Creating an Animated Illustration in Procreate

1. Introduction: Hi everyone. My name is Dylan Bonner. Welcome to my first Skillshare class, where I'll be showing you how to create an illustration and so I'll walk you through my process a bit. Then at the end, we're going to be adding a little bit of animation to our pieces to just make them pop as you're scrolling through a social media feed. See it's so fancy I don't even know. I have been a freelance illustrator for five years now, and I draw mostly Disney princesses, mermaids, that sort of fun stuff. So throughout the course of these videos, I'm going to be walking you through how I create one of my mermaids. So we're going to be starting from a sketch. We're finding that sketch into something that we could turn into a colored piece. I'm going to be showing you how to lay out the color, finishing effects, final touches, and then we're going to add a little bit of animation to the end of it, just to make it pop a little. I don't know what this is. Nothing too fancy funs. We're just going to be doing some really basic, simple animation that's going to be really easy for you to apply to any of your future projects, is to add a little bit of motion, nothing crazy. I just want you to take the skills that I'm showing you, and walk you through my process and then apply those completely to your own work. I cannot wait to see it, ask me any questions along the way, and let's make something really cool. All right. Thank you. 2. Getting Started: So in the first video, we're going to be getting started with procreate and getting yourself set up in the program so you can start the session. The first thing that we're going to do in procreate is, edit the pressure curve and if you don't want to do this, that's alright and this is how I prefer it. It just makes a little more sensitive to the pressure that I'm putting on the Apple pencil. It just gets the lines a little more how I prefer them. Now, when I first got started in procreate, the first thing I did after adjusting the settings was, I picked a brush that I wanted to use. This is actually the first piece that I didn't procreate. I went to my brushes, I tried them all, and I can show you the video. I went through just about every brash they had, tried them, saw what I liked, what I didn't like. Then once I picked the one, I started with the sketch. Once you've picked a brush that you like, then you can go ahead with your sketch, get some ideas out, and just keep it as rough as possible. We don't want to get anything too detailed, we just want to get our ideas out quickly and so that they evoke the initial thought or inspiration that made us want to start the sketch in the first place. When you get bogged down on details, you can lose that gesture. That's why we like to keep pretty loosey-goosey in the beginning. If you need some help troubleshooting through artist's block and just not being in the mood to sketch, then my suggestion is to just start sketching, start scribbling, and I promise you it'll help like for real. Where I combat artist flag is just by getting something out. I usually will do a face, something really rough like this. Then from this face, I can come up with a pose that I think fits it. I'll go down now to the torso. Then from that torso, I can decide what I want the arms to be doing. I'm just giving a super loose, super sketchy, nothing defined yet. We can make decisions about hair or the setting where she is. If you decide you don't like it, you can always scrap it and start something new. We'll start with another scribble. So from here you can find a little character scribbly made. I went into making a big S-shape, because I really like incorporating S-shapes into all of my error work. I get one of the more appealing shapes. So from there you made a cool character out of nothing. Even if you like it or if you hate it, you at least drew something. That's a lot of the struggle sometimes. In the next video, we're going to be starting our sketch. We're going to be coming up with oppose shape and then refining it from there. 3. Sketching: Hey everyone, welcome to the sketching video where I'll be showing you how to go from a blank page to something that you actually want to call it. My advice with starting a sketch is to always use a larger brush as opposed to a smaller brush. This way, you can get more of a general pose, general idea of what you want and you don't get too caught up on noodling. At least noodling is what I like versus called in college. That's where if you're starting off a sketch, you don't want to be drawing every eyelash or every single strand of hair, you want to be doing them more in general pose and getting that out first. Noodling can come way later, either late in the refining stage or even in the colors stage. Don't get too bogged down in details in this part. This is all about getting that general pose, the general shave because the appeal of the final piece isn't going to come from the details. It's all about how that an initial sketch looks, the shapes of it, and the emotions that that will emulate. Save the details and we're just going to start with this sketch. Feel free to try out different poses and ideas if something isn't looking quite natural or right. A good way that I like to troubleshoot these issues is by mirroring my image and you just flip it right over and that way it'll point out what's wrong with the images. It's like if you've ever looked at yourself in the mirror and then see picture of yourself and you are like, is that what really how I look like? It is. But it just looks funny because you're used to seeing it backwards and that's the same thing for doing this. You just flip it over and then you can see anything that doesn't look symmetrical or something that looks off. It's almost like you're seeing it for the first time. It'll really point out some things to fix and I find this super helpful. I do it on all my pieces. Now adding value is optional, but I always find it pretty helpful before going into the coloring stage because then I can pick out what areas I want, push back in terms of darkness, what areas I