Animate Your Illustrations - Procreate Dreams For Beginners

1. Introduction: Have you ever wanted to bring your illustrations to life to make them move, tell a story, or leap off the screen? With procreate dreams, animation is easier and more accessible than ever before. Hey, my name is Alexandra AKAD art Mother. I'm an artist, illustrator, and online educator. My background in animation goes deep as I focus my masters thesis on this subject. And I was beyond excited when Procreate announced Procreate dreams as a powerful yet user friendly animation tool. After diving deep into its features, I can confidently say it is a game changer. I created this class with illustrators in mind as animation can be an overwhelming and complex topic. And a short form video format is dominating most of the platform. Adding some movement to our illustrations might bring your art some new potential. Procreate Dreams offers several ways to animate, and we are going to explore them all by creating a cool scene of a ghost skateboarding through the park. I love spooky season. But regardless of the topic of this animation, we are going to explore the most important techniques like key framing, layering motion, recording motion, the flip book method, and we will also try to paint right in Procreate dreams. You'll also learn how to prepare your illustrations for animation. I'll guide you through the creation process of all the visual elements in Procreates, keeping animation in mind throughout the process. However, if you'd prefer to jump straight into animating, the illustrations will be available in the class resources for you to download. By the end of this class, you will have your very own animated piece ready to share with the world, whether it is on social media, your portfolio or a part of a bigger project. So grab your iPad, fire up, procreate and procreate dreams, and let's unlock the magic of animating together. I can't wait to see what you create. See you in class. 2. About The Class: Welcome to the class. I'm so happy to have you here. In this video, I'm going to talk to you about the class structure, the class resources, and the class project. So the class is divided into two main parts. In the first part, we are going to illustrate all the elements that you will need for the animation. We are going to create a background, a ghost, and a skateboard. There will be more elements moving in the final illustration, but we are going to take care of them right in Procreate dreams. So for this first part, you will need Procreate. It is going to be a step by step process, so you will be able to follow along. But if you don't want to illustrate, but you want to jump right into animation, there will be these elements that we create in this first part available for you to download in the class resources. So in the second part of this class, we are going to animate. We are going to explore the Procreate dreams interface. I will show you how to import images, your illustrations from Procreate. I will show you how the timeline works, how to place the elements into the illustration, and then we are going to explore the techniques like key framing, recording motion, layering motion. Then we are going to work right in procreate dreams, and I will show you the flipbook method where we are going to draw, but it will be pretty easy, so don't worry. But you will learn the techniques. And lastly, we are going to paint a leaf in Procreate dreams to see how it works there because you are able to draw and paint in procreate dreams as well. But the tools are quite limited. So this is why I thought that this class would be perfect for illustrators just as I am like, when I started to work with Procreate dreams, I didn't even think if I was going to, like, paint in procreate dreams because in Procreate, you have so many options. You can prepare every element, and it is so amazing that these two apps like, work together like magic, okay? So we are going to create elements in Procreate and then animate them in Procreate dreams. Regarding the resources, so you will have the visual elements that we will need, you will have one background, one ghost, and one skateboard. They will be procreate files so that you can import elements separately because that is what we will need in order to animate them. Then you will get a brush sat with some extra brushes. You might already have my bras Sat if you haven't taken any other class of mine, the art materials ultimate brush sat, the sample of it. There are six brushes, I guess, but you will have two extra brushes this time, some textures to be able to create a similar effect that I have in this illustration. You will have a color palette and also the Procreate dreams file that you can import into your Procreate dreams so that you can see if you're missing something and use it for reference. The class project is going to be to illustrate a ghost skateboarding in a park. You are free to create whatever background you can follow me, as I already said, to create a similar background that I did, but you are totally free to create whatever background. It just has to have a road, okay, because that is the topic of the class. Then you will need a skateboard or something that has wheels that you will be able to illustrate and then animate with the techniques that I'm showing. Then you are also free to create whatever shaped ghost and actually whatever subject. But keep in mind that the techniques I'm going to use in this class, are going to be best applied into a similar subject as there is a clothe and the movement that I'm going to show you how to animate will apply well to a ghost. But if you have anything other in mind, you can use these exact techniques on different subjects, okay? But you will need to adjust those steps for yourself, if that makes sense. So don't forget to upload your class projects to the project gallery. At the end of the class, I will show you how to applaud and create your class project, and I'm really, really excited to see what you create. So the first step is download the resources, open, procreate and procreate dreams, and 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. So 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 a half of it, and then I will use the third of this half. So 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. Okay? 