Creating Frame Animations with Adobe Photoshop

1. 1. Introduction to Creating Frame Animations with Adobe Photoshop: Hey, Macy Clark here. I am an illustrator based out of Louisville, kentucky. And I'm so excited to share with you my newest class creating simple frame animations with Adobe Photoshop. Now, I love bringing my illustrations and artwork to life through simple frame animations. And this is gonna be a great class for someone who is already creating artwork and just wants a different way to present their artwork to the world. Now, you will need a basic understanding of Adobe Photoshop, but I am going to supply all of the materials and the files that you'll need for your class project. For your class project, we are going to be completing a simple frame animation together. And before that, I'm going to share with you my two favorite techniques to use in Photoshop to create my simple frame animations. I can't wait to get started, and I hope I'll see you in class. 2. 2. Class Project Overview: So let's talk about that class project. Our class project is going to be created after we learn my two favorite techniques to create frame animation in Adobe Photoshop. Once we cover both of those techniques, then we will be ready to create our own frame animation. I can't wait to see what you come up with and I hope you'll be sure to post your projects in our discussion. Alright, let's get started. 3. 3. Lesson 1: Okay, so go ahead and open up Photoshop. And before we get started, I want to go over a couple of things to remember when creating Fram frame animations in Adobe Photoshop. Now, reading frame animations means that each of the pieces of artwork in your animation needs to be on an individual layer. You'll see that on this file we have a, basically a stack of pumpkins. And if you go over here on the right-hand side, you'll see that each of those pumpkins is on its own layer. This is really important because this is going to allow us to manipulate this artwork individually and create a frame animation more easily. So as you are setting up your own art work, be sure to keep this in mind that each, each element of your artwork that you want to move independently, make sure it's on its own layer. So go ahead and download lesson one, pumpkins, the PSD file that is in our class notes. And I'm gonna go ahead and go up to Window and choose timeline. And make that a little bit smaller. So when you open up timeline for the first time, you'll see here in the middle it says Create frame animation. I'm gonna go ahead and press that. What this does is this creates one frame and you'll see that this little thumbnail in your timeline window is showing us what we're seeing here on the main canvas. And so what we can do here in our little male is I'm going to press the little plus sign. What that's going to do is that's going to duplicate the selected frames in this Window timeline. You'll see I have two little frames and they are, the thumbnails are identical to what I'm looking at. The first technique that we're learning about in this lesson. One is when we're creating a frame animation that is basically just a stack of different images on top of one another. And we're going to create an animation that cycles through each of those pieces of artwork. So the way that we are going to do that is I'm going to select that first frame. And in that first frame, I'm going to hide all layers except for that purple one. And then in my next layer, I am going to hide the purple one. And I'm going to show the cyan or indigo one. And I'm just gonna go ahead and build out my animation. And I'm clicking that plus sign. And then I'm going over to my Layers window to the right. And I am just simply selecting the layers that I would like to hide and show through each different frames in my file. Like that. Now we have, are all of the pumpkins represented on individual frames in our timeline window. Now we have a couple of different options in terms of manipulating and changing the animation. You'll notice that underneath each of these frames is a little text that says 0 seconds. What you can do is you can control the amount of time that each of these frames appears in the animation. So what I can do is I can click down and say, I want the purple pumpkin to be 1 second. I want the indigo pumpkin to be 0.5 seconds, and so on. If you have a lot of frames and it doesn't really matter how long. Not that it doesn't matter. It is important that all of them have the same amount of time in the animation. What you can do is, I'm going to click on the first frame. I'm holding down Shift on my keyboard to select all the frames and my animation. And I'm going to click that dropdown menu. And I'm gonna change that to one. And you'll see that, that now that change has been reflected on each of the frames in the animation. So let's go ahead and hit Play. You can see that now our animation is cycling through each of the frames at 1 second per frame. Now, if this is a little bit too slow or a little bit too fast, we can change that. We can look at what 0.5 seconds looks like. So that's a little bit quicker. It just really depends on what the art work or information is in your frame animation. And what the purpose is is if you have texts, which I wouldn't recommend doing long blocks of texts. But if you had a couple of words and you wanted to make sure that people were able to read them. This is gonna be really important to consider. So that is our first technique. I kind of think about this as a stack technique. This is simply revealing different layers and cycling them through to create your frame animation. Now, this is great. Like I said, if you have text, maybe you have a logo, maybe this is a frame animation that's advertising. Pick your own pumpkins or pumpkin decorating, something like that. Then we could insert different, maybe a logo, maybe a location, things like that to create a engaging image and animation for social media or a website. In our next lesson, we are going to create a frame animation that has a little bit of a different style. But what's great about these is we are going to use both this technique and our next technique in our final project. So go ahead and open up your lesson to file, and we'll take a look at that next. 4. 