Creating Reusable Character Poses in Adobe Animate

1. Adobe Animate Poses Intro: Hi guys, My name is Chad trough carbon. And you're watching how to create character poses inside of Adobe Animate. Previously on this platform, I've covered how to create walk cycles and run cycles. This acts as a way to create more detailed animations that can be re-used, but in a non-linear fashion. We can create down poses, opposes talking poses and more that you can swap in and out at any point to create a frame by frame system of sorts when animating out your characters. And once again, these can be re-used with the frame picker or the library. It's recommended that you watch my walk cycle or run cycle courses before diving into this section, as I think you'll get the most out of the course that way. So with all that said, I hope you're ready because we're about to get started. 2. Creating Standing Poses: For this video, I'm working off of 019 Chad actions. Feel free to open up this file. We're now going to go in and start adding in different poses for the single frame symbols. As an example, if we come over here to the library, it's right down here. You'll see that we have a chad stand symbol right here is just a single frame of him standing still. And again, we establish this so that way we have a starting point, as well as the ability to come in and create different poses from this if we want. Now, when it comes to creating different poses, we can have a variety of standing poses. He could be standing as is with his hands at his side. He could be standing with his arms or hands on his hips. We could be standing with the arms bent. Maybe he's sort of ready to spring into action in some sort of fashion, whether it's to start running or whatever the case is, there's many things we could do to create different Stan poses and how we have this setup right now, if you wanted to, you could rename this one to, for instance, Chad, stand hands at sides and then duplicate it and create a second symbol That's Chad. Stand arms at hips. And you could keep going down the line and just creating all of these one frame symbols that you can invoke it anytime if you wanted to. However, in this case, I'm going to do something a little bit different than I think can actually help speed the process up. I want to take advantage of the frame picker, which is available in the newer versions of animate. So to begin, I want to bring the chads stand symbol onto the stage. And the easiest way to do that would be to come in here and remove what I have here for the run animation. Keep in mind that Shad run right to left is here within the library. So it's not going anywhere. Once we remove it from the stage, it's still here. We can drag and drop and put this animation back in place at anytime. For now though, we're just gonna click on Chat run and choose to remove it and then create a new layer. And I can name this one Chad once again. And we're just going to drop in the chat stand symbol. Just drag and drop. And there you go. Now he's kinda big. So holding Control or Command and using the mouse wheel, I'm just going to zoom out. Use Q or select the Free Transform tool. And let's just drop the anchor down to the feet, something like that. And then we can resize holding Shift to do it proportionate, resize, and then just bring it up to the stage like this so that way we can see what we're doing. There we go. So now let's double-click on this character to go inside. And there's one thing I want to point out, and I had this issue before and this is when I duplicated a symbol and I kind of forgot to alter the original, you can see that this pelvis is still a loose vector. And we don't want that. We want it to be a symbol. We could just select this and hit F8 to create a symbol like we did last time. Or we could do something like this where we make a new layer above the pelvis patch. Come over here to the Chad symbols and go all the way down and find the pelvis patch. You can see there's two because again, I made a second one just to quickly kind of move on when we forgot to replace it in one of the original symbols. But we're just going to drag it over like this. And I'm just going to bring it up so that it matches that original. Just like that. And I can actually come in here now and just remove that pelvis patch vector layer. And then just rename this one to pelvis patch again. And then we should be good to go. So now that is a symbol, and if we do any tweening, we will have no issues then. And since it's now in the original stand pose, whenever we reference this symbol, we will have the pelvis patch as a symbol inside as well, which is good for us. So now, with all that said, let's start laying down some poses. We can create a second set of keys. We'll start with head, scroll all the way down, holding Shift, and click to establish a selection area and then hit F6 to insert the keys. Now, one thing I'm noticing, and I'm just going to do this right now for the back hair. Let's make sure that that back here is set to single frame. And we'll set it to one. There we go. And then we can insert that second key there. Now we should have no issues. Again, if you have these underlying issues ahead of time and you don't correct them and you start duplicating your symbols, you can correct them in the duplicates, but the original will keep those issues such as the looping hair. So now we're just taking that opportunity to make sure everything is locked down. So now with all that, we can begin the process of setting up the second pose, since we're on the second key. So one is going to come in here. I'll grab the front arm. It's going to bring it out like this. And then we can bring it down like so. And let's go down here to the back bicep. And we're going to be the same thing. Just kinda come out like that, grab this one and bring it in like that. Now the hands are not quite how they should be looking. So we can come over here and let's go to the front hand, which is right here. And while we're setting this up as a single frame symbol, we're actually going