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. And 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 Okay. And I will add a little bit here as well, taking away from this road. Okay? So now you can set the width of this road. Okay. These don't need to be really edgy and straight lines and shapes, okay? Let it be a bit organic. Alright, 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. And 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 adds already space into the artwork. 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 um, 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 thingy, you know? For the arms. Like this, something like this. Okay. You can also do like two of these. Um, Thanks, so it is not one big. Okay. And I will add the lamp as well. So the lamp is also going to have this bottom thing. You can use reference images as if you wish for drawing a street lamp. I'm like, going from my imagination. So 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. And now that we have this sketch of these three elements, let's just get into illustrating them. So 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 dis light. All right. And 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. We'll 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. Okay. I think it looks super cool. I've got some darkness below this bench as well. And how I'm going to shade this part. It is going to be super 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, select and go to the layer above it, and 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 Gauchenbl adjustments, Gauchenbler, 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 gosh and 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 this 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. M. All right. And what I'm going to do is the exact same thing that I did with this part. So I'm going to f lock this shape, choose a lighter gray, choose the shader 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. And 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 and 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 Goshen blur that as well like this. It will really look as if it was a light like lighting, doing its job. All right. See you in the next video where we are going to add the tree. So. 6. Illustrating The Trees: He 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. So 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. So 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 still seen, okay? And this layer is going to be also blurred. So I hit adjustments Gaussian blur and blur them just a bit. Not that much. And Wala, can you see that? We have so much space there. So cool. Okay, so 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: All right. And let's just finish up the background and add some shadows to the middle ground and some textures. So 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. And 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. So 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. And 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 above 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 blurin. Like this. So cool. So 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, so I will choose this ocher, and I will really just add some blobs as if it was like these leaves like you know, going into the image just a bit to know that there are still leaves up here. Okay. And I will also gush and blur these just a little bit so that they are not that, like, direct. Alright, 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. So this lightened the scene up, and I think that's all for the scene. Now, let's move on to the ghost. So I see you in the next video and let's illustrate acute ghost together. 8. Illustrating The Ghost: Alright, so in this lesson, we are going to create the ghost. So what I want from you now is to create another canvas with the same dimensions. So 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 goes into this direction, if that makes sense. Okay. 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. And 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, okay? So I will have two now or you can have three. Let's have three. I will erase. So one, two, three. Cool. I will add some eyes. Again, feel free to create whatever eyes, and I will just node the hints. You can add some character design props like he can have like, you know, 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. Okay, 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, okay? 