Transcripts
1. Introduction: Hi, I am Marvin and I own and run a motion design studio in the Philippines, and this is some of our works. I have been animating for about eight years now and what I'd like to do with this course is share some of that knowledge with you. When I started animation, there was really no resources. It was hard to get started. Now, there are abundance of resources in the Internet, but still, whenever I meet someone who is interested in animation, they hesitate because they think it's hard, that there are lots of drawings that you have to make and that it's scary. What I'd like to show you is that, it's not that scary, it's simple and it can be fun. What we're going to do in this course is we're going to animate. We're going to start with very basic shapes and we're going to build up from that. While we're at it, I'm going to discuss basic animation principles and by the end of this course, you will be animating a cute, simple character jumping. If you are all ready an experienced animator, then maybe this course isn't for you. But if you're an illustrator and you'd like to add animation to your illustrations, or if you're someone who'd like a basic introduction to frame-by-frame animation, then this is for you. So if you are that person, I hope to see you in my class.
2. What is animation?: Hi. Good to see you here. In today's lesson, I will be discussing what animation is and some basic terms you should know. First is, what is animation? Animation is, basically, an illusion of movement. It's not really moving, it's just compose of still pictures that is shown to you at a certain rate, and it gives of the feeling or the illusion that something is moving. So, when I was young, I always drew on textbooks. On one page, I drew a stick figure with a certain pose, and on the next page, I drew the same stick figure character but on a different pose. I flipped through the pages back and forth and it gives of an illusion of movement. So, basically, that's what animation is. Frames per second, or FPS means how fast or how many images is shown to you in one second. For example, in a 24 FPS or frames per second, means 24 drawings are being shown to you in one second. 30 FPS would mean 30 drawings are being shown to you in one second. Now in animation, you can either animate on ones, or on twos, or on threes, or on fours. So, what do this mean? So, on twos basically mean, that one drawing, what consume two frames. Meaning one drawing is being exposed for two frames. On ones, would mean you draw in every of the frame. So, in 24 frames per second, animating on ones would mean, you would create 24 drawings. Animating on twos, on a 24 frames per second would mean you would only need to animate 12 frames. So, on threes, would mean that one drawing would consume three frames, and on fours, would mean one drawing would consume four frames.
3. Animate UI: For this course, I will be using Animate as my software of choice but if you're more familiar with Photoshop, TV Paint, Toon Boom, then you could still use those software because what I will be teaching in this course is the basic fundamentals in animation and the concept and you could apply it in any software. But if this is your first time animating and you don't know where to start or what software to use, then this is the lesson for that and I'm going to explain the Animate UI. So let's get to it. I'm going to open Animate. I'm using Animate CC 2019. So this is what it would look like when you first open the Animate software. Here there are preset resolution are set up full HD, 4K HD for this project, let's just click the full HD or if you want to create a custom resolution, you could manually input the width and height here by default, the frame rate is 30 frames per second. But for this course, we would use a 24 frames per second so we will change this to 24 and let's hit "Create." Now we have opened a new project, now this is your canvas this is the place where we would draw on the bottom part, this is your timeline and on the right side are your tools. This is where the brush tool, the shapes, the pen tool, the fill are located, this is where your tools are. Now for some reason, if your UI is a bit different than mine, then make sure that on the upper right, that the layout is essentials. Basically Animate has created preset for different uses so when I click "Designer," it has a different layout so that we are on the same page and it's easier to explain, let's just click "Essentials. " Now I would now draw a circle, we would use the brush tool and the shortcut for a brush tool is B. Now if you want to increase the brush size, you click the right bracket in your keyboard, that is the shortcut or if you want to lower the brush size, make it smaller, use the left bracket in your keyboard, or you could change here in the properties when you've selected the brush tool, you could manually set the brush size, for now, let's just go with five. Now, in your timeline, if you've noticed, there is one here, a blank key-frame, you could imagine this, that this is a paper, if you've noticed there is a circle here. So we have one paper and it's a blank paper and there is no drawing, now I'm going to proceed and draw a circle here. Now if you've noticed, now the blank circle is now filled with black. This is because now it has a drawing, this is a paper that has a drawing and now I'm going to add a paper the shortcut for adding a new frame, a new blank keyframe, is F7. Basically what this is, in reality, is I'm taking a new paper, so now this is a new paper. Now in animation, it is essential that we should know what the previous frame is or we should be able to see what the previous frame is and what is the frame after this current frame and in order to do that is to enable the Onion Skin. So the Onion Skin is located here, this is the icon, you select this one and now we have an Onion Skin this is I'm currently on frame 2, and now this is a previous frame. Now I'm going to draw it slightly different so that we would just for the sake of presentation there and now I have two frames. Now, in order to move from one frame to another, you could select it here, you could flip back and forth or the shortcut for that is the comma in your keyboard or the period to move forward, the comma to move backward. Now let's add a new blank key-frame, I'm going to click "F7" and now I am going to draw another