to be using the functionality of the hand to do something similar to what we're trying to achieve right now. So with the hand selected, we're going to make sure that we have our frame picker brought up here. To there it is. And we have these particular hand poses we can choose from. So we're just going to Command and lock that down with the fist. Come down here to backhand and just make sure that it's also set to fist. So there you go. You now have this standing pose. And he can go from this to this. Again, we'll build a select this if we wish. Once we get to the point that we have it on the stage. So now let's go ahead and just create another set of keyframes. Come down here, hit F6. And this one can be a little bit different. Let's come in and start with the body. And I'm just going to rotate the body a little bit forward like that. Again, just to add some variety to the actions here. And we can bring the head up a little bit like this and will come in. And this time we're just going to extend these out a little bit. Come down here. Might be easier just to use the layers to grab the back arm portions or you can hide your body and whatever symbols you need to hide in order to get this to look the way you want it to look. But I'm just gonna come in here. Maybe lower that a little bit more. And let's come over here to the front bicep and also lower that one. So that's about like that. And then for the backhand, just come over here. Let's just make sure that we have that set to fist and also set to single frame. I guess I forgot to do that in the previous one here, let just make sure that we have that set to a single frame, even though these are one frame animations. And also let's make sure that we have that set to open hand on frame 1. Even though these are single frame animations, we just want to make sure that everything's locked down in single frame just in the event something were to change later. And we don't want to run into those different issues. So let's just do one more here for variety's sake. I'll come in and we'll insert a key at four. And this time, we're going to select the entire character. And we'll use our Down arrow. So 1, 2, 3, that should be good. And I can come in here and just manipulate this a little bit. I should pull it up. I should have put a ground line down. But I can just eyeball those really quick here just to make sure that the feet are level with the other poses. So there's that maybe closer to here. And you know, at this point it might just be easier, really quick to create a ground line and then we can remove it once we're done. So I'm just going to make a new layer really quick. And we're just gonna lay down ground lines kinda how we did for the walk and run cycles. Just a very temporary thing. So that way we can get these poses setup the way we want them to look. So there we go, That should work. And then we can come in, go to frame 4. We can kind of see where the feet are off now. So we can come in here and just kinda manipulate it like that. And you could color code the lines as well. Again, I did this as just a kind of a quick little thing here just to get us across to the next part. But don't be afraid to use your guides because they can be very useful in so many different ways when it comes to working on more complicated things like this. There we go. So now you kind of have more of a bent pose. Maybe we want to go in and just kind of bend him a little bit more. And we can go in and just take that back bicep as well and move it back a little bit. So there we go. So now you have that pose, this pose, this pose, and that pose. So with that, we can come back here to scene one. And actually let me double-click, go back into that scene. And let's remove that guide that we set down for the feet. Or at the very least I can come in and double-click on it and make it a guide so that way it's not visible when we continue to work here. So now that we're on the main stage, you can see if we go to the frame picker, we have the ability to choose between different poses. So if you wanted to start, let's first make sure we're set to single frame for these. If you wanted to start with him, with his arms at the sides, you could pick that. And then perhaps you add some different animation in here using different symbols. Maybe he's talking, talking, and then he stops. And at that point you can just go in and have them hands at sides because that's what you want instead. So you go from that to that. And it just allows us to come in and quickly lay down a standing pose. You laid on the standing pose. You're like, Okay, I want him to start like this. And then you just pick it and then you're good. And then you can move on and you can start laying down your other symbols, start animating, creating actions, whatever the case is. But hopefully, the start of this shows you how you can easily create a master, in this case, stand symbol, and then have multiple phases of that symbol come in when you need it. Again, the frame picker is great for this. You could also, although I don't recommend this, come over here to the properties and also choose to invoke the frame that you want. We've talked a little bit about that. So if you wanted him, for instance, just standing without any different things going on, you can just choose one or you could go and page forward like that. But again, I'm doing this because the frame picker is visual. It helps you see what the poses are, which is very useful when it comes to animating this way. So with that said, we're going to pause here and up next key, creating different poses that we can implement later on. 3. Creating Down Poses: For this video, we're working off of 20 chat actions. Feel free to open up this file. We're going to keep going now and build up some down poses for the character. And this is mostly going to be used for when creating a reaction. So at the character gets startled, or if the character is going to change from one action to the other in a major way. Sometimes it's best to create sort of a ducking animation. And you can even