Animate Your Illustrations - Procreate Dreams 2 For Beginners

1. Introduction: You ever wanted to bring your illustrations to life to make them move, tell the story or leap of the screen? With procreate dreams, and now with Procreate dreams, too, animation is easier and more accessible than ever before. Hi, my name is Alexandra, AKD art mother. I'm an artist, illustrator, and online educator. My background in animation goes deep as I focus my master thesis on this topic, and I was beyond excited when Procreate announced Procreate dreams as a powerful yet user friendly animation tool. The Procreate dreams to update came with a complete revamp. So I went ahead and updated this whole class to the new version. After spending time exploring the new interface, tools, and workflows, I can confidently say that this update is a game changer. Create dreams to make the creative process feel faster, clearer and makes animation really accessible even for beginners. I created this class specifically with illustrators in mind because animation can be overwhelming and overly technical. And in a world where short format video dominates almost every platform, adding even subtle movement to your illustrations can unlock a whole new level of potential for your art. Create dreams to offer several ways to animate. And in this class, we are going to explore them all by creating a fun scene of a ghost skateboarding through the park. Yes, I love spooky season. Along the way, you will learn the most important animation techniques like key framing, layering motion, performing motion, flip book, and we are also going to directly paint inside Procreate dreams, too. You'll also learn how to properly prepare your illustrations for animation. I'll guide you through creating all visual elements in Procreate, always keeping animation in mind. And if you jump right into animating, Noveries, all illustrations will be available for you in the resources. By the end of this class, you will have your own animated piece ready to share. So grab your iPad, open, procreate, and procreate dreams, too, and let's unlock the magic of animation together. I can't wait to see what you create. See you in class. 2. About The Class: And. Welcome to the class. I'm so happy that you are here. In this video, I'm going to talk about the class structure, the class resources, and the class project. But first, let me just repeat. Procreate has just released Procreate dreams to a complete revamp of the app. This class has been fully updated to match the new version and workflow. Okay? So this is the time when I want to remind you to download Procreate dreams or update your existing app. If you are a returning student to this class, or you have used Procreate dreams before don't vary. The core animation principles stayed the same, even if the interface evolved. Okay? So your knowledge is still relevant. I will guide you step by step through all changes inside Procreate dreams, too. If you are completely new to animation, I want to ensure you no prior experience is needed. This class is designed with illustrators and beginners in mind. We will focus on practical and creative animation rather than technical overload. So even as the app continues to evolve, the animation skills you will learn will remain transferable and relevant. So back to the class structure. The class is divided into two main parts. In the first part, we are going to illustrate all the elements that we need for the animation. We are going to illustrate a background, ghost and a skateboard. All open to your creative interpretation. Will be more elements moving in the final animation, but we are going to take care of them right inside Procreate dreams too. So for the first part, you will need Procreate. I will guide you through a step by step illustration process that is easy to follow. And if you'd rather skip the illustration phase and jump right into animating, all the elements that we are going to illustrate will be available for you in the resources. In the second part, we'll bring all our illustrated elements to life in Procreate dreams too. We'll start with a quick introduction to the interface and then learn all the animation techniques as we go. Going to animate all elements a little bit differently. So you will learn a wide variety of animation skills. Let's talk about class resources. In the class resources, you will find all the visual elements that you will need for the animation with all original files, even procreate files. Okay? For the smooth import from Procreate to Procreate dreams too, you will get also my Procreate dreams to original file for reference. So if you miss something, you can just check how it is in my file. Okay? You will also get a brush set and the color palette. Let's talk about the class project. The project for this class is to illustrate and animate a ghost skateboarding through the park. Now, again, you have artistic freedom for your very own creative interpretation of this topic. You can create any background, any character, and any object that has wheels. But obviously, you need to create something similar so that the animation techniques are applicable to those elements. Okay? When you are ready with your masterpiece, don't forget to upload it to the project gallery. At the end of this class, I will show you how to export your animation also in a way so that you can put it into your class project. Also love to encourage returning students to update their animation and re draw it or re animate it, and then share that in the class project too, and maybe describe your experiences. What is better in Procreate Dreams too, and how did you feel during the process? It is always so good to read about it. Okay, so now the first step is to download the resources, download or upgrade to Procreate dreams to open procreate and procreate Dreams too. And yeah, let's get started. 3. Illustrating The Background: Hello and welcome to the class. I'm so happy that you are here. Let me just show you what you will need. At first, you will Procreate in the first part of the class, we are going to create three different illustrations. Let me just show you what are those. So at first, we are going to create a background. I will show you how to create this exact background, but you are totally free to create whatever scene in which your ghost will just float through. And you can change everything in this illustration as you wish, but you can follow me as well step by step to know how to create a scene like this. Then we are going to need a ghost. I will also show you how to create a ghost like this, but you are again, totally free to create whatever shape you like. And lastly, I will show you how to create this skateboard. There are specific things that you need to keep in mind when you are creating a skateboard and animating it. So I recommend you to follow me again step by step, or again, everything will be provided for you if you don't want to draw and just animate those things. Then you can skip this part, right? So in the first video, we are going to create the background. This will be a bit more challenging because there are lots of things that are going on here. So there will be separate videos for those not to overwhelm you. So let's just start with the basic composition of the background. As you can see, let's just analyze it. There are three parts to this illustration, there is the background, which is like blurred, right? Then there is a middle ground where things are happening, and there is a foreground where there is nothing happening because we don't want to take away the focus from actually the animation. So let's just start, go to the gallery, and let's create a new canvas. Now, for this, as we are illustrating for social media, we are going to keep this dimension, and that is you can find it here the 19 21,080 pixels. It is going to come out as landscape, but you can just flip it. The basic composition of this is the following. I have a new layer. I will choose the sketching pencil and approximately divide the canvas to halfs. You don't need to be 100% precise with this. Like this. This is approximately the half, is it? Let me see. Yes, and manually, when you are moving furniture and measuring girl stuff. But right. So I have approximately the half of it, and then I will use the third of this half. I will approximately divide this into thirds, and this lower third is going to be my foreground, and this is going to be my middle ground. This is really just for an approximate division. You can change it as you wish as intuitively it feels right for you. Now I will lower the opacity of these lines and create another layer below. Now, I have some colors selected here, but again, feel free to use whatever colors you like. We need color for the background. I thought this gray would look good for the background, so I will just choose the clean shaper and fill it in. Then I will create another layer for the road. It will be a lighter gray, so I will choose this color. I will fill it in. This basically my middle ground. I will create another layer on top and I have this brown here, and this will be my foreground, but as well, we are going to add that ground. I will add a little bit here as well, taking away from this road. Now you can set the width of this road. Okay. These dome need to be like really edgy and straight lines and shapes, okay? Let it be a bit organic. All right, so now we have the division. Let's just start adding the elements. So in the next video, we are going to create the bench. See you there. 