want to pop. That's where it gives me an idea of what colors I want to use because it will just make everything feel almost like it's completed. Then I go in with a white color and draw all around her hair. Anywhere that light is going to be bouncing off of, I'm going to draw a white around. I'm going to draw it right in here too between the arms. That now is just like a thin little layer like that and this down here, maybe a couple spots on the ground for the water refraction or light refractions on the water, I should say. Then I'm going to go to the gaussian blur tool and then I'm going to blur it. You can see it's not super noticeable and that's what I like about it is because it will tie those colors and together a bit more. Well, not really colors in this black and white phase but it will tie them together and make it look like light is really coming out from behind term. Then I add some labor fractions on the water. It doesn't have to be perfect because this is just for the sketch. Of course there's elements like coral and stuff that's blocking this, so in the final you want to see everything. It will call back out. I'm going to leave that layer. Maybe actually then [inaudible] I'm going to duplicate it and then I'm going to blur it just a little, not as intensely as the light coming out from behind her. I'll just give it that extra color. Maybe I'll do one more layer. These points where it's really heavy, Harvard's intersecting then I'll add a little more white. That's what it does output or something. I try blurring it. They go like get better blurred. This is done, I am ready to go into colleague. I'm super excited, ask me any questions below, DM me on Instagram if you want, and I can't wait to see what you come up with. Onto color. Here we go. 4. Building the Base Colors: Hey everyone. In this video we're going to be adding color to our pieces, thinking of color schemes, and adding some detail. Some people start off with their color by creating a palette and they have it set in their mind that this is what they want to color scheme to be. Some go into it blindly, and that's what I tend more to do. If you ever need help coming up with a cleared palette, there's a great website called coolers.co, that's C-O-O-L-E-R-S.C-O. They basically just come up with color palettes for you that you can pick from, and that is a good way to at least get like a jumping off point if you feeling like stuck so fulfill check done. I tend to do color more as I go, so I'll think like hair color and eye color and then the color for a tailor address, and then I can just base each color decision off of the last one that I made. Now works for me, but I'm sure that might drive some people not, so feel free to do whatever fits your personality types. To start, I lay out flat colors and then from there I add detail and like layer after layer. I'll lay down like a flask skin tone, and then I'll maybe I'm like a brush and eye shadow freckles, highlight, and you just want to keep building up and up and up. It's another we're adding color here and then I bring my sketch layer to the top. Now I'm going to do is I'm going to turn off my value layers, and I'm going to lower your opacity on my sketch. Now I may come in, pick a color that I think is probably close to what I want say, something about, something right around there. You can pick a different brush if you want, sometimes I go with the inking brush that way. That's a little bit just to touch. This way I can go in and I can outline a shape not like that, this is just a demo and then fill it like that, so it saves me a little bit of time, and you're going to be going over these colors later and refining the shapes and erasing and having so no need to get it perfect, but I usually try to get as close as possible. Because it's funny wants to turn the line and work off. it's weird to see how your shapes look because I find with darker areas like what her skin is going to be ofcourse where areas like maybe the tail. It doesn't make a difference whether or not you put the colorline inside of your sketched line or on the line, sometimes even outside the line, and I find with darker shapes, it's a little bit more about official to go right on the line and inside, and I think that's just because our lines are dark, so we're filling in those areas that we want to be shaded and we want to have definition. Then with the lighter areas, those and come out of it to reach where our line has reached because her tail actually goes all the way out to there. I'm going to color it out there. Once you have the area full, then you just drag and drop, and because this isn't a perfect inking brush, and then go along the edges and some of those spots they didn't click it, fill them. Also it's a good way to see your shape, see what needs work. Sometimes the fingers have a tendency to get a little wide, go marine and a little bit. It is a brush with some texture to it just because if things get too clean animals look like a vector. Anything is if it looks like a vector, but it's not actually a vector, it just looks like it's a bad vector. I think you they want to go vector or totally different. That's just my personal opinion. I think that's good with the skin for now, and like can new layer I do all of my colors on different layers just because I'm super indecisive, and I want to go back and change it a million times. I can get an you're kind of red tail array now, but I know by the time this thing is done, her tail is not going to be red. Why should we agree and are linked to see it in totally different. Maker tail, because I actually think I want to read, I just wanted to lay color down, any color. I continue on with the tail color, I'm going to fill it into about there because they like to simulate the fun of it, of a different color. Right now for the hair, and you can go to my sketch because she has black hair. I'm going take my sketch here,and just re-purpose so you don't have to color in the whole space again with just the color black. I had them lighter for the sketch, but I think for the file I'm going to do this because I don't want to add our animation, at the