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 kind of make it more flowy, because we are not adding actually texture, but erasing texture from the ghost, and it will make him more transparent. So I will erase around its edges. Everywhere. My make it even smaller and go more hard on the edges. So 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. And now I will make it a bit bigger. And where these waves are like, inward, I will add a little bit of shadow. Kind of 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. So 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. Okay. So you can add sunglasses, you can add the cap, you can add whatever. I will. I have the eraser as the sold and 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. And 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? So if I draw this thing here, it will look like as if it was holes in it, you know. And that will be the eyes. This will add more interest into it. I love to add it like this way. So we have our ghost. I will merge these two layers so that I can export that later. And 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. And 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. So I'm going to choose this ocher color and the clean shaper to create the shape of the board. It is like, it doesn't matter where you are drawing this on your canvas. I'm going to kind of raw 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. So 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. Whoop. 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 fried effect, not exactly a side view of it. Okay? Now I'm going to use my eraser to adjust the shape to make it more, like, perfect. Okay, cool. So now I'm going to alpha lock this layer and choose a darker brown and add the tree texture to it as well. So I added the tree texture as a brush here. I'm going to add exact same shadows as I did with the bench, so I will create another layer on top, choose the drop shadow brush, choose black, and add like hopes I will make it bigger. Add shadow. Even biget. And I will make it a clipping musk, this layer of the shadow. I will add shadow to the inner part of this skateboard. So there is that in it. Okay. I will leave this outside part lighter. I will gosh and blur this, uh shadow. And 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. Alright, so let's just create the wheels. I will create another layer below the board. Joos 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. Okay? This is going to be my wheel. Now I will choose this ocher color. And create a circle inside of it. And I will choose this dark gray again, create another circle to the middle and then connect it with the outside part. Okay. Really cool. And now I will choose the shader. Choose the light gray, make this shader small, and I will just like I said, smaller. I will just add some shadows into the kind of inner part. I will make it even smaller. So 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. So now we have two wheels. I will make it like kind of place it here. I will place this first one kind of 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. Okay? And what I'm going to do now is to merge the layers of the board, so I will merge down. So 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 un alpha lock this layer and I will gush and pl it like this. I will lower it so opacity and bom, I have a drop shadow below it. So with this skateboard, we will need fre tings. 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 and 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 basics. See you there. And 10. Intro to Procreate Dreams: Alright, so welcome to the animation part. What you will need to have is the background, the ghost, and the skateboard, just as we illustrated it. If you decided not to illustrate your own, just download them from the resources and make sure that you have them in Procreate, okay? So what you will need is Procreate dreams. Procreate dreams can be bought in the app store for a fee, so you don't need to subscribe to it, so make sure that you have it downloaded and let's just open it up. So this is how the Procreate Dreams gallery looks. Like it is similar to Procreate and you have all the files here. And let's just create a new one. So up here, you have this plus sign. Click on it. Now we are going to create a new movie. If you scroll through, you can choose from different dimensions. You have square, you have screen size, white screen, ultra white screen, and we are going to use the social, okay? And you have two options here to use this or that. I just choose the empty one. Okay. So this is how it looks like. Basically, this is your canvas, and this is your timeline. Here you have the tools that we are going to use. The gestures that you can use in procreate dreams similar to the ones that you can use in Procreate, so you can pinch, zoom in, you can erase and undo, et cetera. Now, the first thing that we are going to do is to import the background. And I'm going to go back to Procreate. Select my image. And as we don't have anything moving in this background, I will just save it as a JPAG. Okay? So I hit the range button, share JPAG and save image. Now, I go back to Procreate dreams and hit this plus sign and go to photos. I just add that photo. Okay. As you can see, it appeared here in the timeline. Hi, Will. I have it selected. You can see that it is selected when it is like this red. You can move it around. If I click on it, I can make it bigger. And I will just basically do that. I will just place it right here. And that's it with the background. What I want to show you is that this timeline is 30 seconds, okay? So if we keep it this way, our animation will be 30 seconds. We don't want that. That's a lot. We are going to create a 10 seconds animation. So I will click here to dream. And it opens up this menu where you can set different things. Let's go to properties. And here you can set different things. You can set the width, the height, the duration, and the frames per second. Frames per second is how much frames you have per second, which will help you to get smooth movement. 