4. Illustrating The Bench: All right, so we have approximately the division of the background, and I want to start with adding the elements, and we are going to actually create a sketch. So I will create another layer, choose black and sketching pencil. And there are two elements actually three that we are going to add. We have the tree, we have the bench, and we have the lamp. So these are the three illustrations that we are going to create. Let me just start with the bench. You are free to do whatever bench. I'm not going to put the hole in it so that it's already space into the outwork. You know, your imagination will fill the other part of the bench. So what does the bench have? At first, it has this leg that is going to be not on the ground, but rather on the road, right? It will be something like this. And it will have one wooden thing where people sit. This thing will continue. I will add the thing for the back. Let me finish up this part. I will make it bigger so that you can see what I'm doing. This is really like roughly, you can put so much more effort into this, okay? I just don't want to take away the focus from the animation part, and I don't want to overcomplicate this. It is totally up to you how much effort you are going to put into this and it will be like this dingy, you know. For the arms. Like this, something like this. Okay. You can also do, like, two of these. Um Thanks, it is not one big. Okay. I will add the lamp as well. The lamp is also going to have this bottom thing. You can use reference images if you wish for drawing a street lamp. I am going from my imagination. It has something that it stands on. I will adjust it in a second. It has this thing. Okay. And the top looks something like this. There will be light in it. These lamps can be very, very decorative. So again, feel free to spend time with it, and I will just randomly on another layer, just draw the tree. I want a big branch coming here. Like this, you can really keep it rough. Now that we have this sketch of these three elements, let's just get into illustrating them. Let's start with the bench. I will create a layer below these sketches and lower their opacity. Here. Okay. I will use my clean shaper, and I will choose a color for the bench. I really much like this ochre color, so I will just put it here, and I will just fill in at first the wooden part. Okay. I will alpha log this and add texture. And what I'm going to use for texture is a brush that you will have included. It is the tree texture right here. I will choose a darker brown color and basically just go through it and apply this wooden texture. It looks pretty nice. You can go even darker if you wish to make it even more like wooden. But I like it this light. All right. I will create another layer below. Choose a dark gray, and the clean shaper. Okay, so cool. Now, let's shade it. I will off lock this. Choose a lighter gray, choose the shader. And as the lamp is here, there is going to be a light source. This part is going to be a bit lighter. I will add just some things here like this. Well lighten this thing up as well. I will maybe make it smaller and this edge it's going to be a bit lighter. Like this. I will add a bit of light here, and I can even go so much darker and just add some shadow on the other side. I will go almost black. These inner parts. I think it looks super cool. I've got some darkness below this bench as well. How I'm going to shade this part? It is going to be amazing. I will create another layer over this, this wood. I will choose black and actually the drop shadow brush. I will select the bench, hit select and go to the layer above it. I will just layer some shadows. Like this. That's too much. Let me do it like this. I will add some here as well. This way, I'm shading the texture as well with a transparent layer of shadows. I love this technique. So much. Okay. Oops, that's much. Let's do it like this. Maybe to the bottom. Now I'm going to Gachmbl adjustments, Gashmbl and just Gauchenblur the shadow a bit. Like this. I love how this looks like. We will add some more light a bit later. Maybe I will add a little bit of drop shadow below the bench, so I will create a layer below and just add shadow below the bench. Below this thing as well. And again, I will just caution blur it. Okay. So now we have the bench. Let's go into the next video and do the street lamp. 5. Illustrating The Street Lamp: All right, so let's continue and create the street lamp. I am going to use this dark gray for this one, as well. I will create another layer, and let me just fill in the base shape. Oh, yeah, use the clean shaper. H. All right. And what I'm going to do is the exact same thing that I did with this part. I'm going to palock this shape, choose a lighter gray, choose to shade or brush and lighten one side. I will focus the light into the middle so at this street light, I will add the light to this other side. Okay? I will choose an even lighter gray to add more like reflections here and again, go almost black to the other part and just add more contrast. Cool. Now let's add the light. I will create a layer below it. Choose maybe this yellow, but let's go a bit lighter and more yellowish like this. I will fill it in with the clean shaper. What I'm going to do is to duplicate it and hit Gashenblur and it will lighten it up. If I want even more, I will duplicate this one and maybe gash and blur it a bit more like this. You can duplicate anytime you need to lighten things up even more. You can create even bigger Light, you can just make it bigger. Can you see that? I will illuminate a bigger part from the image. What I love to do is to add a bit of white into the middle. Again, I created another layer. I will add a bit of white into the middle and gash and blur that as well like this. It will really look as if it was a light lighting, doing its job. See you in the next video where we are going to add the tree. 6. Illustrating The Trees: It So cool. It is coming together. So just create the tree. I will create another layer. Choose. Again, this dark gray. This is going to be the base for everything. I still have the clean shaper and make sure that this layer is behind the bench. So I will just hold down and take it back. And I will just paint a tree. You don't need to go into too much detail, okay? As you can see this tree is a bit different style than the one that I've done in the previous illustration. It is again up to you what kind of trees you like to draw. Just enjoy the process. That's the point. Okay. Super cool. Let's just add the trees at the background. I will create another layer below. I will turn up the sketch that I have here. Cool. Now we are going to use some perspective rules. We are going to apply the rule that things that are closer to us are darker and more saturated than things that are further away. We are going to create two levels of trees here in the background. At first, we are going to create some bushes. Let's just do that. I have this layer here. I will choose a bit lighter gray and just basically add some bushes like this. This will be blurred, so don't worry about it. How does that look like? And I will create two trees. One here. And some branches like this. And one here. Okay. Cool. I will create another layer behind. Choose an even lighter gray, but try to find a gray that is not this gray, but still darker. Let's see. I will choose the background color, try to find a gray that is a bit darker. I will add a tree here and maybe one here. Okay. Maybe one here. All right. We are going to create the illusion of space also with the blurring. The trees that are further away will be blurred more. I will go to adjustments, Gaston blur and blur them. But so they can be stillthnT layer is going to be also blurred. I hit adjustments Guston blur and blur them just a bit. Not that much. Walla, can you see that? We have so much space there. So cool. Now we have the trees. In the next video we are going to finish up the ground and then move on to the ghost. 