recoil then with an up animation, which will also be doing here, along with some other animations as we continue along with this chapter. So to begin, we want to come in and use the standing pose as a basis for this. So we can come over here and look at the different symbols that we have going on. And why not just use what we have here? So we'll start at frame one. And let's also make sure we right-click on frame 40 and just choose to clear that key. So that way we just have one key frame on one end frames going forward like that. Let's right-click on the standing symbol and will choose to duplicate. Here. We'll name this one Chad down poses and then hit. Okay. So now if we take a look at the actions here, you can see that we have down pose and stand. Now at this point, I'm kinda wondering if we should separate what we're doing here from the actual animations, because Jump, run and walk our animations. If we bring them on, he's animating. These are actually more like poses. So let's come over here and rename stand. Just by double-clicking to, let's go chad poses and hit Enter. Then we're going to grab this folder and bring it so that it's outside of the chat Animations folder. So here you have Chat animations, jump, run, walk. And then you have Chad poses, Chad symbols. And if we go into the poses, you can see here, then we have the down poses as well as the stand poses. And I might actually just double-click on chat stand and rename it to Chad stand poses. So that way it's just consistent with all the naming and it's easier to understand what we are doing with that. So now, with all that in use, we can go in and start altering this symbol. So let's double-click. You go into the new chat down poses and we'll start with the first frame. So coming in here, we still have those guides setup for our feet, which is useful. And actually I might just do a little bit of adjusting because I laid them down pretty quick last time, but just make sure that everything is looking fairly even. And we can also come in. And let's make sure all the colors are setup the way we want here. So let's make sure we have blue and then the back one will be red. There we go. Okay, so now with that we can begin the first down pose. Since they are down poses, we're going to be doing a lot of knee bending with this. So to begin, let's just select all of the layers except for the guide. So I'm just gonna lock the guide actually and then use Control a to select everything. And then we can just move down two keystrokes. And we should be good to start there. So let's get the feet lined. Backup is going to come in here and start rotating. So can pretty close. Might just do a little bit of adjusting here and there. So Bott like that should be good. And then we can come in and just kinda rotate this one down. Like that. And also like that nature that are maybe sticking out a little bit too much. I'm just going to shrink it up a little bit. There we go. So now that's your first down pose is this one. So I'm going to come in here. And for the next three frames that are already laid down, I'm going to select them all and then choose to clear the keyframes. You can also use Shift F6 for this. I kinda forget that sometimes. And then we use F6 again to lay down keys. So now we're just gonna go to the next frame and we're using that first down pose as a reference. So now for this next one, maybe I won't bend the knees a little bit more, but perhaps I'll just kinda Ben the character a little bit more. Again, just to add a little bit of variety. So you can have this. And then maybe the next one. Maybe we do kind of the opposite. Maybe we just bring this up a little bit and we bring the arms up just a little bit as well. So you kinda have just some different down poses here. And we could also decide if you want to change the hands, maybe it's more appropriate for him to be using fifths here versus the open hands. But I'll let you decide that if you want to go that route for the fourth frame, we could come in and maybe alter things a little bit more. So 123. So now we're going to bend the legs a little bit more. Come in and start playing around with this. Getting close. So right there. Okay. So something like that should be fine for what we wanted to do. So you go like that. And then we can come in here and just bend this down a little bit more. Grab that back bicep, straighten that out. Back forearm, can bring it out like that. So you go from this to this. And we'll do just two or three more frames here as variations of this. So I'm going to come in and just make sure we add some more keys. Just like that. I accidentally edit keys to the guide. It's not a big deal if I do, but I'm just going to remove those so that way it just a clear shot and then we can keep going here. So then for these maybe we kinda bring the arms up a little bit more, something like that. And I could also go in on this point. And we'll make these fifths again just to kind of add some variety. That way we have that all figured out command and also just change that so that it's a fist. And we can just do one more here, possibly. Maybe one where his hands are up a little bit more. Something like that. So you have three down poses here, basically 123123, and there's variations of it. So you have just the different inclines of bend essentially with this. And we have six poses for that, which isn't bad. We could do way more, we could do weigh less. I'm going to remove that last frame that we laid down since we're not going to be using it. And as you can see now we have this laid down. Now of course, as I said, there's way more we could do. It just kinda depends on your animation. We're just sort of lay down some generic poses right now. But you could also change the way the feet are positioned. Maybe you want him to be ducking mid run. Well, you could adjust the feet so that he is coming on the run cycle or the walk cycle. Or perhaps there's something else going on. Maybe he's going from sitting to standing. And you want him to be in a certain position. You could also go in and do such things just to make sure that everything is looking good. And that way you have a solid pose library built up for when the time comes to animate. So again, if we come back here to Scene 1, and we were to click on this symbol. You can see here we have all of the down symbols right here ready for us to add in if we need them. So with that, I'm going to pause here and up next, we can keep building up more poses. 