Well hit. OK, and I'll bring that to the bottom of my stacking order here, and I'll go up under effects, and I'm gonna type in an effects called Phil. I'll double click on that, and I'm gonna change the color of my background layer. No hit. Okay, great. Another solid layer. And I'll change that to black. And I'll go here and I'll choose the mask tool here, this circle, masterful click and drag. And then I'm going to go down here, and I'm going to change the mask to invert, and I'll hit f to reveal the feathering. I'm gonna feather it out like that. So this is going to create a little vignette ing, and I'm gonna go here under my blend modes and choose overlay. Okay, So let's spend some time trimming our workspace and are layers. And I just did a shortcut to trim the workspace Harry area. I hit the end. He and I also just trimmed the, um, the audio by hitting Ault left bracket. So if you want it from the end of a layer, you would do all right bracket while the cursor is, it'll trim it right where the cursor is. Okay, so I'm hitting the space bar to do a ram preview of this the first day. Good. It's sounding good. Okay, great. So you have spent some time looking at your animation, making sure it's what you want. I'm also gonna adjust my key frame here, so it happens a little bit sooner, and I'm gonna trim the workspace areas, so it ends there. 17. Rendering With Adobe Media Encoder: okay, Inside of aftereffects, I'll go to composition at two Adobe Media Encoder Que Click on that and that will take us into Adobe Media Encoder inside of Adobe Media Encoder. Click on H 264 and that will open up this dialogue box. And this is where we can adjust our setting. So click on target bit rate, and I'm gonna change that to five because I don't want it doesn't have to be super high quality for this render. And I'll change this to make sure it's on h use export. But if you look at this, there's a lot of other options you can even animate. It is a gift. Okay, so I'm gonna hit, okay, and I'll navigate Overlook where it's his cute title. If I click on this, this is where it's going to render to. So that looks good to me. I'll hit, save and click that little green button up there and it will render Okay, great. So now that it's rendered, if I click on this link right here, this will take me directly to where the animation is. Okay, so I'll double click on that quick time. I view it at half size and if I click the play, but you can see and hear my animation. Happy birthday 18. Thank You!: All right. Well, you guys did it. I'm so excited to see what you guys come up with. Thank you so much for taking my class. And as always, ask me any questions that you have. Please tag me. Please give me feedback about what you liked about the class. And, um, just remember, I'm always here to answer any questions that you have, so thank you so much for taking my class.