7. Illustrating The Background - Finish It Up : Let's just finish up the background and add some shadows to the middle ground and some textures. Now I'm going to choose the layer of the road. Yeah, here it is. I will keep this dark gray, and I will choose a shader, make it bigger. I will make the road like darker at this front and get it lighter at the back because there's a slit. This will create the fact that this light is illuminating the road as well. You can go in and it adds already a little bit of texture as well. I'll just add something to the ground too. I will choose a darker brown, go to the ground layer, Alpha lock it. I will just add a little bit of variation to the ground, bit of lightness and darkness. And what I miss is the leaves and actually this foliage that is on the ground when it is autumn. I'm going to choose the texture shaper, and this ochre color and create a layer about the ground and actually just add some blobs of color to the ground. Also here to the foreground. And I will choose a reddish color as well, maybe darker one and add that in. And I will again, caution blurt. Like this. So cool. It added some variation to the ground. You can add some other details to the scene if you wish. I will maybe make the bench a bit bigger, so I will just select these two parts, hit select and make it bigger. With the shadow as well. Yeah. Okay. It's really cool. I would also love to add some leaves to the top. I will choose this ocher and I will really just add some blobs as if it was like these leaves, you know, going into the image just a bit to know that there are still leaves up here. Okay, I will also gash and blur these just a little bit so that they are not that direct. All right. And let's play with light a little bit more. So what I want to do now is to create a new layer, choose this yellow color and the drop shadow brush, and try to make it big and try to add a bit of light around this lamp to the ground as well. To the bench as well to add this illumination and I will gash and blur this as well. Everything is gash and blurred. This lightened the scene up, and I think that's all for the scene. Now let's move on to the ghost. I'll see you in the next video and let's illustrate a cute ghost together. 8. Illustrating The Ghost: All right. In this lesson, we are going to create the ghost. What I want from you now is to create another canvas with the same dimensions, 1920 and 1080 pixels. Okay. So as a ghost is white. I want to at first, change the background color to gray. I will create a new layer, choose black and the sketching pencil and sketch out the ghost. Now, you can look online for inspiration, how to illustrate a ghost. I will go from my intuition. So I will just draw a ghost shape, but keep in mind he will be skateboarding. So kind of this shape would work best so that these cloth or whatever is this, um goes into this direction if that makes sense. I will create a shape for the head and make the cloth go back and I will connect these two lines with these waves. Maybe I will go more to the same length. I will have basically two waves. This will give me, let me show you here to our three waves. I can shade a little bit between these waves and it will give me the effect of that cloth. I will have two now or you can have three. Let's have three. I will erase. One, two, three. Cool. I will add some eyes. Again, feel free to create whatever eyes, and I will just note the hints. You can add some character design props he can have glasses or I don't know, a baseball hat. That would look cool or sunglasses. That will look cool. Yeah. So let your creativity flow and make it fun. But at first, I will just fill in the shape, so I will lower its opacity of the sketch, create another layer below it, choose white, and clean, shaper, and just fill in the shape. Okay. And now let's add the texture. So I added a brush called salt and chili. It is actually created from real salt and chili. This is from my spicy brush sat. And this is what we are going to actually use as an eraser. This is going to add our texture, but in a way that it will be transparent. So I'm going to choose that as my eraser brush. I will lower the opacity of this ghost. This will make it actually transparent. And I will choose my eraser and go through the hole and make it big. Go through the hole, a ghost really lightly to add a little bit of grain into it. Okay. I will make the brush smaller and I will go through the edges of the ghost and this will make it more flowing. Because we are not adding actually texture, but erasing texture from the ghost, and it will make him more transparent. I will erase around its edges. Everywhere. Maybe make it even smaller and go more hard on the edges, it is not that defined shape. It will really add such an interesting effect to this ghost. I love to try new techniques, and I just discovered it isn't so fun. All right. Okay. Now I will make it a bit bigger and where these waves are inward, I will add a little bit of shadow, this triangular shape. This will really make it look like it is clothed. Can you see that? It looks so fun. I will erase a bit from the middle. I will turn off the sketch so that you can see what we have done here, and I think this looks super amazing. Let's just add those eyes and the heads. I will create another layer. Choose this darker gray and just with a sketching pencil and add just the eyes. Let me see if that looks good. I will maybe place them higher. Like this. Make the smile like this and note those hints slightly. You don't need to add any special, um, features. Now you can add the props that you wish, maybe the sunglasses. I will maybe erase this hand. He needs just one hand. The other is on the other side. You can add sunglasses, you can add the cap, you can add whatever. I will. I have the eraser as the salen peppers. I will change it to the sketching pencil. What I'm going to do now is to make it a bit smaller, erase from it. At this part of the eye, I will just draw this line here. Lower its opacity and actually make this part lighter as if it was a hole. Can you see that or understand what I mean by that? If I draw this thing here, it will look as if it was holes in it, and that will be the eyes. This will add more interest into it. I love to add it this way. We have our ghost. I will merge these two layers so that I can export that later. Now let's move on to the next video and create this skateboard. So 9. Illustrating The Skateboard: Okay, we are almost done. We already have the background. We have the ghost, and let's create the skateboard. So what I'm going to do is to create another canvas, the same dimension. I will again, change the background color to gray so that I can see better what I'm doing. Now I'm going to use a little hub from Procreate. I will go to the range button, Canvas, and I will turn on the drawing guide. This will help me to create good shape for the skateboard. I'm going to choose this ocher color and the clean shaper to create the shape of the board. It is, it doesn't matter where you are drawing this on your canvas. I'm going to kind of Draw a long ellipse. If you need to count the squares for you to have a better understanding of the size. Now don't look at the shape, I will adjust it a bit. I am using count two squares from here, two squares from here. This is going to be the end of the skateboard. Oops. And I'm going to continue that shape like