24 is totally perfect for smooth illustration, animation. And the duration, just click here and just write 10 seconds and hit done. And now my timeline just scroped to 10 seconds. You can see that this file exceeds that. So you can still see the whole timeline. If you want to fit it, this is good if you want to just select one part of an animation, imagine that there would be some kind of a movement here. Just hold down and you can just place another part of this video into the timeline that is captured. So now I want to fit it. And if I just hold down this part of this file, I can just move it like this. Bam, I fitted it into the 10 seconds frame. As you can see, this button opened up. If I click on it, there are different things that we can do, and this is the action button, and we are going to use it in the animation part. All right. So in this first video, we just had the glimpse of how Procreate dreams looks like. We imported the background, and now you know how the timeline looks like. So let's just move on to the animating. In the first part, we are going to animate this skateboard. See you in the next video where we are going to add this skateboard moving. And 11. Animating The Skateboard: All right. So we have the background, and now we are going to add this skateboard. For this, we are not really going to export anything. We are going to drag and drop. This is an amazing feature that you can drag and drop elements from Procreate to Procreate dreams. So I will open up Procreate. And open up my skateboard. And you can transfer several layers at once. But what I found from the time I've spent with Procreate dreams is that it is so much easier if I just do it individually. So I will just hold down the layer of the board, swipe up or just open procreate dreams. You can see as I'm holding down, I can choose where I'm dropping it above or below, and I will do it above. So it just dropped it. You can see it here, you can move it around. I will just place it down here and make it a bit bigger. And in the time frame, I will again do this that I'm holding down the edge of this file and I will fit it into the timeline so that I have it throughout the whole animation and did not jump off or anything like that. I will just zoom in so that you can see what I'm doing. Better. Now I go again to Procreate dreams and let's grab the drop shadow first. I will place it below it. Can you see that? Again, I'm still holding down. I can choose where I'm dropping it. Again, I will make it fit and yeah, sometimes you need to play around to get used to this thing what I can do here was pretty annoying. So don't worry if you just cannot grab it at the first time, okay? So you need to just a bit hold down your finger and then you can adjust it. Now, I will place it below, so I will just place it below the board like this can change its size as you can see, I'm fitting it. And I will go back and choose one wheel. Actually, we only need one wheel because we are going to duplicate it. So I will go here and place the wheel between the two layers. It works similarly as with layers in procreate when you are illustrating, you are layering different images about each other. So what I'm going to do again is to hold down the site and fit it into the timeline. Yeah, I have the wheel and I will place it down here. I will make it bigger. Okay. And if you hold down, it opens up a menu where you can cut, copy, duplicate, rename, change the blending wad, et cetera. I will duplicate it. Now, for some reason, it placed it to the same timeline, same layer of timeline. I will just hold down this part. This is the other wheel and I will just place it above it. Now I can place it to the front part. Well I have my skateboard imported. Now we are going to start animate. But at first, I want to group so that I can apply a motion to the all elements because I want these all elements to move together through the image. So for this, there is a menu. This is the layer menu or timeline edit menu. When it is on, so it is in red, it means that it is like an active mode. You have this colorful tan silver. You can actually just select stuff. This is for that. Select these four things. As you can see if I go through it again in the select. I will just select these four. I will hold down, and group. Now it is here. If I want to check what is in the group, I have it here, I have this arrow and I can see every element. But now I will close it down and if I have this selected, Okay, I will turn off this mode. So if I have this selected, I can just move it around. I will place it to the initial position. So it will start, for example, from here. As you can see, it doesn't cut off the drawing as it does in procreate. When you place anything outside the canvas, it just crops it. But it is alive outside the canvas as well. And the reason is like, you know, to be able to go outside of the frame. Okay. Now I will place the tuggle to the front. Now the animation technique that I'm going to show you is the key frame technique. Brockway dreams is very smart because if I place a keyframe for this object for the beginning of the timeline, I will just click here and add move and hit move and scale, you will see if I get closer, this appears below the track. This is a keyframe. This is a key frame. This means that it registers this object here as if logged in in this time in this position. If I go