end where others are moving, and I want to keep the colors as simple as possible so they're not doing too much detail on every frame. I'm going to lighten them a bit, see you lighten them in the hue saturation brightness, and if your color balance, shadows clued, starker. I'm going to add color, I'm going to go back to this and then make it the color I want. I basically just want it to be a light brown, Not too much color, I just don't want it to be straight black because they won't pick up on any of the other lighting. Alright, now I'm going to go into the eyes. When I say I do a layer for every color I am not kidding. Actually, instead of redrawing the eyebrow, I'm just going to duplicate the one from the sketch because I liked the shape of it. I'm going to do the same thing I did before, lighten, add some color to it and then take it away. I don't want it to be too severe. With eyebrows, I tend to go lighter even if they are dark brown just because otherwise they're going to look a little too severe on the face. I'm giving her eyes a dark brown color. For the whites of the eyes I always like to go back to the skin tone. Just go a bit lighter, I'll probably mess with it once it's laid down, but just to start. I'm just going to mess the tail colors just a little bit just to see if there's anything I like. I like that for now, I may change my mind but we will see. Might lighten the eye color just a little bit but not too much because if it was just straight white then it's going to look really bizarre. I'm going to add a highlight for the eye. I don't like to go with stark white similar to the eye color because it's just going to look way too severe in the finished result so I'm going to add in the super light desaturated blue. One more spot of it too. I'm just going to Select this one, drag it out a little bit, there. I'm going to use the sketch for the lips as well. If I have more of like a general idea of how I want the lips, then I'll usually redraw them but if I have them in a sketch exactly how I want them to look, then I'll do this because it's just easier, and I get the same result at the end, just with less sweating. I think I'm a little lighter. I go underneath and add a little highlight down there. Adjust that color. I rarely keep the color that I put down which if like some artists may like, not love but that's just how I do it. I'm just adding a little bit of color under her eye, the same as the eye shadow. Desaturate it, lighten it because I want it to look natural, I don't want it to look like a night on the town. I'm also going to duplicate. Now I'm going to add some shadow, so a helpful tip with this is selecting the layer that you want to add shadow to, so I want to add shadow to her skin. I'm selecting the skin layer so that if I draw outside of it by accident, nothing comes up. But if I draw in it, it'll show up. I'm selecting a super dark color, because the most important thing with this is getting the shapes right and getting the color where I want it, and then once that's laid out, I can go with something more subtle. Because when I lay down a really subtle color, it makes it harder to see what I'm doing. Doing it this way does make it a little easier on your eyes. Now I have my shadows down and I'm going to edit them to a color that I actually like. For shadows, you want them to be a bit cooler than the initial color, so if there's a lot of yellow tones in the skin, then you're going to go a little more to the purple side for the shadows. I still want to keep them subtle, I don't want to go too severe. Because it colored right in the selected layer area, the edges are a bit jagged, so I'm just going to erase a little bit on the edge to soften that out so it doesn't look so harsh. I really like this line that I have with the jaw and the ear and even this little line there so I'm going to duplicate it from my original sketch, make it just a little darker than the shadow. I don't know why you have to do those two steps to add color to this but anything that's black or gray, but you do. Unless there is a way to do it that I haven't figured out yet. If so, feel free to tell me in the comments. I merge that together with my shadow just because they don't really need to stay separate. Try to pick a shell color and the skin's pretty dark so I'm going to go a bit lighter, just so I can see what I'm doing. I will definitely be changing it but I just like laying down colors with high contrast because it makes it easier to see what I'm doing. That Fill tool is really just good for coverage, you're always going to want to go on and like soften your edges or get little spaces that didn't get filled but if you just need coverage, that's a good way to do that. Let me put my sketched layer back on. I'm going to lay out a quick color for the rock. See it leaves a little outline of where your edge was feathered a bit so you're going to want to fill that in. I'm just doing this for coverage. It's not exact, it's going to get refined. This is just a good way to get going on the background. If she's going to be green, I definitely don't want it to be a greenish rock because that's way too much. Probably something in the purple family. With backgrounds, it's good to just get coverage. Because otherwise you're going to drive yourself nuts thinking about what every color needs to be, how they all need to tie together. I just like to lay down some color and then change my mind a million times. 