this. Whoo. I will adjust it a bit in a second. But basically, this is going to be the main shape of this skateboard. This will add a little bit of this frideffect, not exactly a side view of it. Now I'm going to use my eraser to adjust the shape to make it more like, perfect. Okay, cool. Now I'm going to alpha lock this layer and choose a darker brown and add the tree texture to it as well. I added the tree texture as a brush here. I'm going to add exact same shadows as I did with the bench. I will create another layer on top, choose the drop shadow brush, choose black, and add hopes I will make it bigger. Add shadow. Even bige. And I will make it a clipping musk, this layer of the shadow. I will add shadow to the inner part of the skateboard. There is that in it. I will leave this outside part lighter. I will gosh and blur this, uh shadow. Actually, I will choose this sketching pencil and this ocher and to this lower part, I will just add a line. This will note the side of the skateboard. All right, so let's just create the wheels. I will create another layer below the board. Jot this dark, very dark gray and the clean shaper. And I will create one wheel and I will use these four squares for defining the wheel. I will create a circle. I will hold down and click at this menu that pops up and hit circle, and it will create a circle for me, I will just fill it with color. I will make sure I don't have any pixels left. And as it was a textured brush, it left some kind of unwanted shapes around the circle. So now I have a circle. This is going to be my wheel. Now I will choose this ocher color and create a circle inside of it. I will choose this dark gray again, create another circle to the middle and then connect it with the outside part. Okay. Really cool. Now I will choose the shader. Choose the light gray, make this shader small, I will I said smaller. I will just add some shadows into the kind inner part. I will make it even smaller. I will add this light into the outer part of this wheel and I think it looks pretty cool. And what I'm going to do is to duplicate it. Now we have two wheels. I will make it like place it here. I will place this first one here. I have snapping turned on, so I will be able to see some guidelines. You can make a smaller wheels as well. So if you want, you can just make them a bit smaller. Like this. So cool, leave them on separate layers. What I'm going to do now is to merge the layers of the board so I will merge down. I have one board. I will duplicate this board, go to the lower one, place it below everything. I will hit select, choose black, and I will fill layer. Now I will select and place it below the board. I will alpha lock this layer and I will gash and ler it like this. I will lower it opacity and bom, I have a drop shadow below it. So with this skateboard, we will need frettings. We will need the board itself, the two wheels, and the drop shadow. And we are going to animate those separately, so we need all elements separately. Okay, so we are done with the illustration part. I'm so excited. Let's just see what we have created. So now we have a background with a road. We illustrated the trees at the back. We illustrated some leaves, the lamp and the bench. Then this is let me add this. This is a flat image. There are no separate elements that we are going to use. We are going to export this as it is. I will just show it to you in the animation part. Then we have the ghost as a separate element, and then we have the skateboard with the board, the two wheels, and the drop shadow. All right. So cool. See you in the next lesson where we are going to go through Procreate Dreams to basics. See you there. And 10. Intro to Procreate Dreams: He Alright, so welcome to the second part of this class where we are going to animate and you are going to be introduced to Procreate dreams. Now, you are watching the updated class, so we are going to go through Procreate dreams to now, right? So again, a little reminder. If you haven't yet downloaded or updated your app, do so right now. Also, if you are here only for the animation part, make sure to download the illustrated elements from the resources so that you have something to work with. Alright. So you have downloaded and updated Procreate Dreams too, and let's just open it. Okay. So right now we are Procreate Dreams too, and we just entered the theater, okay? Some parts of this app are called differently, but it makes so much more sense than before. Okay, so in the theater, you have your movies. And basically your files. If you had Procreate dreams before and you had some movies there, you will have this little icon here, 1.0. That means that that file is still in the first version of Procreate Dreams. If you click on it, it will convert. So you will not lose your previous movies, right? So here you can hit Select and create a new folder, delete and duplicate files. You can, you know, just slide through them. If you click a movie, it will open pretty easy. If you want to create a new movie, you need to click this plus button. It will open the dimensions that are like default set here that you can open. So we have wide screen, we have ultra white screen, social, square and screen size, and we are going to go for social. So please go and create a new movie that is in this dimensu. Now, previously it was, I think, drawing and empty. If I'm right, now it is flipbook and empty. These little buttons here. It basically means in what function will the canvas open. But basically, you will be able to set it anyways. So I would just go for the empty one, okay? So click empty. And now we have a new movie. Okay, so let's just explore the interface now. Let me just at first, show you that here we have the theater button. So if you want to return to theater, just click that button. It is pretty cool. They changed it. It is more user friendly, I would say. Okay, let's just talk about this part. So, here is the canvas, and it is called the stage, okay? Everything outside of it is the backstage. It is really like if you are in a concert, just imagine it. You have, you know, the stage, and there are things also happening in the backstage. It is a little bit different than in procreate, because in procreate, everything that is outside the canvas is cut and unalive, okay? But here, things are alive in the backstage as well, okay? It is really important because when you're animating, you just need to, you know, go out of the screen. It makes pretty much sense, okay? Here, down here, you can see the timeline. And as you can see, I'm already using gestures. We will get to that in a second. But here is the timeline, okay? And it is kind of similar to the stage. So as you can see, here is this part. Okay. And this means the timeline or the time of the actual animation. Everything outside of it is backstage timeline. Okay? So you can place clips outside of this live area, and it will not count into the animation, if that makes sense. But we'll get to that a bit later. Down here, you have three modes, compose mode, perform mode, and keyframe. Now, these two are animation modes, and this is the compose mode, which basically means that in this mode, you are not doing anything to the animation, but you are actually placing the elements, you know, resizing them and doing things like that. Okay? Here, if you click that, this is the selection tool. So if you are selecting, we cannot select anything right now, but I will show it to you later. If you have this active, you are selecting elements in the timeline. You can turn that off. And here you have the movie settings. So here is the project settings, okay, down here. Here's the stage timeline, share and preferences. And in the project settings, you can set the frames per second and the duration. So I have 10 seconds duration. If you don't have that, please now click on it. I said, click on it, and write ten or select these 10 seconds. Okay. And the frames per second means how many images you have in 1 second. The more images you have, the smoother the animation. 