to the end and hit it again. I will have another keyframe here. I at this keyframe, I will select it, move this skateboard to this other part. This is going to be the final position. Okay. And now, can you see that? If I play it, this is the play button. This skateboard just moves across the hole. Now, you can see that there is a curve to this movement. It starts slowly. It gets quicker, and it gets slower. We can edit that. I don't like actually this movement. I will just stop it. If we go to this track, hold down, you will see the menu set all easings and you can just set it to linear. Linear means that it will just go smoothly in one speed through the image, or you can choose ease in, ease out and ease in and out for the motion curve. Let's just keep it at linear for now, and I will just zoom out from the timeline. Let's see. Okay, so the skateboard is moving through the hole. Okay, cool. Now, let's just animate the wheels. So now I can open up the group and see that this motion track applies to the whole group, but I can have individual motion tracks for every piece. Okay? Now, let's animate the front wheel. I will place this playhead to the front wheel. Okay, here. I will click, move, and move on scale to add a keyframe, and I will go to the end of it and tap. Now I have two keyframes. Can you see them? Yeah. If we click on a keyframe, we can see that we can adjust like movement by adding different numbers in. And we have rotate here. Now, if we want a wheel to rotate, we need 360 degrees, right? So if I set it once, it will just turn once. But we want a multiple of 360, okay, because it will just turn around lots of times while it is going through this movement, right? So the easiest will be to set to 3,600. And you can choose plus or minus. It will affect the direction. And when the car is going, it is going to be minus. Yeah. So -360,000. Okay? And this is what it looks like, okay? Can you see that? It is turring. So cool. Let's just do the same exact thing to this other wheel. I add it to the beginning of the track, move move and scale, so we added a keyframe. I will go to the end of this movement. Just click to add a keyframe. When I go to the beginning, I will just click and write 3,600 minus Okay. Looks super cool. Okay. So let's just wrap up what we have done in this lesson. So we animated the skateboard. We imported the board, the drop shadow, and the wheels separately, placed them to their position, then we grouped the whole so that the motion of this forward movement applies to that group, right? You have it here. We have this motion track here. We added one key frame at the beginning with the movement scale. We added one to the end of this track, positioned it there so that it goes from A point to B point and set easing to linear so that it moves in the same speed from the initial position to the end position. Then we animated the wheels. We opened up the group, selected the wheels, added key frames to them as well with the movement scale. And we added the 3,600 minus rotation so that it turns around. We did this number because plus and minus means plus is one direction minus another direction, right? Plus is how the clock moves that direction minus the other one. And when wheels go, they go minus o, 360 degree is one circle, so we need a multiple for it to multiply it. Okay? So we just added like we multiply it with ten so that we have ten full circles while this goes from A to B. Does that make sense? I hope. If it doesn't use a discussion board to ask questions, but I think it was pretty straightforward. Now we have the skateboard animated. I will close up this group. Okay. And one more thing I will show you like you have this check box here, so this is how you can make things appear and disappear. So we have the background. We have the skateboard, and let's move on, and let's add the ghost. 12. Animating The Ghost: All right, so our next step is to add the ghost and animate its movement. Let's go to Procreate. Go to the Ghost to Ghost. Make sure that you have everything on one layer, hold down the layer, go back to Procreate dreams, and again, place it about the skateboard, adjust the size of it. And now I will show you another animation technique. I call it the recording. So you can basically record everything you do while you are moving around the ghost. At first, let's just adjust this timeline. So the ghost is from the beginning. I'm adjusting it till the end, let's just check. What's happening? Yeah. Okay. So we have it in the timeline. I will move this toggle to the beginning, and I have positioned the ghost right here, right? It is here. I have this record button right here. If I click it, it will record every movement I do with this selected drawing or image. Can you see that? Everything I do will be recorded. Let me just show you. It creates keyframes by itself, okay? This is really fun because you can create this floating effect with your hand. So if I play this, I just see Okay, from the beginning. Can you see it's recorded everything I did with the Ghost. Okay, but I want to animate it like bitters. So I just two finger tapped and undid the movement that I done. Now, this can be pretty challenging as as you move this image around, it really picks up everything that you do. I will make these hops. Okay. I will unclick the record button because then it records also if I make something smaller or bigger, let me just show you. So I hit the recorded button and I'm just doing this. I just did record that, okay? You're going to play with this a bit later. I will just erase it and turn off this recording button. I will make the ghost