4. Creating Up Poses: For this video, we're working off of 21 Chad actions. Feel free to open up this file. We're going to begin by coming in here. And let's just remove this current pose symbol that we have on the stage just by hitting Delete and coming over here to the library, I want to locate the Chad Stan pose symbol. So right here. And we can either duplicate it on the stage or actually we could just do it right here. So there's your stand poses. Let's just right-click and choose duplicate. And we can rename this one than to Chad up poses and then hit. Okay. So now we have opposes in place and we can bring it onto the stage on the chat layer. And we're just going to re-size really quick. So come in. Just do our quick resize here. So that way we can see what we're doing. And we can begin the process of creating these poses. Okay? Now, with the down poses symbol in place, we can double-click to go inside. And this is actually the opposes symbol, not the down poses. And we're going to come in here now and remove all the keys that we established. Just going to scroll down here and right-click and then choose Clear key frame. And we'll start with the first frame here. And let's make sure we lock the guide so that way we're not accidentally altering it. So to begin, I wanted to select the entire character. And let's move them up to keystrokes. So 12. Then I'm just going to grab the body here, maybe rotate it back just a little bit like so. And we're going to grab the top portion of the leg here and just stretch it out so that the feet are touching their lines that they shouldn't be touching. And I might also grab the bottom portion of the arms here and just sort of rotate them out a little bit like that. Again, just to kinda help with the recoil effect. So as you can see, he's kinda recoiling up a little bit, or at least that's how it's supposed to look. So now we go to the second key. And again, at this point I might just select all of those frames and just choose to insert keyframes or hit F6 to do so. And for this second pose now, we can decide how we want to do this. I'll keep the legs at the same height. We're just going to move in. Maybe just alter this a little bit. So there we go, Something like that. Now for the third pose, select everything due to more keystrokes up. And we'll just kinda keep altering. Maybe this one's going back a little bit like that. Come down here to the bicep. Can bring that back as well as the front forearm. Just kinda kick it back like so. And then for your legs, we're just going to come in here and do that. And do that. So you go from this to this. And again, you can kinda see he is just rebounding up a little bit. And let's just clear the key on this last frame. And I'm going to reinsert the key so that way we can keep going off of that previous frame pretty easily here. And again, we can come in here and just sort of alter things. And there you are. Now of course, you could keep going forever with this and add as many opposes as you feel are needed. Again, I'm going to just do this for right now. And we'll see how it all pans out when we do our test animation. Again, this is more just for a reactionary or a transition type of pose. And so that's why I'm adding it in. I think they can be useful and we could always add more, but I think this should work for our purposes for right now. So we'll pause here and up next, move over to some more poses. 5. Creating Talk Poses: For this video, we're working off of O2 to Chad actions. Feel free to open up this file. We're now going to add in some talking poses for our character. And the easiest way to do this is to start with the standing poses and then build it up from there. So inside of the Chad poses library, I'm going to right-click on Chad Stan poses and then choose Duplicate. Inside here we're just going to name this Chad talk poses. And then we can click Okay. So now once we're there, we can first, let's just click on this symbol and remove it, and then bring in the chat talk poses. And we don't have to bring the symbol onto the stage each time we want to alter it. However, I just feel it's going to be easier to work with this background as opposed to a white background. I just think it'll be easier to see. So once you have the talk poses in place, we can double-click to go inside. So here we are. We have our character here with his poses in place. And I'm just going to start with the stationary pose on frame one. So I'm going to clear all of the keys despite coming in. And I believe it's Shift F5 to clear those keys. And then I'm going to hit F6 again to lay down keys. So that way, we're just starting with this pose and we don't have to worry about anything else. So these are going to be some talking poses. And I'm just going to go in starting with the first one and just added some body language and other things to help. When we need our character to talk, we can invoke these poses if needed to create the animations. So we'll start and just come in. And I'm going to grab the back bicep. I'm going to bring out both hands just like this, in front. Just like that. So then that is your first talking pose. The next one. We can come in here and just keep moving with this. So let's just do the front arm. And we can kind of bring it up like that. And this pose will be more for like an explanation, like it's that way. And he raises his arm up, just kind of adding emphasis to it. And I'm just going to alter this a little bit as well. So it's kinda like that. So there you go and have some talking poses. We could do a variation on this one here. So let's just come over here. Maybe this one's down a little bit