24 is kind of a industry standard for smooth movement. If you have less, you will have kind of robotic movement, okay? So, set it to 24 and 10 seconds. Let's talk about gestures. I have my two fingers. It is pretty similar to procreate. So I can zoom in on the canvas and zoom out with my two fingers, the same on the timeline. Okay? With my two fingers, if I do this, just pen, okay? I can just place things around, also in the timeline. Okay. And also, I have a two fingertap undo and a free fingertapR doo, you will see it in action a little bit later. Okay. So let's just do something in here. Alright? Let's import the background illustration. And one mode is to save the image, in procreate and add it as a new photo into Procreate dreams. And we're going to do it like that right now. We can dragon drop elements also from Procreate to procreate dreams because these two applications work like magic together, okay? But let's just do it in a traditional way so that you see how that works. Okay. So I will click on my little background image, hit the wrench button, share, save as a PNG. And save image. Okay. Now, if I go back to Per Create dreams, hit the plus sign here. Okay? As you can see, with this plus sign, you can add some new things. You can add a flipbook, you can add drawing, text, and a new track, and we are going to explore that a little bit later. Now let's add a photo. Okay. I imported it into the timeline. Can you see that? This is as if it was one layer, right? And it jumped to the perform mode. So let's just go back to the compose mode. If I'm clicking here on the stage, I can change its size and place it. Can you see that? I can place it outside the stage and into the stage, and I'm just going to make it fit the stage because it is going to be the background and we are not going to do anything with it, basically. It is going to be below everything. Okay. So now I have it placed. You need to make sure that this little image fills the duration. So it might, um, come like this. So as you can see, I'm choosing this play had another little element. If I'm going through the timeline, the image is there and then it disappears. So it needs to feel duration. How to do that. So, select the element. You can hold down at the edge and I don't know if you can see that. I can do it with my Apple pencil. There's a little arrow that appears, and now you can feel the duration. You can even extend it. So I'm holding down at the edge, and it fills the duration. But you can just hold down and open a menu. Okay? So if you hold down your finger on an element, not just your finger, even the Apple Puzzil, okay? It opens the menu. You can set several things here like blending mode, mask. You can name your layer, et cetera, but here is the filteration. And if you click that, it will just fill in the set active timeline. Okay? That's important right now. Okay. So now we have our track, and we can place it, okay? Onto different tracks. I am placing it into layers and actually creating new tracks every time I'm placing it below and below. And now it is at the bottom. And let's just start animating and see the animation modes in action. So so in the next video, where we are going to animate this skateboard. 11. Animating The Skateboard: All right, so let's get to animating. In this video, we are going to animate the skateboard. Okay. So I already shown you how to import elements in a traditional way so that you export it in Procreate and import it via this menu. But let me show you how to drag and drop from Procreate because these two apps work together as magic, and it is pretty useful, okay? So if you go to Procreate and let's just open our skateboard, and let's open the layers. To drag and drop a layer, you need to hold down a layer and open procreate dreams. As you can see, I'm still holding down this layer. I can navigate here in this timeline, and I will just place it to the beginning. Okay. And it is important as if it was in a new layer, as if it was a new layer and procreate. Okay? I need to make sure at first that every element that I'm placing in this animation, it has to fill the duration. So again, I will manipulate and move around the layers by holding them down. I will place it to the beginning of the timeline and again, hold down and fill the duration. And with pinching, you can make the timeline fit the screen. So it is here, as you can see, we are in the compose mode, and we can in the compose mode again, choose a size for the skateboard. I will just place it onto the road right now. Okay. Now let me show you what happens when you are importing several layers together. I will select all three layers of the two wheels and the drop shadow. I will hold it down, go back to Procreate dreams, and I will place it to a layer below. As you can see, all three elements imported into one single track, and I need them to be on separate tracks. Because if they are like this, if I'm playing the animation, let me show you. One element just appears, it disappears, et cetera. It doesn't make any sense. Let's just arrange it. I will just click on the first wheel, place it to this track. Click on the second one, place it here, and click on the little drop shadow and place it below. I will click everyone and fill duration with each little element. Now it is fully filled. Can you see that in the timeline? Now let's arrange them, so I will go with the first little wheel and place it below and put together the little skateboard. I will make the skateboard a bit bigger like this and arrange the wheels Good. Okay, let me show you how to group elements because we want to animate the whole skateboard and not just the individual elements. So to make it make sense, and you will see, we are going to use the multi select tool with a multi select tool, I will draw through the elements that I want to select or the tracks. As you can see, I didn't draw through the background. So it selected these tracks. If I go through it again, it will deselect. So I will just select, hold down, and again we have another menu and hit group. Now it places this whole group into one single track, and as you can see, it is a group, I hit the arrow and it opens up the individual elements that I can animate separately as well. So this is the grouping. I need to deselect the multi select tool and I can just adjust the wheels individually within that group. Okay? Okay. Now if I close the group, I can just place it all around together, resize it. I will make it a bit smaller. Let's just start animating. Okay? So I will place the skateboard to the beginning of the road. As you can see, this part is in the backstage, and this part is in the active stage part. Okay? Only this part of the skateboard will be seen in the animation. Now. Let me show you key framing because that is the most basic animation technique that we are going to use. So I will place my playhead to the beginning of this group, and I'll just enter key framing mode. Okay? As you can see, this little play head just changed. If I go to perform, it has this little record button here. If I'm at the key framing, it has this action button here. So I will make it as close as possible. So if I hit this action button, a menu opens up. We move and filter. With filter, you can apply different filters to the track, but now we are going to click Move. You have different things here like move and scale, warp and distort, and I'm going to hit move and scale. And what happened here? Just take a look at it here. This is a key frame, and it added another track below the track, and it is called motion track. Okay? So this is where the emotion is recorded and added to the track. So what does this keyframe do? It remembers the position you have your image at, okay? So this keyframe that appeared here affects the whole group. Okay? Now let's just add the final position. So if I pinch and fit the screen, I will go to the end with my little play hat, and I will place my little element to the final position, and it created a keyframe. As you can see it already, let's just play it. Broker dreams will automatically create the movement between two keyframes. And what if I don't know place playhead here and I don't know moved the little skateboard there. I would have keyframe there, it would look like this. It would go there to that keyframe and go do or to this end position. But we don't want that. W two type undo, we can just undo this keyframe in the beginning in the middle. We want an initial keyframe and the final keyframe and we can start the easing. So easing is basically how this movement goes, okay? So if it is linear, or it is going