5. Adding Background Color & Foreground Elements: Backgrounds have never been my strength, and have always struggled with them, but since I started doing the [inaudible] thinking of them more as other character, then I know how to approach them because I know how to approach coloring character. If you think of this similarly, then, its a bit helpful. I'm sure this looks utterly insane, that's why there's a method. The method may not be for you. You may really hate it. But this is the way I go about it. There are cool sources for doing color palettes online, those will generate them for you, and then you can follow along with it from there, this is just always it's been what works best for me, and if that's not what's best for you, you know that better than I do. I wanted it to be back lit, it's going to have like this, I'm going to blur it, this is a no way a final, this is just really good ideas. The wrap pretty dark, and wants to be the same color as their output because it's closer, it's going to be a bit darker if I frame it. The seafloor. [inaudible]. I think I want like a Aqua. I'm going to keep this color on the brush just because, as you know by now, I like something that has high contrast to what I'm working against because this is going to be the shadow. I see this. I want to seem different vibes here. I want authorial, but I also want murky, so it's going to be an interesting balancing act. I think I'm officially mixing the green tale because it's all just too much green right now. I like to think too much about what I'm doing, I will redo it if it looks crazed is but otherwise, if you think too much, spend too much time on it, it will start to get overly designed, which if that's your thing, then do it, but for me, then I just get lost and its a bit more daunting and if I just go with the flow. This is from the same coral family that's down there, but it's in the foreground. So I'm going to go a bit bigger with it. We bring this rack that's in the foreground, all the way to the foreground. [inaudible] and try to get a color that I'm happy with. Something along these lines, and this is just a framing device to make everything feel enclosed, metal, healthier backgrounds, and environments feel a bit more complete. I'm going to do some just random plant life, I'm going to undo everything I just did because I want to do a different color. The rest is going to get all messed up. It's a little like bright purple hope this works. I'm going to add in some plant life like flowers or suntan haven't quite decided yet, some people go super designing with their plant life, I like to go a little more organic, it's just a nice style, but do it ever feels natural. In this section, I'm just going to cut it out and then paste it, and now that way I can mess with the colors a little easier. Maybe I want to make one stock. Again, I don't know to actually called stocks but doesn't take away blue. Then I can start to mess with these colors a little bit more. Meaning they can stand out a bit, mix it up a little bit, add some different colors in there. I'm going to the rack that she is perched on. Select a lighter color and select the shape. Again, so that I'm only a drawing within that shape. I'm going to add, I think highlights would be perfect. We can always go in and take some stuff out. I'm going to take out the shadows under her hands would be. For more specific edges, I'm going to use more of the tip of the pencil and then for broader areas I'm going to use the side just like I would with an old pencil. Some I'm making more defined and some I'm keeping that soft there. That just shows the texture of the rock and how harsh the shapes are. This is probably the brightest they want the rock to be just right at the top or the light sitting hit the hardest. I going to turn off my sketch layer just so it doesn't affect what coloring I pick just. I'll just move it all across the range just because I want to keep my options open. Because sometimes the color that I end up going with isn't one that you think of initially. At least that's how it happens for me a lot. I'm going to go with this on, which I wouldn't have guessed, right? I'm going to go in and add some shadows. I'm going to keep my light color just so that I can see what I'm doing. I go back and I'm going to select that rock shade again just because it saves you a headache. I'll try and get it right along the edge just perfectly. Okay, so I that's think that's good for now, then I'm going to darken it and adjust the the color. I'm thinking on it a bit lighter. Then I'll probably take that initial rock layer that that I did and change that up to accommodate those new choices. I'm going to tern my sketch back on and see what other details I have. I had some seaweed happening behind her rock so I'm going to go in to get a pretty dark color to make it easier to see. I'm going to put it on multiply cause I like to make seaweed translucent. I'm not making it exact to the sketch, just using as a guide. That's what I tend to do with more organic elements. It's like can I tend to just keep him loose? I find that from my own personal artwork. If I plan them too much and if I design them too much, they just look super unnatural like that's not where they belong. Some people can design them really well where they look perfect in the environment but I'm not quite there. It looks something like that. You can lighten up even more. I'm going to add some more saturation. I wanted to be subtle. I don't want them to like Mac interface. I'm going to go back to the seaweed. I'm going to select the color I picked. I'm just going to add some more elements to them [inaudible] intentional. I just like a weird to scribble on the side of my page. I'm going to try back to multiply. Now the shape is defined a bit more. I know what I want, I'm going to adjust that color. I think I like that. Finding new things is just by going across and seeing what you like is how that works. I'm going to keep it like that just for now. I may go back, you never know. Then go into this little rock formation in that back and highlights. I want it to be subtle. I want it to be in the background so I'm not going to draw, turn attention to it with a bunch of contrast. In fact I may darken the whole thing. 