more compared to the other one. It's kind of like that. So you have this one and then you have that one. And actually we could even raise him up a little bit like that. So there was even more of a difference. And just go through here and just think about how body language works, how characters talk, how you talk. I myself use my hands a lot when I talk in real life. And so it's kind of easy for me to imagine different poses for talking here. So for this one, I'm just going to bring this one up. And we can kinda shrink this in a little bit. So it looks like he's putting his hand towards his chest. And actually looking at this, let's bring that one down like that. And then for the forearm, we can kinda pop it up like that. So we have some talking poses here or potential talking poses. We can add a few more here. I'm actually just going to come back here to frame one. Select all the layers on frame 1, holding Alt and just drag this over. So that way I can continue just using the talk pose I established on frame one. And I'm just gonna do a few more. Here are a couple more. That one's pretty familiar or similar, I should say. So maybe something like this. There we go. It's a little bit different. And let's just do one more here. I'm gonna come in and I'm going to do the same thing I just did. I'm going to just copy those keys over here. And for this one, maybe we do something a little bit different. So come in here, that down, bring that up. So here we could do sort of a shrugging the shoulders. Now, one problem here though, is this hand isn't doing what it's supposed to be doing. It should be showing the palm and not the back of the hand. So one thing I can do is let's double-click on the backend here. And I want to locate that pose which is frame 3. I'm going to right-click and choose to copy frames. And then let's go back here to Chad talk poses. Go over here to the front hand and unframed for I'm going to paste frames. So there we are. You can see it's a little bit offset, but that's okay. It's gonna come in here and try to get it back into position. Zoom in really quick. There we are. Okay. And actually, one more thing with that hand still selected, modify, transform, flip vertically. It's kind of up here now, but we can bring it down, use Q, and then bring it up. So that way it's in position, just like that. There we go. So that's looking a little bit better. Looking more in line with what we need. And we can just come out here and we can test this out. And you can see that we have all the poses in place for the talking animation. Now there are several, several poses you could create for your own production. Again, setting up your poses will probably be dictated by your script or your screenplay or what you have in your head. Maybe you don't need any of these talk poses for your own production. However, it seems like it could be something that most people would need, which is why I decided to show it off here and create some talk poses as well as some other poses that we can work with. But now that we have some poses in place, we're going to pause here and up next, move on to the next part. 6. Creating Face Poses: For this video, we're working off of 23 Chad actions. Feel free to open up this file. We're now going to dive in and add some expressions to the face that we can choose to invoke at anytime. In the previous course, when we rig this character up, we touched on creating different expressions for your eyes as well as your eyebrows. And those are still baked into these symbols. We're just going to be taking this a step further so that it's easier to pick different facial expressions as you animate various things out. There is a couple of things we're going to have to do though, in order to get this to work. So when you're setting up your various rigs, you'll have to decide if and when you want head turns to be part of the equation. In the case of this particular symbol, which is the talk symbol, I'm going to go in and set this so that it's only a three fourths head view. So that way I can focus solely just on the three-fours expressions. And if I wanted to, I could create a separate head that allows me to do, for instance, profile or front expressions. But for now, we just want to set up a three-fourths view. So what we'll do is double-click on the Chad talk poses symbol to go inside. And as you know, we have all these poses set up just like this. So I'm on the final frame here, which doesn't really matter at the moment. But I just want to point out that's where I'm at since we have all these keys. And when we click on this, it takes us to the head symbol. So if I double-click and go inside, you'll see that we have head. And then we have three keys which allow us to swap out the head phases, which again can be useful in certain animations. But in our case, we just want the three-fourths view. So that way we can take advantage of the different expressions for that view. So with that said, I'm going to click on the chat talk poses symbol to go back out to that. And while still on Frame 6, actually, let's go to frame 1. We'll just go to frame one so that way we can easily clear keys here. And while on frame 1, Let's right-click and choose to swap symbol. Now here we have head and then head. Three forests had front and head side. We want had three-fourths in this case. So we're going to click once on head three fourths and then click Okay. Now you might get this issue where it's not popping in at first, if you click back and forth, you'll see that it should eventually pop back in. So now we are on head three-fourths. And I'm just going to come down here to the head keys here really quick. And we're going to clear those. So that way, we're using the head three-fourths symbol for all of those keys. So now, once you have that setup, we can double-click on the head three-fourths symbol to go inside. And from here you'll see that we have our eyebrows, eyes, hair, mouth, and the face ready to go. And we're going to set this up like we did with the talk poses, the stand poses, any of the poses, each