circle, further forward this time. Now I have three key-frames now, if I click the "Comma Button," so it's going to go back in frame. Now, if you notice in your Onion Skin, there are two colors, blue and green. The blue ones are the previous frames, and the green ones are the frames after what is the current frame. So this is the frame after that and the blue is the frame before that. Now, if you've noticed here what 24 frames per second mean, that for one second, there are 24 frames and currently, we have been animating on ones and for this course, we would be animating on twos, how do we extend these frames so that one frame would consume two frames? The shortcut for that is F5, if I click this one, that would extend and I'm going to click this frame, click "F5," and this one, click "F5." Now, this is on twos, now let's go into preview this animation, there, slight movement and the shortcut for previewing your animation is the return button in your keyboard. Now to just explain the point in extending key-frames, so now I'm going to go to the first frame. Currently what this means is that one paper is being shown for two frames, it's just one paper, not two papers with the same drawing, but one paper that is being exposed for two frames. Now I could extend this to how many frames I would like, I could extend, I'm just going to click "F5" to extend this further. Now, this one drawing, this one paper now consumes ten frames, or is this 11 frames? Now if I'm going to change this one, so let's just add a face here. Now I'm currently on frame 10, now let's go back to frame 1, what I did in frame 10 is still applied to frame 1 because basically, this is just one paper. If you look at this, this is one paper with one drawing. So basically this is the animation and this is what you would need to get started.
4. Two methods in animating: In animation, there are two ways on how to animate. The first method is called straight ahead and the second method is called pose to pose. Now, for example, if we're going to animate a circle moving from left to right, using the straight ahead method, it simply means that I would animate as I go. It's animating as you go. Using that method, I'm going to draw the first frame, its starting point, which is here. Then click "F7" and draw the second frame. Click "F7" again, draw the third frame. You do this until it reaches its end point. Let's preview this. Now, it moves from left to right, using the straight ahead method. The second method is called pose to pose. I'm going to create a new layer and go back to frame 1. I'm going to add this layer. Now, I'm going to show you how to animate pose to pose. Basically, pose to pose method is to divide the whole animation into key poses and then do the in-betweens afterwards. For example, I'm first going to draw its starting point. Hit "F7" and draw its endpoint. Then I'm going to work towards its in-betweens. Now, I'm going to create the in-between, between this frame and this frame. How to do that, now. If I'm going to go back to frame 1 and hit "F7" to create a blank keyframe, it's not going to do that, because there's no key frame to create a blank keyframe from. Now, because the second frame, frame 2, is already occupied, if you click "F7," it's not going to create a keyframe because frame 2 is already occupied. It needs to be blank. There are two ways to do that. First, is to drag the second frame here and move it to frame 3. Now, we have a space in frame 2 to create a blank keyframe. We go to frame 2 and hit "F7", because currently, frame 1 is being extended to frame 2. One paper is being consumed by two frames. What we need to do is add in a new paper in between them, so we click "F7". Now, it's already blank and I could create my in-between, right here. Now, notice, again here, just a recap, the blue one means it's the frame before this one, and the green circle here means that this is the frame after this one. Now, using the pose to pose method, I want to create an in-between here and then in between here. I'm going to go back to frame 1, hit "F5". I'm going to extend this so that I would have a space to create a blank keyframe. I'm going to go to frame 2, hit "F7," and then create the in-between, between this frame and this frame. Now, I'm going to go back to frame 1. As you can see, if you're going to look at this, there's the small blue circle here and a small green circle here. This means that the onion skin will show two previous frames. This one would also show two frames after that. I could set this one so that it would show this number of frames after this frame or I could also move this one so that it would show the number of frames prior to this frame. Now, I could set this that it would only show one frame after this and one frame before it, or set it two. It depends on how you want it. Now, let's go back to this frame, and I'm going to move this one so that we could see all of the frame. Now, we still lack a frame here. This is frame 1, frame 2, frame 3, and frame 4. Now, I'm going to go to frame 3 and create an in-between. I could create that by pressing "F5". I'm going to extend this frame and then click "F7" to create a blank keyframe. Now, I could create it's in-between. Now, my in-between is already complete. I'm going to preview this. Now, that's how you animate pose to pose. First, you draw the first frame and then the last frame, and then work towards its in-betweens. Now, if you'd like, we could also create the in-betweens between this frame. Add more in-betweens to make the animation smoother. For example, this one, I'm going to hit "F5. " Go to this frame, and then add in-between here, and then go to frame 3, F5, then add an in-between here. Then I'm going to go to this frame to create the in-between here, I click "F5". Then go to this frame, F7, create the in-between. Go to this frame, hit "F5," and go to this frame, hit "F7," and create the in-between. I'm going to play this. Now, it's more smoother. That's how you do a pose to pose method. Now, for this course, we would focus on animating pose to pose. Now, this is currently animating on once. I've told you in the introduction that we are going to animate and focus on animating on two. How to do that is, we just extend each frame. Go to each frame and hit "F5" to extend them. Go to the frame, F5. Now, they are animating on twos. Let's preview this. Now, it's animating on twos. Now, for the next lesson.