6. Creating Background Elements: I'm going to flatten out this rock shape. I feel like it's to that point where I can do that, be comfortable with that. May also then lower the opacity on it, to make it blend a bit it more in the background and the lighting. Seeing if I can use these water re-fractions that I had from my sketch and just recycle them. I probably want the water re-fractions or layer factions to be that warm color from where the light's coming from. Be pretty bright. I am going to duplicate it. Put a bit of a blur on it. Here I may, because I have that blur now, I might soften the original layer, and you'll soften the blur a little too because I don't want it to be too much. Because this is just a straight white color, I am going to bring it down so you can see where that highlight is. Because I don't want it to be pure white. This is where I wanted to be the brightest, so I might just make it a bit more yellow and kick it up a notch. Just take this one, keep it saturated, keep it pretty warm but just a little darker. It's a subtle shift, but I think it will help. I'm going to go in. That's a little big. I'm going to add not super specific layer refractions, just the suggestion of them. I'm going to flip back and forth from my black and white version to my color version and see what is getting carried over well, and what isn't getting carried over well, something that I don't think is getting carried over well is that rock formation. I think it looks a little crazy, so I'm going to take that, lower the opacity. I'm going to tweak this rock formation because it's not something I'm in love with. I'm going to pull it back to the original shape and get that color. Well, opacity, so it's not quite at that color. Turn that back on, and then filling in that original shape that I had because I much prefer that to what I currently have. The way I had it in the sketch is a lot of this area was blow out with a lot of lighting, so I'm going to try to keep that, and erase good chunk of that. Then I'm going to keep some detail. Just going to go very lightly with the eraser. I don't want it gone I just want it pushed back and then have this highlight here. I'm just going to drag this a little more like that to how I felt like it was more so on my sketch. There's also some pretty heavy white light coming in here like that. I'm going to go in front of that shape. Blur to about there. Just mess with the opacity a bit just to make it a little less intense. The lighting went down that far, I think it gave it a more open environment. So I am going to try to keep that. Maybe I will bring it up even to here. I have to add details like fixing the tail and adding scales and more elements to the skin. But I do like to get the overall sense first before I go into stuff like that. Now I've added some overlay layers. The normal tone is this, which of course looks super extreme. I don't know if I'll end up keeping it at the end, but it does tie those colors together. We added this, which just looks like that normally. But I wanted it to have something that gave us a frame. This was another green, looks like this normally. I had it about there. These are just things that I was playing with to get a mood. I actually prefer it looking more like that though. Maybe darken it up a little. So it's actually dark red color. That does tie everything together nicely. This gives me an idea of what it might look like like in the end. Also means I may want to make her tail look a little less rose gold, push it over to yellow a bit more. Take that highlight in the background and make it a little more gold yellow, less green yellow. I'm also going to drag it out a bit more. I'm going to flatten my rock. It's at the point where I'm comfortable enough with the decisions that they made about the colors where I can be okay doing that so I can erase that. I'm going to go in, have the highlight color. I'm going to go a bit brighter, and I'm going to add in some scales. I do draw my scales by hand because I've tried doing it with a brush before, a splatter brush or something, but it just never quite looks how I wanted. This way I can control the direction, how many there are. I just find it easier. It takes a while but it's worth it. At least I think so. I missed a area there. Now that I have that done, this may break her heart a bit, but I'm going to lower the opacity a ton. [inaudible] don't want them to be super in your face. I'm going to duplicate them, bring the opacity up and erase the edges so that they get brighter as they go towards you. I'm going to take the fin cut and paste it into a new layer. That way I can keep working on this and not worry about what I'm doing to the fin. 7. Fixing the Details: Right now I'm going to select the Tail, the peer color is a bit darker, and then go in and add shadow to each of the sides of the tail because the light's hitting more so this side of the tail and still adding shadows too less. You want to put these back on, make sure they don't look too bright against that shadow that you just added, that's a wrong layer. I'm going to make sure it don't look too bright against that shadow I just added onto to the super subtle like that. These are the brighter ones, I make sure they're popping up where I want them to and nowhere where I don't want them to, pop once. I'm also going to go over, am just going to pick that color. I'm going to add some extra bright ones with the brightest points in the tail, that I really like catching the light. Those ones that I just added, am going to duplicate, I'm going to put a slight blur on them to give them more glam so that's a change that makes. I am going to bring them up back to be like a warm glow like that. There are scales those are done. The shells, let me see how I had them in the original. I had him with this U-shape repeating so I'm going to do that. But it's not giving me quite the look I want. I had been going like that but I think I want them a little more shaped that way: it changes the angle. I'm going to use this color as the highlight layer. It actually, I'll just duplicate it, make them darker like that. This is the duplicate layer and I'm just going to erase the edges as the highlight. Just balancing that out, that highlight layer may even take a little brighter, a little warmer. Actually, I don't think so. Maybe a little warmer. If anything, I take the shadow layer and dark out. Then I can take those bright lines that I made got them to be satellite online to be able to see them from this far back. Looking at how I have her blush and her rosy nose, actually I feel like her profile changed a bit so I'm going to go back in with my sketch capacity down and I'm just going