4. Lesson 2: Okay, so go ahead and open up lesson two. Now, this is, you'll see this is an illustration I did of a rainbow trout. So for this illustration you can see we have the trout and then we have our background layer. I'm gonna go ahead and just create that as a background layer. So we have the fish and it is independent from the background, so it is on its own layer. So if we were to create the same type of animation that we created in lesson one with the pumpkins. This wouldn't be a very interesting animation because we only really have one piece of artwork. We have the fish. So in this example and in this lesson, we are going to create an animation that has our fish swimming from one side of our screen to the other. And the way that we're going to do that is again, you want to make sure that your timeline window is open. And we are going to create frame animation. And if you have opened this up and you might not have the Press that you might have already, might have already created a frame like this in your timeline, and that is totally fine. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to do the same thing that I did last time with the bumpkins is I'm going to duplicate this frame. So now I have two frames. In my first frame, I'm going to click, Make sure that that first one is highlighted. And what I'm gonna do is I'm going to move my fish. So it is just peeking out from the left-hand side of my Canvas. And then I'm gonna go over to my timeline. And I'm going to select second frame. And I'm going to move my little fish over to the right-hand side, so the end of his tail is just peeking out. Now, we went and duplicated our frames with the pumpkins. But when we're creating a motion effect like this, we do not need to go in and manually add in our frames. There is a really great tool and it's on, you'll see it's a little like a little illustration of a moving ball with scale on it. So what I'm gonna do is I'm going to click my first frame. I'm going to hold down command. On a Mac, it's command. And I'm going to click this button, and it's going to tween animation between frames. Click on that, and a little window is going to pop up. And it is going to ask us how many frames to add. And I'm just going to use five. And I want to make sure that all layers is selected. And I'm gonna hit, Okay. You might not have seen that pop-up window, but we just want to use that tween button. And you'll see that it has populated the frames in-between our fish. Then we can create our animation. And it looks like our fish is swimming through the scene. And again, you'll see right now it's on 0 seconds, so it's moving really quickly, which you may want in some animations. For me, I kinda want to slow this down just a little bit. I'm going to put it on 0.5 seconds. A little bit slow. So I'm going to change him to 0.2 seconds. And then our little fish is swimming through the scene. 5. 5. Exporting Different File Formats: Good work on those lessons 12, I hope you are getting the hang of creating your own frame illustrate frame animation in Adobe Photoshop. I want to talk about two different things when it comes to creating frame animations. In Adobe Photoshop. The first thing is your canvas size or maybe ratio. This is really important to consider. At the beginning of creating your artwork. You want to make sure that you are creating a canvas size or ratio that is going to work with the end result. For instance, if you are interested in creating a frame animation that is going to be used in your grid on Instagram. So that one is probably going to be a square. If you are creating a real or something for TikTok or Instagram, you'll want to make sure that it has that different ratio or size that you're working with. I always like to make sure as best as I can is to start with the canvas size. That makes the most sense for the end product. That's just going to help you be able to design and create an animation that is fits in the, in the Canvas the best way. The second thing, and we'll hop back on to Photoshop to talk through this, is we need to talk about the two different formats that we are going to export from Photoshop. So different, different platforms required different file formats. So if we wanted to say post that video or post that animation on our feed on Instagram. So we're doing a square canvas. We need to make sure that we are exporting from Photoshop a video file. It is not a GIF file. A GIF file is not going to work in the feed, or basically Instagram and social media. We're going to need to export a video file. But if you are interested in inserting this animation into say, an email marketing blast, we can then do a GIF file. So let's hop back onto Photoshop and I'm going to show you how to export those two different file formats when I am creating animations. And I've already gone through all of the time to create these animations. I just go ahead and export it in two, in both formats. It just because I'm already doing it and it just, it makes it a little bit easier for future use. However you work through exporting and things like that, It's really up to you, but I'm sure you'll find the best way that works for your practice. So let's hop back on Photoshop and talk about exporting these files. Okay, so let's talk about exporting different file formats. So once you are pleased with the frame animation and the timing on each of your frames, then you'll be able to export the files for use on social media, your website, email, all of that. A couple of things to consider with, especially with posting on Instagram. If you are posting a video to your feed on Instagram, you'll want to make sure that the minimum time of your video needs to be at least three seconds. So if you are creating, let's say we're creating this fish animation for the feed on Instagram. You'll want to make sure that this is at least three seconds. If you find that the animation that you've initially created is not three seconds, what I like to do is I'm just going highlight all of these frames. And I'm just going to click the first one, hit Shift on my keyboard and select one through seven. And then I'm just going to duplicate. What that's going to do is that's just going to duplicate that first first set of slides or frames that we created. If we need to make it even longer, I'm just going to select all of them. And again, I just chose the first frame and held down shift and did that. And then I'm just going to hit that plus sign again. So now that we have our animation and we're really excited about it, let's talk about the two different file formats that we need to be aware of. So I'm gonna go up to File and Export. I'm going to go down to the bottom where it says Render video. Now, rendering video is going to export an MP4 file. It might take a little while depending on how big the animation is. So you'll want to make sure that you name it and then you select the folder. I typically do not mess with any of these different ways to change the document size, all of that. So I'm going to make sure it's named, makes sure that it is going to be saved in the correct folder. And then I'm just going to hit Render. And that will export your video. Now, the other way, if we wanted just to create a gift that is going to be embedded in a website or email marketing blast. Then I'm gonna go back down to File Export. And I am going to select the Save for Web. I'm going to make sure that the file format is GIF. Again, you can change these different options depending on your usage. I typically do not touch them. And then I'm gonna go ahead and hit Save. Before I hit Save, actually you can do preview and it'll show you that preview of your frame animation. I'm gonna go ahead and hit Save. And you'll make sure that this is saved in the correct format. Format and file. 6. 