Bite Size Animation: Animate A Parallax Effect in Procreate Dreams

1. Introduction: Hey, I'm Isaiah Cardona, and I'm a senior art director and teacher that enjoys teaching students about animation. In this bite size class, I will quickly break down how parallax animations work and walk you through a simple framework for creating your own parallax animation. This short learning module is best suited for intermediate students who have experience with Procreate dreams and are looking to learn a new fun and versatile animation technique. So if you're ready to get started, grab your iPad with Procreate dreams, and let's get started. Oh 2. Animating A 2D Parallax Effect: Welcome back. In this tutorial, I will walk you through how to create a parallax animation and procreate dreams. This animation can be broken down into three elements. We have the guy in the foreground, which uses frame by frame animation to produce the hand wave animation. Then we have the car, which is the focus of the animation. This element also uses frame by frame animation by giving the illusion that the wheels are moving. And lastly, we have the scrolling background image. How it works. The animation works by using a parallax technique where the car is stationary while the background and foreground character move from left to right, which gives the illusion that the car is moving forward. A key takeaway when designing your assets, make sure the background is really long. The first step will be to set up your file. I'm using wide screen and 12 frames per second and 3 seconds duration, but set up your file for your project. Next, I'll import all my assets. Once my assets are all in, I will organize the tracks so the background image is at the bottom, and the foreground animation is on top. I will also make sure that the background and car fill the full duration of the animation. Now I can start animating the parallax effect. So I'll start by moving the background image so it aligns with the left edge. And I will add a keyframe at the start. Then I will move to the end of the timeline and create a new keyframe and then move the background to align with the right edge. And now we have the scrolling background. Pro tip, the easing setting will play a huge part in the animation. Tap and hold between keyframes and then tap on set all easings. Using Lanier will make it look like the car is constantly moving at the same speed. This is great for looping animations, but using the other settings like easing and out will give the impression that the car is speeding up and slowing down. So I play around with the different options to find the one that works the best for what you're going for. And now I'll return my easings back to Lanier. Next, I'm going to animate the movement of my guy, so it looks like the car is passing him by. And you might have noticed that this track is the only one that doesn't fill the full duration. That's because we'll only see him for a short duration of the animation. To start out, I'm going to move the character group to the end of the timeline so you'll see the car drive a little before it passes by the guy. Now I'm going to zoom out so I can see the full background layer, and I will move the guy somewhere in the middle of that layer. Then I'll add a keyframe at the start of the group. Next, I'll move the playhead to the end of the timeline and add a keyframe and then move my character outside of the left edge of the frame. And as you can see, now we have all of our foreground and background elements animated. Now I'm going to show you how to play with the camera focus of the animation using the new lens blur feature. Lens blur occurs when a camera lens focuses on a single object, the focal point, which causes objects in the background and foreground to begin to blur. The further away an object is from the focal point, the blurrier it becomes. For my animation, I want the car to be the focal point, which means that the background and foreground character will appear blurry. So I'll start by going to my background layer and tapping the action icon, then tapping on filter. Lens Blur is a new effect that was added this summer to the filter options. It gives you the option to adjust the radius, which will affect how blurry it is, as well as the brightness and contrast. And I want to add just a slight blurriness to the background as I still want the details of the illustration to be visible. So I'm going to go with 2%. I recommend playing around with the toggle until you get the desired effect you're looking for. Now I'll apply Lens blur to the foreground character, and I'll make it 3% to indicate it's further away from the car. Now, tap play to review the animation. Pro tip, a cool thing about ns blur is you can use keyframes to adjust the blurriness to give the illusion that the camera is switching between focus objects. As you can see here, I have added keyframes, so it looks like the camera goes from focusing on the car to the foreground character, and then it will later return back to the car. Playing around with lens blur is a great way to add an advanced touch to your animations. And now that you have the process down, let's talk about the class project. The class project is to create a parallax animation and post it to the project gallery. You have complete freedom, so make sure I have fun with it. And for those looking for an extra challenge, you can also apply the lens blurr technique to your animation. If you have any questions throughout this class, please leave a comment in the discussion section of this class. I'll be happy to help. I can't wait to see all your projects. Thanks for watching. Bye for now.