to tweak the profile because I want it to be as close as possible because they liked how it looked before. I'm going to select the scan and even go a little later just so I can see what I'm doing. Actually maybe even later just to see, obviously this is not a flat color. We're sticking with just for the purpose of laying it down because I want it to feel subtle, subtle blush when it's all done but the thing is when I'm drawing with really subtle changes in the color, it's hard to see where it's getting laid down. So I have my higher layer. Just going to play with colors. You can add something right around here. Then I duplicate it, employ it just a bit. That light be bouncing off of it then add in some bubbles. I'm just going to make a new layer and draw them right over my sketch. Though when I have them all gone, I can go back and move this layer down, so that it makes more sense. I'll multiply that to make it a bit cooler. I'm just going to lower that capacity. Doesn't affect the color too much, but it does give it at least some textures so that it doesn't feel too glassy. I'm seeing a flat not altogether so my background color is right there. I'm just playing with the idea of adding a little bit of purple tone to the sides, will be pretty subtle. I don't think I want it that harsh on the side. This rack that I have in the forefront and then a line little low. Then you go in, check if any sketch shapes weren't finally. Then I add just some subtle shading. Just lower that opacity, merge them and then, though a little bit darker. I may just add just some color like LG or plant life along here just to give a little something. If I were to turn on all of my lighting effects and the overlays. Let's just see what it looks like as it is. I think I want more of this color, not that. Let's make sure I'm selecting the right color., and I'm going to just duplicate this a couple times. Not too close, you don't want to wash out somewhere around here, maybe we just to touch on those tail highlights. I'm doing it really small, but it's just because it's easier to make it work. Let's see if I select this. It's not quite white, which is good because I don't actually want any white in this piece. I guess it can stay as it is. Then I'll turn these on, except that one. I'm just going to merge these two right now I'm thinking about go back just to round out this part. This thing I like doing with my straight lines is, you just hold it for a bit and then it'll automatically straighten. [inaudible] 8. Playing Around With Lighting: Soften up on her even more, because they like that they're harder in some places. You don't want them that aggressive. Right around here. I'll duplicate or soften the original, soften the layer and even duplicate the original. Go back in with my blur tool go back in with my airbrushing eraser and just airbrushed on to right about the top. Now, I want to see if I can push those overlay layers that I originally created into something a little different. That's all. Get touched too much less red. We can make it a bit darker. I think I'm going to take that same airbrushing eraser. Erase top of it. Erase it as it gets close to back-lighting. Just adds a little bit of extra framing. I'm going keep it dark, just slightly less like that. So I'm going to now turn off my overlays, lighting color they had failed, rays of light. I'm going to keep that. Then I'm going to add some highlights from the lighting. I had it here and her skin here for her highlights I'm going to anywhere, the light hitting really hard, mostly back-lighting. So it is going to just be like this edge up against the exact same color. Just about I probably would be adding some to the outline of the face. So just those subtle highlights. The edge of some of this quarrel. I decide that I hated. I'm just going to take it out. But [inaudible] see [inaudible]. I don't want to overuse this highlight because it can go a little too heavy on it. It can be distracting in overpower your piece as I have learned the hard way. So I have those waiting on this down, so I'm going to duplicate them. I think for this reddish orange coral too, I'm going to duplicate the layer, bring it down a little bit, and use that as a shadow. I'm going in and erase all of the edges to give it some texture and then it adds a little extra dimension as well. So it does not look like too much of a difference, but if you take it away, it does add a bit and I'm going to do the same to the blue. Erase the tips. [inaudible] Spread it within or without. Just helps. Blended a bass that doesn't feel too much like a pop-up book. They go in and just add some random elements to the sea life on the ground. Don't think it's going to stay. [inaudible] So, don't stop her there there. [inaudible] and go for like unexpected like an orange a little darker. I'll probably change the yellow. A bit from what I currently have an idea and see how this all looks with the overlay is [inaudible] z1 at all to tie together and make sure nothing looks too. When it's all put together the actual looks little [inaudible] breaks down. Prey lamp the brighter part of it. Because that is something I want to pop a little more than it currently is. Do the same with the blue. So the next video we're going to be adding finishing touches here and getting it all finalized. That way you'll be ready for the integration portion, which will be later. 