6. Our Class Project: Basics. What we're going to do now is we are going to move on to our class project. We are going to use our two techniques that we used in lessons 12 to create a little bit more of a complicated frame animation showing a raincloud going over a flower pot and a little daisy flower that's going to grow. So go ahead and open up the project file that's linked in the class notes. And over here on the right-hand side you'll see in layers window that I have named each of my different layers. This is going to be really helpful, like I said before, for those more complicated animations, it's just gonna be able to give you a little bit more control and kind of know which layer is which as you hide those different layers. So the first animation, or excuse me, the first frame I want to make sure is that we need to hide some of these layers because we don't want to have the daisy and some of the other elements shown right away. So what I'm gonna do is I want the flower pot to be shown. And I'm going to hide the flower. I'm going to hide the two leaves, and I'm going to hide the rain drops. So what we want is we want this cloud to go across the top of the screen. But when it's over our flowerpot, we want to make sure that that rain appears and then goes down. So what I'm going to do first is I want to create the effect of the Cloud moving across the sky. So I'm going to duplicate that frame. So I have two frames. The first frame, my cloud is all the way over to the left, just like how we did with the trout. Then I'm going to click on that second frame and I'm going to drag my cloud all the way over to the right. Then I'm going to go up to my timeline window. I am going to hit Control or excuse me, Command on my keyboard. And I'm going to hit that tween button. And again, we can choose how many frames that we want to add. I'm gonna go ahead and start with phi. I want to make sure that all layers are selected. So I'm gonna go ahead and hit. Okay, so let's do a little preview. So I'm happy with that. If we wanted to add more frames in there, we could. But for right now, that is totally fine. So what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna go back and I'm going to find the frame. Where for me it's number four. I'm going to find the frame where that cloud is, right over my right over my flower pot. And I am going to make sure that on this frame my little raindrops are visible. And since I want the rain to fall down on my flower pot, I'm going to duplicate this. Again. We're doing the same thing that we did with the fish and we did with the cloud, is we want to create a couple of extra animate next or frames to show that the raindrops are falling down. So that first one where the raindrops appear is number four. I've duplicated that, so number 45 are identical on five, I'm going to drag the rain drops down. And I'm gonna go back to the timeline. Let's select 45 while holding down the command key on my keyboard. And I'm going to go ahead and hit that tween button again. Now, I probably don't need five frames. I'm just going to choose three. And let's go ahead and hit play and see what that looks like. I'm pretty happy with how that looks for the raindrops. So next, let's figure out how we can make that little flower grow and balloon. So I'm gonna go ahead and stop the animation. I'm super excited about how the clouds and rain are moving in this animation. But next I want to have my little plant in my flower plot, pot grow and then bloom of flowers. So I'm gonna go ahead and stop my animation. And I'm going to click through until I find that frame where It's the last frame for me, it's number eight. It's the last frame of the raindrops because the next frame, you'll see the rain drops are gone and the cloud is moving on. So what I'm gonna do is I'm going to duplicate this frame. So I want the cloud to be in the same position. But I'm gonna go ahead and I'm going to hide the raindrops that's gone. I'm going to then duplicate that frame again. And I am going to then hide one leaf. And then I am going to show two leaves. Now, I'm just going to move this up so that it's in the right position. Then I'm going to duplicate this layer again. And I am going to then hide the two leaves. And I'm going to add in my flower. So let's take a look at what that looks like. I did something wrong and I'll show you what I did. So after the flower blooms, We did not change the flower to be visible on the remaining layers. So what we need to go do is in each of these layers, I'm going to show the flower. And I'm going to hide that one leaf and change that. We could delete the frames and start over. But since I'm happy with the direction of the clouds, I'm just gonna do this manually. I'm going to hide the one leaf and I'm going to show the flower. What's fun is if we wanted to, we could kind of show the flower, kinda getting a little bit taller in each of the frames, but I'm just going to keep that in the center. I'm going to make sure that that is where I want it. So now that I've made sure that my flower is visible in the remaining frames of this animation, I'm gonna go ahead and hit play. 7. 7. Wrapping Up: Alright, well, good job. And now that you've created your final project animation, go ahead and export it as either a GIF or a video file so that you can use it on all of your different social media and e-mail and website platforms. I am so excited that you've joined me for creating simple frame animations and Adobe Photoshop. Please be sure to post your project in our class discussion, I would love to see all of the different tweaks and things like that that you made to our final class project. Again, this is such a great way to bring your artwork to life both for personal and for business use. If you are a working artist that is already creating artwork for clients and businesses and customers. This is just a really great addition to your skill set into your offerings. So I hope you continue to create simple frame animations and have fun creating. Thanks so much.