5. Ease: Here I'm going to explain ease. Now in animation in order for you to show that something is fast, then you draw just a few frames. If you want to show that something is slow, you draw a lots of frames. What ease means is that where does the animation slow down? Now, let's take a look at this example. I have created four circles moving from left to right. I'm going to play it. Now if I'm going to ask you, "Which of the circles is the fastest?" Then maybe you would choose one circle over the other. But the truth is, all of them have the same starting point and all of them has the same endpoint. What made one circle more faster than the other or slower is because of the ease. Now, let's take a look at this first circle. I'm going to preview it and I'm going to go to frame one, click onion skin and I'm going to extend this all the way through, so that we could see all of the frames. Now, I'm going to create a new layer and I'm going to go over this, so that I could explain this better. Now if you are going to look at this, this animation has no ease, meaning that it's in-betweens. The distance between each of its in-betweens are the same. Meaning that the distance from this frame to this frame and the distance from this frame to this frame, is the same. Now, if you look at this one, it would seem like that the ball is moving at a constant rate. Now this is without ease. Now let's look at the second circle. I'm going to preview this. Now, this circle seems like it's moving slowly at the start and begins to pick up speed. Now this is what you call ease out. The circle is easing out, easing out of the frame, easing out. An ease out is slow at the start and fast at the end. Now let's create a new layer and now let's try to map out the distance between each frame. The next frame is probably here. The next frame here. Okay. Now, if you notice here, the first frame and the second frame, the distance is not too much. It's only a little bit. But the distance from frame two to frame three grows bigger and the distance from frame three to four is much bigger than the distance between the previous frames. Now that's what ease out is. The distance between them is growing and the distance between here is the biggest in an ease out. Now let's take a look at the third example. Now this is an ease in. An ease in means that it's fast at the start and it slows down, its easing to the frame. I'm going to create a new layer. Go to frame one and now let's try to map out the distance between each of the frames. In an ease in, it's the opposite of ease out. The ease in is at the start, the distance is very big and then the distance on the next set of frames is lower than the previous one. The distance here is lower here. Again, the distance would be much shorter until it would settle to it's place. Now this is ease in. Now the final example is a combination of ease out and ease in, or sometimes you call it ease out in or in out. I'm going to play that. This one would seem like it's slow here and a bit fast at the middle and then slow again at the end. I'm going to create a new layer and let's try to map out the distance between frames.. Here, as you have noticed, so the distance here grows, grows bigger and bigger and then it goes small. Now that's it for our lesson, for ease. In the next lesson, I will teach you how to animate or create the in-betweens and how to do ease in and ease out much.