9. Finishing Touches: Hey everyone. In this video we are completing the backgrounds, adding the finishing touches to our pieces, and getting them ready for the end and initial phase. The first step is completing your background in your character and that includes adding finishing touches, extra details, lighting, etc. You can also add in texture effects like bubbles, rays of sunlight, sea weed, any other little environmental details that you think will push the mood or the setting, the story. Once you have all of these elements down we're going to go to adding lighting. This would include adding overlays or a specific lighting layers. We're going to add highlights. Something that I like to do is add a highlight layer. Then I will duplicate that layer and blurred a little and then I'll duplicate the later again, then blurred a little bit more. Then this just adds hazy effect that'll make your character and your background feel they are in the same environment and not like it's a paper cut out on top of a background. It'll just make it feel a bit more blended. Now, overlay layers can do is tie all of your colors in together. I usually don't go too crazy with overlay layers, but I'll add maybe one for shadows and one for highlights and then maybe one that's a medium tone. Then you can adjust the opacity to it, because you don't want them to overpower your piece. You still want to retain what made your piece where it was before. But it's just going to tie in your colors together. I'll usually pick typically a blue or dark green flow like a shadow layer and then I'll just go pass this two to start over taking everything. Then for the highlight layer, I usually go pinkish or yellow, and that will also tie all of your highlights together. Then for the top one, the mid-tone layer, I go a bit more neutral. I will show you how to do that in my peace and which colors I use and the opacity I use them for. Overly layers are really just going to tie everything that you've already made together. Some of those that may feel a little disjointed, are going to be tied together and more. They're going to look like they're a bit more in the same color family and that's going to help the overall look of the piece. What I'm going to do now is adding some bubble effects. I put this blue overlay layer in the background just to get the car to where I wanted because they're getting a little warm, which is fine if that's what you're going for. But I wanted them to see a little blue there except the blue overlay layer on the back. Now for some bubbles, I needed to go to this little flux brush, going to go small. I like to pay attention to where they are in the environment too. These are background bubbles. They're going to be pretty small and they will get bigger as we go into the foreground. That's going to overlay them. Then I'm going to take them way down because I just want them to be subtle. I don't want them to be pulling the eye or anything. I'm yet to pick a color. I'm probably going to pick, something in the warmer side probably right around there. That's nice. Then I'm just going to where I'm a little bit, because I still want you to be able to see and I just don't want them to be super sharp. That's a subtle effect, but it does make a difference. Then I'm going to go to the top. I'm going to go under my overlays. I've hit my layer capacity, which happens every time, so I'm going to take away some of these values from the original sketch because I duplicated the file. I still have my sketch file somewhere. I think that too. Now I can go in and I can make my new bubble layer. It's going to make a little bit bigger. This ones are going to go in front of her too. It's tricky getting it just throwing a lot of bubbles on your character because you still want be able to see your character and have it not be too overpowering. That's about enough and then you leave it and you're done, so cute right? I'm going to overlay these two, I'm going to mess with the colors. You something that's going to pretty much work for the whole thing. You can get into it and start to change up certain sections of the colors, but I prefer to usually just go with all the same color. Probably I'm going to go a bit warmer with this one because it is in front of the other layers. That's about the color I want. But it still looks a bit crazy. I'm going to blur it just a little, right around there because these are going to be for brown bubbles. Do the same thing. I'm going to overlay. Actually maybe I'll try because there are some dark spaces in there, maybe I'll try normal, and I'm going to blur a bit more than the other ones because I want them to be so close to your eye that they're blurring a bit. I'm going to adjust the color. That's pretty. Then I'm going to take them down to about here, and what that's going to do is give a murky vibe. I'm going to add a couple specially placed ones. That wasn't on rush. It's going to want one here. I'm pretty much the point of the other ones like that. Then I lower them off the same point right about there. That just adds a bit more depth. Now you have this teeny-tiny little bubbles in the back. Actually I might actually pull up just a little more, I can add on right here. I'm just looking at any extra touches that I could add. You'll do a better highlight on the tail right here. Just going to do a little touch and a little bit right here. I'm going to make that an overlay just little to blurry highlight and I'm going to blurry a little. That just adds a little bit of extra shine to both. I think she's done. Now we're going to go to the animation portion. If you want your piece to just be still illustration, it is done and then if you want to add some motion to it and give it a little pop as it's going through a social media feed. Then the next video will show you how to do that. The next video we're going to be adding finishing touches to your piece and getting it all finalized, that way you'll be ready for the animation portion, which will be later. 