quicker, et cetera, and the way we can do that is to hit to the motion track. Can you see that? I'm holding down the motion track, and it opens up the menu of set all easings. Okay? If I click there, I can set linear. So the movement will be like linear. Is in and is out and is in and out. Okay? We want it to be linear, okay? But this is a very nice way to add a little bit of variation to the movement. Okay, so we have the moving skateboard. This is the first animation we did here. And now we are going to set wheel rotation. Okay. So let's just go to the first little wheel. Okay? So again, our playhad is on this wheel, and here is this action button, I will click. I will hit move, and I again add another motion track, only to the wheel. Okay? At the end, I will just place another one. We want scale. Now we have two keyframes, one here and one here. I will click on the first keyframe. And it opens up the Men scale menu. As you can see, there are different things you can set, but here is the most important one, rotate. Now, if a wheel rotates, it makes 360 degrees. We need to add a multiplication of that here. How many times will basically from this key frame to the end key frame, how many times will it rotate? The easiest will be to set it to 3,600 and you can set plus and minus as well. If it is rotating as the clock, or reverse. Let's just see that if the plus, how does it look like? Can you see that? It is moving. Well, okay. So let's see at the beginning till the end, it will rotate ten times. As it is going. If I would say, I don't know, 36,000, it would rotate very quickly. It has to make 1,000 rotations from the first keyframe till the final one. But it is good enough right now. Let's do the same exact thing to the back wheel. So what I did, let's repeat the process. I clicked Move Move and scale. I went to the end of the timeline and just hit move Movement scale to place keyframes. I go to D. Key frame, hit it. Right, 3,600. And now let's play it. Okay. Now, as you can see, both wheels are turning. How cool it is. Wow. I love it. Alright, so, this is the bottom where you can play your animation. And yeah, I think it looks pretty cool. Let's just do a little very quick recap what we did in this animation. Okay? So we learned about key framing. If you are in a keyframe mode, you have an action play hat. We learned how to import with dragon drop from Procreate, how to arrange different layers, how it imports from Procreate if you're bringing in several layers. We learned that you need to fill duration if you want that element to appear throughout the whole timeline or throughout the whole animation. We grouped elements. We resize them in different ways. And then we learned key framing, so we added one keyframe to the whole group at the beginning of the timeline. Set a final position and added another keyframe. We set the easing of the movement, and then we made two wheels rotating by again adding one keyframe to the beginning of the timeline, one keyframe to the end of the timeline, and then set rotation to the multiplication of 360 degrees so that the wheel rotates ten times during 10 seconds. I think this is so exciting. See in the next video where we are going to animate the little ghost. 12. Animating The Ghost: All right, so in this video, we are going to animate the ghost. But let's just first close up this group so that we are a bit more organized, and let's just be in the compose mode, right? So, we are going to impose our ghost the same way with the dragon drop from Procreate. So let's go and select the little ghost to go to procreate dreams to import. What we need to do again is to place it to the beginning of the timeline, hold down and fill duration. Okay. Now, I will select the ghost and make it a bit smaller. And fit the size of the skateboard and I will already place it here onto the skateboard to its initial position, okay? So the animation technique that we are going to use in this part is the perform mode. With the perform mode, we are basically recording the movement that we are making with that element. So let me just show you. I will hit perform. This button just changed to record button. And as you can see, here is the perform indicator that means that anything that I'm doing right now with the ghost will be recorded. Let me just show you. I'm just moving it around. I'm making big movements so that you can see what happens. Okay. Can you see that? What happened here? Here is the whole motion track full of key frames. So it automatically created key frames from the movements that I made. And let me just play, as you can see it. Okay, let me show the whole. The movement isn't that nice, right? So this is a little bit play and um you know, trial and error. I will just go back and delete this track with the two fingertpUndo. And now I will sometimes I need to do this several times, so I need to, you know, pay attention how I'm moving the ghost around. So basically what I need to do is to follow the skateboard, basically, and add a little bit of this floating movement to the ghost because he's actually floating on the skateboard, okay? So let's just try it. Make sure that the playhead is at the beginning, okay? Okay, I stopped. So if you stop, the play head stops. Let's see how it looks like, Okay? It looks a little bit better. But not perfect. To help you with this little movement thing, there is a modification called motion filtering that you can open when you click on the perform bottom, and I have set it at the 77 person, but let me just show you if you have it zero. W zero motion filtering, it will pick up every movement you make with your hand. So it will be very not smooth the movement. It will pick up everything. Let me show you. It will really be like, you know, not very floating. And if I study to 100%, it will be kind of too smooth, I think. Let me just try it. So it will smoothen out these little little movements that my hand makes. Okay. Can you see that? It made just five key frames. It doesn't look good. Okay, so let's set the motion filtering to 71 person, probably, and just make yourself a little space here where you can just move around. I don't to stop when I'm performing. I would rather do the motion several times. But it just 10 seconds. Let's just try. Have the playhead at the beginning and see what we can do. Let's play it. Cool. Okay. I love it. It can stay. Now, let me show you something. We can layer motion. That means that there will be more motion tracks collecting data from the distortion or the manipulation with the element. So if I'm clicking here, I'm at the perform mode. If I'm clicking here, I can add key frames as well. So I hit move and I hit arb. As you can see, it created another motion track. Below and I created these nodes. I have the motion track here. The playhead on this track. I have these notes I can warp this little element to add an extra floating effect. I will just grab this node and I will just move it around as it floats around. This will add this extra motion. Can you see we have two motion tracks here? Let's play it. Added this little. Can you see that? So cool. Okay, so this is what layering motion is, and you can do so many things. But let's just move on. We already have the animated little ghosty. Let's go back to compose mode. And we have this little animated ghost in the park, and let's just add some extra elements. In the next video, we are going to animate some light bucks and I will show you the flipbook. See you there. Okay 13. Animating The Lightbugs: All right, so welcome to this video where we are going to explore the flip book that is again, completely reamped in Procreate Dreams, too, and it is really, really like a dream for anyone who struggled with animation before. It is really well made, okay? So let me show you how you can create a new flip book. So I will create another layer, and here you have the flip book. And it opens up basically a painting mode. But you have a flip book here that you can play, and you can see here are little frames. You have 24 here, but that is 1 second. Okay? So we have 24 frames per second set for this animation, and we have 10 seconds of this animation, which means how many frames or yeah, frames we have together, 240. So this might sound a little like a lot. But what we are going to do is a very simple animation. And