a bit smaller to fit this skateboard, and I will hit the record button. Now, up here you have Modify. Can you see I have motion filtering here. You can set it, and it will filter out unwanted motions that you do with your hand. This is similar to the stabilization setting that you have in procreate brushes that it doesn't pick up everything you do with your hand, okay? And what I'm going to do now is to you need to you can do it several times. Sometimes it doesn't work for me that much. I will keep my pencil right here and try to follow the skateboard and do this floating movement with the ghost. Okay? I will redo it. Let me just show you. Yeah, this is how it would look like. But I will need to adjust it a little bit. I have that stopping in the motion. So let's just start again. And I will just hold my breath and try to keep my hand, like, straight or fixed and also keep this part. I will start holding it down at this part of the screen to try and get to the end of it. So let's see. Okay, let's see. I love how transparent this ghost is. It turned out pretty nice. Okay, I will try once again. Make sure to put this playhead to the beginning. I have the recording turned on. And hold my breath. And if I if I stop and take my pencil off the screen, the recording also stops. But what I found is that it creates these jumps in the movement that you can actually adjust because you have these key frames here. But it is just for me so much easier to do the whole again. So let's see. Okay, I don't like it. Okay. This will be cool. I like it. All right. Now, what I want to show you is that we can layer movement. And what does that mean? It means that we have one movement applied to this ghost, and we are going to play with warp to make it float a little bit more. If I click here and hit move, I will click Warp. Okay. I will open up this warping rack. And if I just go here, I can record everything that I do with this ghost. What I want is to get this juggle and move it a bit. Like this. Can you see that? I will have this floating effect. It is mowing hair. Can you see that? So cool. I love it, how it works. So if I go there, can you see that? I have two layers of movement here. So there is the first one where I recorded the whole movement, it goes through the scene. And there is this other one with the verb where I adjusted this little toggle. And if I go to the front, I can toggle other ones. Oh, I didn't want that. It will be another layer of movement. So you can do this, very gently. This will not look good, but I will just try. Oh. Oh, they're not that bad. In the front. In the end, I will just erase it. If you hold down the key frame I don't want to have Okay. I will just adjust this like this. Super cool. Alright, so we have now our ghost animated. So let's just wrap up what we have done in this animation part. So basically, we have used this recording function of Procreate dreams, which is pretty mind blowing that you can really record every movement you do with an image. So we imported our ghost. We recorded it as it followed the movement of the skateboard. And then we layered movement and added verb to add this floating effect to it. You can play so much with it, but it will be enough for our ghost right now. I hope that you like it. I can't wait to see your ghost. So let's just move on to the next video where we are going to play with the flip book function of Procreate dreams where we can, like, paint into it. So yeah, see you in the next video. I'm so excited. 13. Animating Light Bugs: In this video, we are going to explore the flip book function in Procreate dreams that is included in the painting and drawing mode that Procreate Dreams has. This is this menu. So if I click it, it will open up this drawing and painting function where you have brushes, you have the smudge tool, you have an eraser, you have layers, et cetera, and colors as well. Now, we are not going to paint right now. We are going to try the onion skin and flip book animation method that is within this. But at first, I will exit this menu by clicking there as well, and I will need another track. So I will hit this plus button, hit the track, and I will have a new track, a completely new track here. I will place this play hat to beginning. And what we are going to illustrate now is these flying lights or these bugs that are around this light, okay? So it is going to be pretty simple. I wanted to keep it simple, but I still want it to show you how it works. So now you are on a new track. You have the playhead at the beginning. Click the drawing mode and see what I'm doing. I will bring out the flipbook menu by pushing this down. And now it opens up a flip book for me, which will have all the frames of the illustration. I mean, the animation. So what does that mean? Do you remember we have 24 frames per second, and we have a ten second animation. This means we have 240 little flip book pages now. Yeah, this may sound a lot, and this is why we are not going to draw anything complicated. And we are going to do this once. Okay, I will choose white as my color, and I will choose from the brushes, the luminous light pen. Yeah, I accidentally hit done, and I went out from the menus, I will just go back. And I will just draw a little light here. Now, if I flip the flip book to the next one, you will see this purple thing. This is the onion skin. If I click to the numbers, it will open the stage options and you can hide the onion skin or you can edit the onion skin. You can edit its color. So if it's backwards, it will be purple now, and forwards, it will be like orange. And how many frames can you