10. Animating Your Creation: Everyone, so in this video we are covering the animation portion and exporting the file and posting it. The first step is deciding what elements of your finished illustration you want to know of. I say the easiest ones are usually going for the hair, maybe some bubbles that she could be linking, spark was also really work. Those are going to move around. Decide well, and it's you think would look really good moving in a get form, and then from there, we'll go into actually making it happen. In creating other frames to the animation, you're going to want to add another layer and then start creating animation. It's a good idea to have in mind where you want to start and where you want it to end. Because it's happening in the gift form, like how they join, procreate. It's a good idea to have your starting point, let's say it's A, go to B, C, D, and then work your way back to A, so that when it's in the get form, the motion will return to where it started, and then that will just fit the format better. For that, I think what I'm going to animate mostly is the hair. It seems like the best element to keep moving. What I'm going to do is, get my hair color, just dragging it to the top and here's my hair layer. Now duplicate that, I'm going to get rid of all the twists. I hope these are going to be perfect. This may take a couple tries because I don't do this often. I'm going to take this first one, animate and save it as JPEG. Here is the second, I'm going to touch that up, and bring our head the tabs so I don't draw off head. Saving this as a JPEG. Trimming off my old air, saving as a JPEG lighting this one and going next frame. All that I'm trying to do is guess where the braids are going to be moving. I'm saving as JPEG. I think I want to bring the hair back out. Enlightenment. I'm setting the groundwork to bring this black back out. I'm not sure if this is going to make perfect sense, [inaudible] put together. But if it doesn't make, we can always go back and change things at a more frames, takeout frames that don't make sense. My goal is to get it back to this one. Line this one a bit less. I'm trying to get something in between. Let's say this is a JPEG, and then I'm going to go to the first frame that I had, and then I'm going to insert all of my other frames. We didn't save them in order. I have all my frames right here, and let's see what it looks like as a Gif that's a little not. Let me slow that down. That's going to go. Well, it's a little fast. I don't want it to look like she's like barely holding on for her life on that rock. Even slower. Next, I actually want to delete my last frame and work on more in-betweens. Where is my [inaudible] here. What I learned from that little GIF is that I wanted to create an in-between frame between this and this. It's going to have to get from there to there in a way that makes more sense. Probably start by bringing the back to that halfway point. It's good to go back and forth and see where things end up. Like this has to be pulled right there. Then turning off this one. I'm just going from the final now. I'm going to bleed into that final one really well. This is going to be an in between frame. It's going to insert the latest and then I will insert the one that I plan on having to be the last one. Let's see if that looks any better. It does look a bit smoother. At least if you ask me. That's pretty cool. Actually pleasantly surprised by that. Now if there is something else you'd want to add, you could add bubbles or something. Assuming we would start by drawing them down here and then up here and then up here. I'm not sure if I'm going to be in love with that. What I'm going to do is go back to the gallery, duplicate this. Now I have two of them. I'll try the bubble thing on here. I'm going to pick a color that's not going to stand out too much. This is frame one. I'm going to start with some bubbles. Now I'm adding my new layer. My second frame. Lighting it up a bit. Adding in those bubbles again. With bubbles, they're not going to follow a super strict movement. They're scattered all over the place. They're going to go from side to side. Moving into the third, I'm going to lower the opacity of that. It's a little sloppy. The bubbles are little misshapen compared to the last frame. That's okay because they don't stay the same shape realistically anyway. Onto the next frame. As we get higher into the scene, some go a little lighter. Just keep them visible. Really then let's try look a new bubble down here. This is the last one. I want to unnecessarily have it bleed into the first one, but have it not be super far removed. I'm gong to draw that a bit. Actually, I'm just going to do a new layer of bubbles and then I'll merge it with this one when I'm ready. The brightest bubbles are going to be the ones from my last frame and the lighter ones are going to be from the first frame. I'm gong to try to bring that bubble in between there. The original. [inaudible] I'm just going to bring it there so it's lost. Merge this with my last one. Make sure they're all turned up all the way. Let's see how that looks. Honestly, I think that's pretty cool. I'm happy with it. I'm going to slow it down a little. I think that's about where I want it. I'm going to export it at the full resolution. I have to do the web ready one two just in case. I'm going to do the movie version as well, the MP-4 option. That's pretty cool. Notice how it's two seconds though. At least I don't think you can upload a video on Instagram that's two seconds long. Let me see. Guess you can. Never mind. That's what I'll be uploading. I'll play it so you can see. Is the hair the smoothest animation you ever did see? Absolutely not. It is just a fun little way to get some motion in there. That was it. Once your animation is complete, you're going to want to go into a new file and import all of the frames that you created. In your new file, you have all of your frames set up and you're going to want to put them in the order in which they appear. That may even include repeating frames, which is normal. This is not fancy animation. This is bootleg, basic beginner animation. That's all I'm qualified to instruct on. For exporting the file, Procreate has a GIF option. I'm going to use that to export my finished result. Then I'm going to post it on Instagram. 11. Final Thoughts: Everyone [inaudible] as the whole class, I hope you take what you've learned here and just apply it here on our and just have fun with it, I want you to infuse as much of yourselves into this process as you can. No need to stick to a set of rules that I gave you, just totally make it your own, and I cannot wait to see what you've made it. Feel for your posted it below. [MUSIC]. Please posted below. I can't wait to see it. If you have any questions let me know, you can ask me here, DM and Instagram. Find me, wherever. Well, thank you so much for joining me. I hope you've had fun I hope you've made [inaudible] proud of and I can't wait to see the results.