let's just have a glimpse on the little tools that we have here, okay? It is pretty much again, revamped. So we have settings here. Okay, so let me just explain what onion skin is. So onion skin is when you are drawing through these little frames, it is very useful to see what you have drawn before. Okay, so that you know where to draw the next motion at. So flip book is basically, oh, let me just start, okay? So, here are the little brushes. There are so many new brushes here, and what I love is the luminance brush and the light pen, and I will just choose a little yellow color. And yeah, if I'm drawing, can you see that? I already have one little frame here, and if I'm drawing, it stays there. So if I want to go to the next movement, can you see that this little one turned to purple? And if I went to the settings, the purple was here as well. So this means that the previous little drawing that I made will turn purple so that I can see what I've drawn before. So if I'm in the second frame, I can paint it here, and let me just show you what we are going to do so that it all makes sense too. Here is the third one. So we are drawing light box, okay? So flying around here. Okay. If I'm playing this, can you see that it is moving? Dim, bit dim, d, d. It is really cool and really simple and really easy. Okay? So this is basically what we are going to do. We are going to make free light bugs flying all around, and I will show you some other settings that you can have. Let's just take a look at the little settings up here. So we have filters so we can change the hue saturation brightness, so we can play around a lot with Um, you know, colors and things. This was missing in Procreate Dreams one and it's so cool that they added it here. Now, our little light bug will stay the same, but it is so cool to have it, okay? We can gosh and blur. This is so useful. And yeah, these filters are amazing. I can't wait to play with them next time. But we can also select. And as you can see, we have a free hand selection to rectangle Ellipse, color fill, et cetera. So this menu was really missing from here. And also, we have a transform tool. So now we can transform our little elements that we are drawing here. So basically, the flip book is several canvases that you are drawing on. And it is so cool that as you are, you know, drawing, you can see the animation playing at the background, so you can plan around your little animation. But we are going to do this really simply and beginner friendly, okay? So I don't want to overcomplicate it for you. You have the um well known tools up here. So we have the brushes, you can smudge erase. And we have also layers here. I think probably at every little little canvas, you have layers separately so that you can do more complex drawings. That is really cool. And we have so many color options. We have to disc the classic, the hominy, the value, and the palettes. Just as we have in Procreate. And you can create your new palette, as well. So it is really, really, really revamped, and I just can't emphasize enough how what possibilities this gives us to creatives. Okay. Well, let's just get back to our little light bugs and make it easy. So have the brush. You can see. You don't need to plan the movement very much, okay? So if you are doing this flip book thing, it is really good to kind of plan the movement. That you are drawing then. But right now, this light box can just, you know, go around in different shapes. So let's just have fun with that. It is really beginner friendly and it is really good to get used to how this all works. So I will speed this up so that is not that oops. Not that boring for you. And yeah, just click and click and throw. Hm. Oh, yeah, what I wanted to say that if you are drawing smaller and smaller dots and then get bigger and bigger, creates the effect that it gets closer and further away. And as you can see, now that I ended the 24, I need to click this plus sign. And, yeah. Okay, so 240 little drawings or dots. It already hurts my arms, but let's just see what I've done. Okay. Let's go. Okay, let's see it, right? I guess let's play it. Oh, wow. It looks so cool. Oh, my God. It's so fun. Can you see that? Wow. I love what it looks like. Now, we are not going to rest, okay? We are going to create another layer within the flip book that is also a new feature in Procreate Dreams, too. So if you hit this okay, not the plus sign, but this sign, it will create another track. So you can add another drawing. So we are going to do the exact same process again to make these two little bucks play around. And don't worry. We are not going to draw other ones right now. So let's just play again, okay. Whoa. Okay. I just play. Wow. It looks so cute. Okay. Alright. Super amazing. Now let's see what we can do. So if I'm hitting flip book, I can hit finish drawing to return to the stage. And as you can see, it is here. So both of these little light bugs are here. Okay? Now, if I hold down the flip book layer, I can hit Convert flip book to tracks, and this will take my two flip book layers and put them into a group. It will create a book, a group, okay? And here are all the little drawing separately so that you can actually move them around if you need so. I will show you something. I will hit the multi select tool and select this whole track, with everything with this one as well. Okay? So I have all little drawings selected. If I hold down, I can group so this way, all these little flip book images will be in one group in one track, and it will be helpful if I want to duplicate it. Because we don't want to draw another one, so I will just hold down and I will just hit Duplicate and it will duplicate this whole track with the little flip book things here. But right now, I can just select this group. And in the compose mode I am, I can rotate it and place it somewhere else. So it will take its whole motion with itself, okay? So it will have a different motion as the other one. Can you see that? So I added. I duplicated this one up here and it now has a variation as I moved it to a different side and rotated it, okay? I hope that makes sense. So we have free little light bugs here floating around with our little ghost. So let me just do a little recap of what we have done here, okay? So, we created a new flip book. We have drawn two little light bugs in 240 little drawings because we have 24 frames per second, and we have a ten second video, right, and that makes us 240 little frames. We filled all of them with a little light bug in a random motion. Then we exited the flip book menu. We clicked on the flip book and converted it to tracks, which gave us a group. And in that group, we had the layers two layers of the drawings. We converted one into a single track by grouping. We duplicated that group, and in the compose mode, we placed it to a different place and rotated the whole drawing with the motion, and it gave us a little variation, and we didn't need to redraw a third little bug. So we have now three. And it looks super magical. Okay. I hope this gave you, you know, a little creative boost because you can do amazing things with just a few clicks in Procreate Dreams, too, and it is just magical. And in the next video, we are going to actually draw in Procreate Dreams, too. So let's just draw and animate leaves, and, yeah, see you in the next video. So 14. Animating The Leaves: If it All right, so let's just animate some leaves. We are going to try out drawing and painting in Procreate Dreams too, and we are going to animate with the perform mode again. And yeah, at first, let's just close this group so that we are a little bit organized. All right. So to create a new drawing, hit the plus button and hit the drawing, and it will enter the drawing mode. It is similar to the flip book, but we don't have the flip book right here. Okay? So we are going to draw a, um leaf. And for the color, you can choose whatever color you wish, but you can also use the color picker. So let me just show you. I will just hold down my finger here and I will just pick up this color and I can just use it. I will use a little bit lighter one. Choose a brush. What I love is in the drawing brush set the Blackburn. It is so nice textured brush. But you can choose different one. You can just play around. I will just use this Blackburn