key will have its own expression depending on what you want to do. So let's just come in here and let's just add a handful of expressions. So I'll just select these frames and then hit F6 to create keys. Now actually before I do that, I'm just going to hit undo control Z. You'll notice that my eyes are bugging out and that's because they're currently set to loop. I'm going to come into the eyes and just set that to single frame. And same for the mouth and the eyebrows just to make sure here. So single frame for eyebrows. And that should be good. So now let's add those keys once again, just like that. So that way you don't have anything looping and you don't have any eyes bugging out or anything like that. So the first key can be your default smiling pose. The second key can be anything you want. Remember we have these certain phases set up. So if we click on the eyebrows, you'll see that we have different eyebrow phases that we can use within that symbol. Same goes with your eyes. So for this particular frame unto, maybe you just want to have the eyebrows lowered and you want to have a frowning expression. So you know that on frame one, you can have the happy expression and then frame two you can have the frowning expression. And then maybe unframed three, you want to do something different with the eyes. Maybe he's going to be looking over that way on frame three. And maybe you want something else for the mouth. We could come in here and have him kinda have like a more inquisitive look to the mouth. As you can see here, we can just keep going through. Maybe frame 4 has bug eyes. And we can go in and let's just select a mouth here. Maybe something like that. And then for the eyebrows, we could do this. So you can see here we have these different expressions that we can go in and just easily put in. And we can just do a few more here. Let's go here. I've been looking forward like that and then we'll just do one more again just for the sake of showing you what you can do here. Okay? Okay, there we go. So now we have all these phases set up for this particular head symbol. So now if we go back here to the chat talk poses. In the case of the talk poses, you'd probably have a mouth moving and all that. But let's say for whatever reason, you just want to hold on one frame. You can then choose on that frame which particular face you want. So maybe at this point when he is using his arm on frame two, you want his head to look over like so. So you could implement that in just like that. And you can have multiple frames of his arm up if you wish, along with the ability to go in and just change out the head, or you could have multiple heads with the same positioning of your limbs. Really, that part depends on how you want to organize and set up your different library assets. But here, I just wanted to show that you can easily set things up just like you can with the body using your face symbols. Again, I would recommend that before you begin that process though, you go in and you swap out your main head symbol for the head three-fourths symbol. If that's the head symbol you intend to use for your different expressions with this particular pose. Of course, you can always swap up ahead and do different expressions with a front view at any time using keyframes. But if you're looking for it more easy and reusable solution. This is one you can check out. 7. Animating a Sequence By Swapping Symbols: For this video, and we're working off of 24 Chad actions. Feel free to open up this file. We're now going to go in and create an animated sequence using all the assets that we saved in the library. We're going to start by swapping out symbols while tweening certain events. And again, this is just to show how you can take everything that we have learned and combine it into an actual animated sequence. To begin, let's just come in here and create a new layer for the character. That way we can clear all keys. I'm just going to remove the Chad layer and make a new layer, call it Chad. And let's come over here to the library. We want to now grab the Chad run animation. So inside of the chat folder we have chat animations. We can come in there, we can go into r1. And in this case, I just want to choose the stationary one. So that way I can control how long I want this on screen, because the run left to right only has like two or three seconds of animation before it stops. So this one will allow us to loop indefinitely. We're just going to grab it and drag it onto the stage. So here we have the character. I'm just going to zoom out with that handy control functionality where we can hold down the button, use our mouse wheel. And we're just going to come in here and resize the character really quick. So just kinda get everything situated. And making sure we're holding shift. We can just resize just like that. So now we have the character on screen. And if we were to just take a look at this because we have it set to loop. As you can see, we hit Enter. You can see that he's just running and running and running. Let's go back here to frame one. And I'm going to hold shift and drag to the right so that way we can remove him from the center of the stage. And we want to now start planning out the animation. So in this case, let's come in and go to about frame 15. I'm just going to insert a key with F6, hold and shift and bring him over like so. So right now if we come back and hit Enter, it looks like this because we don't have any tweeting occurring, which is fine. So when he gets to this point, I'm actually going to add and oppose. So on frame 16, let's hit F6 to create a key. And we'll come over here and right-click on the symbol and then choose to swap your symbol. We'll come over here to the poses folder. And we have the up pose right here. So Chad, up poses will just double-click to bring that in. So he's running and then we're going to have an oppose. And it just depends on which oppose we want. I think frame one should work for this. So we're just going to come in here, put it on frame one, and make sure it's set to single