6. Inbetweens: In the previous lesson we have discussed about easing. For this lesson, I would like to teach you how to do the actual in-betweens and I use a method called halves. It simply means that I first look for the half or for the middle point and work towards that. Let me show you. I would like you to follow along with me so that would be easier for you. First, open up the Animate software, and now, don't forget to change your frame rate to 24. Then hit Create. First, let's do a circle moving from left to right with no ease or moving at the constant speed. Click the B, so we are on the brush. First, let's do the first frame and then hit F7. Let's click the Onion skin and then do the last frame. What I typically do once I have finished the first two frames is, I reset the timing. For this exercise, let's move the last frame to frame 17. This is 15, 16 then 17. Now, we are animating on two, so click F5 so that the last frame would consume two frames, frame 17 and frame 18. Now, what I do once I already have the timing. I already know that animation would start frame 1 and would end at frame 17 so what I do is I already create the blank key frame for those. Again, keep in mind we are animating on two. Skip a frame and click frame 3, hit F7, go to frame 5, hit F7, and so on. But now we have finished creating the blank key frames. In using the halves method, and this is no ease, meaning it's moving at a constant speed. I first go to frame 9. Now, let's extend our Onion skin, so that we could see the first frame and extend it so that we could see the last frame. What I do is I get their half or the middle point of these two frames. It's probably around here. Now if you look at this, we have finished doing the drawings for frame 1, frame 9, and frame 17. We still lack six more frames. What I do is first pick a side, either do the left side or on the right side. I will choose to do first the left side. First, go to the middle point, which is on frame 5 and then figure out what is the middle position or middle point or the middle action of these two. It's probably here. Once that is done, again, choose either if you want to do the left side or the right side, I'm going to do the left side first. Now, if you look here, you see two frames, two green frames. So let's adjust our Onion skin so that it would only show the previous frame and the frame after. Now, let's do the middle point, which is probably here. Now, let's proceed to frame 7 right here. Adjust our Onion skin, and then do the in-between here. Now, we finish the left side. Now, let's proceed on the right side. Now, I go to the middle, right here. Let's extend our Onion skin and then do the middle point. Then go to this blank key frame here. Create the in-between, and then do the last frame. Now let's hit Enter and see the animation that we have done. Now, if you want to preview this, all you have to do is hold the command button and click Enter, or on the Windows it's Control Enter. Looking good. Let's extend this Onion skin so we could see all of the frames. What I do first with no ease, or if it's a constant rate, is that I first do the first frame, and then the next is the last frame and then I do what's in-between them. Then do what's in-between these two frames. Then these two frames, and these two frames, and then so on. On the other side do the same. Then these two frames, and then these two frames. Now, let's do an ease in. Let's rename this layer, double-click and rename this to no ease. Now, let's create a new layer. Lets rename this to ease in. We're going to do an ease in now. Similar concept. Let's create the first frame, hit F7 and draw the last frame. Now, let's move the last frame to frame 17, there. Let's hide the previous layer so that we don't accidentally draw on that. Now, remember that in an ease in, it starts first with a fast movement, meaning the distance is big, and then the distance slowly gets smaller and smaller until it reaches its last point. If the method we use in a no ease is we start at frame 9 and then work towards that, work backwards, and work forwards and in-betweens, in an ease in, you just work forward. I start with frame 3. Let's set F7. Then reducing the halves method, we create the middle point or the middle action which is here. The reason why this is the next frame, because this is the largest, distance that this movement is going to make. Now, I'm going to go to frame 5, hit F7 and create what's in between them. As you can see, using this one, the distance is getting smaller. Hit F7, move again two frames forward, hit F7. So now let's hit the return button. Now this is an ease in. Now let's preview this. Now if you you don't want to show the upper animation, for example, and you just want to preview your recent one, go to this layer. Even if it's here then when you hit preview, it will be shown. What you can do is click this one, right click and click guide. What this will do is when you preview it, it will not be shown. I'm going to right click again and click the guide so that it doesn't become a guide. Notice in an ease in, I animated in a forward way. I start with this frame and then this frame, and then start here and then find its half, it's half, its half, and then so on. Now let's do an ease out. I'm going to create a new layer. Let's rename this, double-click to ease out. Now just a recap, an ease out is slow at the start and then it becomes fast, so it's the complete opposite of an ease in. If we were animating in a forward way in the easing in, now what I do when easing out is I animate backwards. Let me show you. First draw the first frame, hit F7 and draw the last frame. Again, drag this to frame 17. Now, instead of animating forward, because in an ease out, it's the complete opposite of ease in, I animate backwards, I animate here. I click F7, draw its middle point and then go backwards, F7 draw the middle between this frame