and let me just draw a very simple leaf like this and I will choose a lighter color and choose a sketching pencil. I brush side, it will be aprocriate pencil. I will just draw a little bit of this middle. I will animate this leaf with perform. I will hit drawing and finish drawing. And as you can see, it placed the drawing into a new track. I will make sure that it fits the whole timeline. It does. All right. All right, so we have the leaf here. I will make it a little bit smaller, and I want it to fall down in the background. With this falling down motion, okay? I want this leaf to actually fall behind the ghost. So I will just hold down the layer and place it behind the ghost. We will animate it with perform and we are going to again layer motion. I will just hit perform and at the beginning of this little at the track of the leaf and make sure to have a steady hand. And I will make it fall like this. Let's see how it looks like. Okay. You can do several takes again, okay, if it doesn't work out for you. And I will want to move, not just like this, but I want to have this little swing emotion to it. So if you have this little leaf selected and you click on it, you can see these nodes, right? If you hit on the node, you can just change the size of it. We don't want to play with that. We want to rotate it. So if you click it, you can see this little quarter circle thing and you can Okay, I can see what I'm doing. But let me just check, okay? Okay. So let me see. Okay. I need to play with it. I want this sleeve to fall like this and then take a turn and then like this. Let's try to make it. Like this, and turn. Okay, and turn again and turn. Wow. Okay, and it derived. So let's see. Okay. Cool. So fun. Let's just repeat this process with another leaf. Hit plus and hit drawing. Now I'm going to choose a little bit of reddish color. Choose the black brush again and draw another leaf. Like this. Choose a lighter color and the appropriate pencil and just add a middle like this. Again, drawing, finish drawing, and I will just make it a bit smaller in the compose mode. Okay a little bit smaller. I will again make it fit the whole timeline and take the play head to the beginning and actually I will place its bit to the side here, and it will also fall down similarly. I will hit per foam and Okay. Okay. Okay. This is too quick. Let's try again. Okay. And let's do the same exact thing. I will click the node, click this thing. Okay, let's play it. So cool. Let's do a third one. The third leaf will be in the front and we'll go through the whole animation. Click the plus button and hit drawing. Okay, let's make a big leaf. So I'm going to use this color, this ocher color again, make the brush a bit bigger, use the black burn again, and I will try to make a nicely shaped leaf. Okay, that's cool. Uh, let's choose a lighter version of the color, choose the procreate pencil and add Okay. Add this a little. Things here. Cool. Hit finish drawing as this is going to be in front of everything, make it to the top, place it to the top, and again, make sure that it is filling the duration of the whole timeline. That is, now I'm in the compose mode, we are going to work from the backstage now. Let me show you what we're going to do. We need 10 seconds to go from this part down here, okay? So let's just try it. Make the play head to the beginning, go to perform. We have the perform indicator, and Okay, let's see. I didn't exit it. So I will try to exit. I will place a little bit higher. So I'm at the perform mode and I have 10 seconds to rip down. Okay? Cool. I always do the exact same thing. Play with this anchor or this movement. Okay. Cool. Wow. So dynamic. It looks so good. It works so much better than before, to be honest. I love it. So many things happening, right? I can imagine a nice spooky music that actually we can add here as well, but I suggest now to add it online when you are sharing your Ofick. So yeah, let's just move on to the next video. We are going to show you how to export your animation. See you there. So 15. Export Your Animation: Alright, so I hope that you love the animation as much as I do. In this video, I'm going to show you how to export your animation and actually upload it to a class project. And there is an amazing new feature in Procreate Dreams, too, and that is that you can export your animations as animated gifts. And that is so cool. So thank you Procreate for adding this because it was pretty troublesome before to create animated gifts. But right now it is pretty easy. So if you click the movie settings, and the share menu, you can export the movie as a video, so it can be an Epi foe. Animated gif frames as images. The current frame, you can create a Procreate Dreams file and you have advanced Export. So let me just try the animated gift at first. So it exports pretty quickly, and I will show you why. And, you can just hit Save Image and it will save it to your camera role. So it is pretty nice, but the quality is not that good. But you have a possibility to export it in higher quality. So if you go to Advanced Export, you can choose the format up here. It can be a video and it can be a gift, choose the gift and you can choose the resolution. In default, it is set to 480 P. It is enough if you go, I think for the thousand 80 and you don't need four K, you can set the playback so it can be a loop, a ping pong, and, these two and you can set a transparent background that is pretty cool. Actually, I think that looks pretty good right now. And I will just share it, and it will render it a little bit longer, and the file will be a little bit bigger. Depending on your purposes, you can just play around with these settings, okay? Alright, so you can just hit Save Image and it will again be on your camera roll. Looks so good. So this animation should look really good when sharing on social media, on your stories or as a post. But let me just show you how to export it to be able to upload it to your class project. So when you are on Skillshare and you are submitting your class project, you need to keep in mind that it is 8 megabytes that you can upload here, okay, as a gift. So very, very low resolution version is going to be that you are going to upload here. Okay? It is enough for me to see how you nailed the motion. Um, make sure to add a title to your class project, add a little description so that I know what your experience was during the class. It is really so fun to read them. And don't forget to add a thumbnail to your class project that is actually showing in the project gallery. Maybe export a frame, you know, or create a screenshot and, you know, crop it and place it there as your thumbnail so that we can see a glance at your illustration and animation. Or you can export the illustration from Procreate as well. Well, let me just show you how you can make a, low resolution one here. If you go to resolution, you can hit Custom and you can just hit 300 and also turn off the dithering because it may add some extra megabytes. Hit Share right now and hit Save Image. Can you see that? It is pretty simplified, but it looks still good. If you go to the class project and hit this one and hit photo library, it is a ploding and we have your gift right here. All right, so I hope that you had fun in this class. See you in the last video, and let's wrap it all up. 16. Final Thoughts: Congratulations. You did it. I'm so proud of you for sticking till the end. I'm sure you have a mind going animation, and I can't wait to see it. So make sure to upload it to the Project Gallery. Okay, so let's just do a little recap on what you have learned in this class. In this class, you have learned how to illustrate with animation in mind and how to prepare your visuals for creating an animated scene. You have learned the basics of Procreate Dreams, too, learned keyframing, layering motion, performing motion, the flip book, and you also painted right in Procreate Dreams too. This was so much fun, right? Make sure to leave a review to the class. It is so important to me to know what you think about it. Also, stay up to date by following me on social media, on Instagram and Facebook, and also here on Skillshare. I'm so much looking forward to see you in my other classes as well. It was a pleasure to have you here. I wish you all the best and happy creating.