frame. So it goes from this and then he's going to. Have sort of this up pose. And we're going to hold that for, let's say, three or four frames. And then I'll hit F6. And upon hitting F6, I'm going to also click on the symbol and holding Shift. I'm just going to move him over two keystrokes like that. So he'll be here and then he's there. And then we're going to insert a keyframe right after that. And we're going to now swap the symbol again for down poses and click. Okay? So now looking at the down poses, we can choose what we feel is appropriate and I actually think the first downpour should be fine. So what's happening here? Just in case if you are a little bit lost, He's going to run to this point. He's going to stop. And he's going to recoil up a little bit while stopping. And while he's stopping, he's going to skip forward a little bit because of the momentum from the run. And then we're going to see him kinda recoil down a little bit before beginning the next phase of what we plan to do here. So we have the recoil and then let's just go to frame 20 to and we could hit then F6, come over here and swap out the symbol. And in this case, let's say we want to bring him into a talking pose so we can just begin that process. And he could then start talking. So then let's just come in here and add some keys of him talking. And again, we could add voices and all that. But I'm just doing this last part here, mostly just as an example. So now we're going to have them running. And then he's going to come to this point. So let's just take this one step at a time. We'll right-click on frame one and choose to create a classic tween. So you have them running. And then we stop there on this next one. So on 16, we're going to right-click and create a classic tween. So you go from this to this. And then from there you have the rest of the animation. So you have them run in. And then he starts talking and you can see him kind of slide a little bit. And then you can begin the process of that animation. Now again, the talking animation here is really quick and there's no voices involved with that. But as you can see, we can go in and do certain things with that. But that's the basic idea of how you could animate swapping symbols. So once you have your library set up, in this case, we would tween in the run. And it's just a matter of making sure you break everything down so you have the end of the run. And then after that you're going to create a second key and then swap your symbol and get to the rest of the animation, finished that one, and then do another key to start the next symbol. And you can just keep going like that for as long as you feel it's necessary. Even after this, we could come over here to, let's say frame 30. Insert a key, Right-click, swaps symbol. Come over here, and let's just bring in the walk animation. There we go. Go over here to frame 50. And just bring this out like so. Come back, right-click and create a classic tween. Make sure that on that frame we are also looping. So you can see he kinda walks off like that. So again, we can go in and we could polish this up. But this is mostly just to show you how you can go in and animate using symbols. You just want to make sure that you keep all your keys separate and that every move completes itself before you go in and start swapping out your symbols. So with that said, we'll pause here and up next, take a look at another way we can animate. 8. Animating a Sequence with the Frame Picker: For this video, we're working off of 25 Chad actions. Feel free to open up this file. We're now going to take a look at a second way. We can animate out a sequence. And this one involves using the frame picker. Just to review from the previous video, we animated by swapping out symbols. So anytime we wanted a new action to take place, we would insert a key and we would have the then twinning take place if anything was there along with any of the other actions and you would just swap it out as you go. Here we're going to do something a little bit different. So to begin, let's just remove this layer, create a new layer. I can name it Chad and hit Enter. Coming over here to the library, we want to locate the chat runs stationary symbol and bring it onto the stage. So once it's on the stage, I'm just going to come in really quick and resize this so that we can see it and it's looking a little bit better. There we go. So we have that. And we're going to start with this. Now. You'll recall in the previous video, we had him running. We haven't come to a stop. He talked and he walked away. We're going to do the same thing here, but with the frame picker. So the first thing we can do is click on that runs symbol, then hit F8 to create a new symbol. So we're going to convert this symbol into another symbol. We can name this one, in this case, chad animation one. Now, if you were creating your own production, you might be more explicit with this. I'm just saying that this is the first animated sequence and my library, we're going to have this whole thing being mapped out. But maybe you have a sequence that up where he runs and he grabs a loaf of bread. You could name it Chad animation, grab bread, one or something along those lines so that it's more explicit and so that way you understand what it is. But for now we're just going to keep it as that and click, Okay. So if we double-click on this when we go inside, we're now looking at the runs symbol. What I want to do is begin the process of laying down the actions that I want for this particular symbol. And to start, I want to have the run animation, which is right here. But we want to set this to a movie clip. So we're going to come over here to the properties for this object, will just bring that up. And you'll see that we have graphic right here. Let's just set that to movie clip. Now this will remove the functionality of the frame picker, but that is okay. So the first frame is running. Go to the second frame. Let's hit F6. And we want this one then to be that up position when he sort of recoils before he comes to