see this means and how it is opaque? How much is it opaqu or transparent so that you can see? Because we are going to actually draw a movement of this light, okay? So I have it here. If I go here and draw another one next to it, go to the next one and go another one. Can you see? I can see the movement of this little light. This is I'm going to do this 240 times, yes. If you ask this question in your head. So basically what I'm doing. I will show you in a second how this will look like, is that I'm flipping this flipbook and redrawing this little thing. And when you are doing very detailed animations, you redraw everything in every little page. So let me just sit down and I will just continue in a second, and let me show you how does this look like? So I put the playhead here, and I just play it. Can you see? This is what it did. And we are going to do this the whole track to have a movement for this little light. So I will go back. I'm in the flip book, and I'm totally randomly. Okay? So you don't need to predraw or prepare anything just intuit This is quite a meditative thing. You are just painting this light and you don't even need to think about how big you draw it because if you draw it bigger, it will seem like it is getting closer, if it is smaller, as if it was going like, further away. So you can it is perfect this kind of an animation to try it out how things work and get used to the things, how they work. Okay. I'm here. And I will do this 240 times, so I might now speed up the process, not too bore you. If you get tired and don't know where are you down here, you can see which second you are in and which frame. Okay? So this is the 19th frame of the sixth second. This is the 20th frame of the sixth second. I go to 24. Can you see that? And now I'm at the seventh second. Okay, so I'm at the end. Let's sit down. Let's go to the first part. Let's see what we did here. Hit the play. Oh, it looks super fun. Oh, I love it. Okay. How is it like? Can you see that? Blinking. I love how it turned out. Now, we are going to save ourselves a little time. What I want from you now is to go to these layers or the timeline edit mode. And actually, I will select all of the frames right here. And hold down and group. Now you will have all of the frames here in one timeline or one fall you will not have these individual frames. This is because I will hold down and I will duplicate the whole. It again pushed it to the end of this timeline. I have it here, this clip. I will hold down and place it to a new track. Let me place it here. Okay. I'll need two. Yeah, just like this. So now I have two. But what I can do at this second one, let me just turn off this timeline edit mode. I get it and I will move it aside. So actually, the track of the movement will be the same. But it will happen on a separate part or like a few millimeters away. Let me just show you what I mean. I will just put it to the side. When I paint play the two, they're doing the exact same movement, right? Let me click. You know what? I will flip it vertically. Where is it? Oh, here down. Uh huh. Can you see that? Now I will bring it up. You will need to find it somewhere. I will put it here and now play it. She'll go out and you see that the movement is similar, but it goes in and goes out and has this little funny thing going on. What I'm going to do is to duplicate this another one more time, so click Duplicate, do the exact same thing. I will go to this one, hold down, put it to ito track, make it fit the timeline, just like this and I will again place it somewhere else. Somehow, I don't know. I will flip horizonal No. Let's see. Yeah. So I flipped it vertically, flipped it horizonally. Why is he here? Oh, okay. Okay, I recorded it, that it is in the beginning here, and he goes back there. But that's fun. I will leave it there. This is so cool. Can you see what's happening? I love it. Yeah, so there is another thing happening here with this little bug. It goes there. And you can do it so many times, so you can duplicate it. You can create another track of movement. I just wanted to keep this light with these 240 little dot drawings. Alright, so I think this looks super amazing. Now, let's move on to the last part where we are going to paint in procreate dreams, some leaves falling down the trees. I can't wait to see you there. So see you there. 14. Animating Leaves: He he Alright, so this is super fun. I will create some leaves this time that are going to fall down from the trees. Again, we are going to have three leaves. Two of them will be in the background, and one will be in the front. So what I need is a new track. So hit plus sign, hit New Track. I'm here. Okay. And I will go to the paint mode. And I will choose a brush. Let it be what did I use? It was the Blackburn brush. It is in the drawing brush, the black burn. You have the color picker here as well, just like you have it in procreate. If you hold it down to a place, you can pick up a color, and I will just paint a simple leaf. Let me make this brush a bit smaller. Okay. I will choose a lighter color and choose this catching procreate pencil and just draw this middle here. Okay. So I have this leaf here. I can redraw it several times. Again, this is as if it was one frame. But I'm going to extend this frame again till the end of this timeline to fit it. And I'm going to layer movement again. So now what I want to do is to have this falling down movement of it. So what I'm going to do is this record thing that we did previously. So I make sure that I have this play hat at the beginning of this track, click the record button and just Add