a stop. So we can right-click on this key or this symbol and then choose to swap your symbol. And we're going to come in now, find the poses. And we'll enter in the up pose just like that. And click OK. Let's just click once on this. Come over here to your object properties and make sure we have this set to graphic. And we're also going to set this one to single frame. So you have the run, you have the up. Let's go to the next key and hit F6, right-click, and then choose to swap your symbol on this third frame. And we're going to go to the dial and poses now. And this one's also going to be set to single frame, set to one should be just fine. From there, we're going to go in and insert our key. For the next part, we're going to swap the symbol here. And we can swap this one for the talk poses and click. Okay. So here you go. You have your talk poses in place. And from here we can just go in. And I'm just going to insert a few different taught poses, kinda like how we did before in the previous video. Even though again, we're just kinda pretending he's talking right now. So we have that setup and then he's going to walk away. So we'll insert a key, swap out that symbol and have him than walk away. So come in here, go into the walk, and there it is. The walk, however, is going to be a movie clip. So let's come in here, go to your object properties and make sure it's a movie clip. So there you are. You now have this setup. Let's come back here to now to the main scene, despite clicking on scene one. And we have the animation looking just like this. Now, the one thing we want to do on the symbol on frame one is come over here and make sure it's set to single frame. Even though it's set to single frame. And even though as we scrub right now you're not going to see anything. If we hit Control Enter, you're going to see that he is running in. That's because we set this up as a movie clip within this symbol, even though that this is a graphic symbol with a single frame, this run symbol is a movie clip. So it's going to ignore the functionality that we're placing down on that frame. It's actually going to loop because it's a movie clip. So with that, it's a little bit hard to tell exactly what you're doing here. But let's just see what we can workout. So we're just going to come back and move this guy over here to the right. Come over here to frame 15, hit F6, come over here and you still running. And then frame after that hit F6, come over here to the frame picker. And with the frame picker now, we want him to do the up pose. So we're just going to select that one and set another key. And I'll have them slide a little bit. And then we'll insert another key. Come over here to the frame picker. Make sure he goes into the down pose. And then we can have them start talking. He's talking and he's doing the talking thing. And then we're going to have him start to walk away. So right here. And then we'll insert a key at 50 and then just have him move off. So now we come back here to frame 1 will create a classic tween. Create a classic tween here for when he slides. We don't really need anything there except for unframed 32. We can insert a classic tween. And it's going to look like this now. But again, if you were to use Control Enter, you can see now that it actually is animating out. You're just not able to see it because of the movie clip functionality. So that can make working with the animation a little bit difficult. However, if you have your animations laid down and you know the timing of it, you might be able to work with that timing along with rendering out the movie and testing things out as you move along. And you might find that using your frame picker is an easier way to work. Again, it just kinda depends on the circumstances and what you plan to do. Finally, you might also find it more beneficial if I come over here and create another layer. And we're just going to go back to the library, go into our animations. And in this case, let's just go back to frame one. And we're going to bring the animation for him running onto the stage, off to the side here just a little bit. And I'm just going to resize this so it's easier to see. And we'll also double-click on this new layer and change it to a guide. Click. Okay. And we'll make sure that this is currently a movie clip that's looping, which it is. So you can see here, what we could do is even though this particular symbol is not previewing for us because it's a movie clip. We can still get an idea of what this is going to look like by using this as a reference. So we can see it's going to run like this around like this. And if we stop the run right here, his legs are going to look like that at that point. And then we're going to go into the staggered position. So you can also do that as a way to sort of guide you. And once you're satisfied with that, okay, good to go. Well, I want to see what the walk is going to look like now, you could have multiple reference layers or you can just keep swapping this out as you need the reference. So now it's like okay, so if we start here, if it was at frame one as an example, within the loop, you could come in here and you can set that up. So that way you understand he looks like that. He's going to be looking like this at this point. And you can just go through and work it out like that as well. Movie clips are awesome because they work independently, but a kitten become a little bit confusing when you can't see exactly what's going on on the stage. But again, there's things you can do such as creating references like I did here to help you with that process. 9. Conclusion: Hopefully between this lesson and learning how to create walk and run cycles, you now have a strong foundation for building up your own original character animations. As you continue to learn the process of animation. I have more courses on Skillshare, so feel free to seek them out. I'm trying to post one a week right now. And I cover all sorts of animation topics from Adobe Animate to MOHO. Thank you for watching, and I'll see you next time.