this leaf falling movement. Let's see. I don't like this. You might want to do this several times to get it right. And what I also wanted to do is to put this track behind the ghost. So because this is happening behind the ghost, so maybe just place it behind the ghost and the skateboard. So let's just. Okay. Pretty sweet. Okay. We are going to layer again the movement. So I want this little lingering, movement to this leaf. So I make sure that I have this track selected. And what I'm going to do is to click this toggle and I can adjust the movement. Okay. Let's see. All right. Look super fun. Okay. You done. And I will do this again with a different colored leaf. I just had a spider going through the desk right here. Have you seen that? This is really spooky. Okay. So I have my drawing mode. I will choose a darker, reddish color and go to recent brushes, choose Blackburn, and draw another little leaf. Okay. I will choose a lighter version of this color, choose the procreate pencil and just add these things into the middle. I done for the drawing. I will adjust the timeline, so I have it here. Okay, I will make closer. I will adjust it till the whole timeline. Cool. I have it selected. I have this tuggle in the beginning, and I will hit record. And basically, I cannot see, so I will just move it here. Okay. Let's see. It's movement. Okay. And now I will again layer this movement. So I will select it, make it at the beginning, hit this tuggle and play with the anchor and hit the record. I don't like it the end that it is turning, so I will look for that keyframe for this. And I will just delete that keyframe. So many things are going on, right? So cool. Okay. And let's create the third one. So I will create a new track, go to the beginning, go to the drawing, and I will just choose this aqua color. I love it. And I will create a big leaf, a very big one. So I will choose Blackburn. I will make the brush, big, and create a leaf. Try to make a better shaped leaf. But it looks good. All right. I will choose a lighter version of the color with appriate pencil, I will just add this okay. Things here. All right. It's done. I will adjust it to the timeline again. All right. The beginning, I will just put it outside of this frame and I will again hit record and it will just go through this hole and as you can see, it is not good because it should be in front of everything. I will just place it on top of it all and keep your eye on the timing, you'll need 10 seconds to get down. I just try it again. Okay. All right, does it looks nice. Okay. Now, I want to do the exact same thing with the anchor or this side movement. So just do that. A Cool. Super cool. All right. Okay, so I think that our animation is finished. If you wish to add anything else, you are free to do so. But we did so many things in this one, and I'm so happy about how it turned out. And in the next video, we are going to export it and post it on social media. So see you there. 15. Export Your Animation: All right. So in this video, I'm going to show you how to export your video. Now, to make it clear, what will be exported is this part or from the timeline. Anything that exceeds that timeline will not be in the animation, okay? So to share, you click the dream here, you can add your name like Show keyboard. I will write the Osmor it done. And I will go to share. I will go to video, and it will export. Okay. And I will save video. So now you have your animation on your iPad. You can share it through AirDrop to your phone and share it as a real, select an audio for it. And when you are sharing it, make sure to tag me. I'm so much looking forward to see your animations. It will be so much fun to see this gallery for your Skillshare project, if you want to share it, I hope you want to share it. Just create a screenshot of your artwork. Screenshot it, go back, crop it. Like this. Can make it even smaller and hit done, save the photos and put it as a class thumbnail. You can place the whole image into the body of the class. And if you want to share your animation itself, upload it to a video hosting platform like Vimeo on YouTube or upload it to Instagram and tag me there. And you can put the link of your Instagram real into the class project. So you can just uh choose a project title, it's some description I always like if you share some words about the experience, about your experience in the class, place the image. You can add the cover image, as I already told you, and the link to the Instagram post. Also tag me in it, or if you decide to upload it to Vmeo or YouTube, you can also add it here if you click Video and you can add the link there. It doesn't work with Instagram links, as you can see. Okay, so I'm so much looking forward to see what you create in this class. Let you see each other in the last video where we are going to wrap up what you have learned in this class. 16. Final Thoughts: Congratulations. You did it. I'm so proud of you for sticking till the end. I'm sure that you have a mind blowing animation, and I can't wait to see it. So make sure to upload it to the Project Gallery. 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, learned key framing, layering motion, recording motion, the flip book method, and you also painted Inpro Create dreams. This was so much fun, right? Make sure to leave a review for the class. It is really important to me to know what you think about it. Also, follow me on social media, on Instagram and Facebook and here on Skillshare to Stay UpToDate. I'm so much looking forward to see you in my other classes as well. I wish you all the best and happy creating.