and this frame and then so on. Now if you are confused by this, because currently the onion skin is showing a lot of the frames after this frame, just adjust it so that it will only show two frames. Okay, let's play this. It starts off slow then builds up speed. Now let's turn this two layers to guide layer and hit preview. Now, the last one is an ease in out. Let's create a new layer, rename it this to ease in, out or out in. Now let's go to frame one, draw the first, hit F7. I'm going to extend this one so I could see just a guide, drag this to frame 17. In an ease in and out, it's a combination of the methods that we have used. I start first, just a recap, an ease in and out would start slowly and it would build up speed. Its fastest at the middle, and then slows down. I start at the middle in doing an ease in and out. Click F7 and draw it here. Now let's create the blank key frames. Now we are here. Decide first if you're going to do the left side or the right side. Let's do the left side first. If you're going to do the left side, this is an ease out, so you animate backwards. You go to this frame, let's drag the onion skin here and then draw what's in between them. Then move to the next frame backwards, draw whats in-between them. Okay. Now we are done on the left side. Now let's do the right side. The right side is from this frame to this frame. It's an ease in, so we animate in a forward way. Let's move to the next frame and draw what's in-between them. Then the next frame and then we're done. Let's hit Enter. That's an ease in and out or out in. Now let's remove the guide in the other two layers and hit preview. Now we have finished all of the ease. This one is moving at a constant speed, this one is easing in, easing out and easing out and in. Now just to recap, I'm going to create a new layer just for a guide. What I typically do for a concentrate, I start first here, this is the order of how I do the frames. It's a middle, middle, middle, and middle. When animating ease in, it's in a forward way. Animating ease out is animating backwards, starting with the first frame, last frame, then work backwards. An ease out in is a bit of a combination of all of them so I start with the first frame, last frame, the one in the middle, then if I decide to do the left side, so I would animate backwards.
7. Keyposes and what ease to use: You already know what key poses are and how to do the in-betweens. Now the question is, how do you determine what drawings are keyposes? And how do you know what ease to use? Is it ease in or ease out? For the first question, how do we determine which drawings are keyposes? Keyposes are sometimes called extremes, meaning they are the extreme poses the peak in the actions or another way to look at it is, where does the direction change, at which point does the direction change? For example, take a look at this. The circle moves in a zigzag pattern. Where does the direction change? Those are the keyposes. This one would be a keypose. This one would be another keypose. Another keypose and another keypose. These are our keyposes. Now for the second question, what ease will we use? Now if you are confused, what ease to use in your movement or in your action. There is some guide that you could follow. Whenever an object goes into the scene, you use ease in. For example, this one is ease in. If an object is from the scene and goes out of the scene, you use ease out. It goes with the name. If an object goes in, ease in. If an object goes out, ease out. That's simple. For example, in ease in other applications that we could use is, for example, there is a car from outside of the scene and would go inside and would use break. The ease would be an ease in. Now, if we have a car at the center of the scene and would accelerate and go out of the scene, you would use ease out. Now if there is an object that's going to move within the scene, you use ease in out. It makes the action more smoother. Now, if there is an object that is just passing through you use no ease because it's in a consistent, the speed is in a constant rate. Now take a look at this. Again. Let's go back to our first example. Now that we have keyposes, we determine what ease to use from keypose to keypose. Take note that what I just explained earlier is just a guide and this is by no means applicable to every action, but if you're still confused on what ease to use, you could use this one. Let's go back here to our previous example. Now take a look at this action. The ease used here is, in out. From this keypose to this keypose, it's an in-out from this keypose to this keypose, it's an in-out. From this one to the last frame, it's still an in-out. I have prepared the same keypose, but a different timing. I'm going to play it. Now it's like a one big movement. These are still four keyposes but it's in a different timing and different ease. From here to here, it's ease out and from here to here, there is no ease, it's running at the constant rate, and from here to here, it's an ease in. Take a look at this. This is some timing chart. Let's map out the action. This is my keypose, this is my second keypose, third keypose, and fourth keypose. Now, let's go back to our first example. The circle symbolizes keyposes. Now, let's map out the in-between. If I observe this one, the in-betweens would look like this. It's slow here, picks up speed, and then slow again. Then slow, picks up speed, and slow again. Slow, picks up speed then slow again. Now, for the second example, I'm going to hide the layer, create a new one. The ease looked like this. It starts with ease out. Then from this frame to this frame or this keypose to this keypose, it's running at a constant speed and from this frame to this frame, it's ease in.[NOISE].
8. Keyposes in an action: Even if you know how to determine which drawings are key poses, sometimes it's hard to wrap our heads around what key poses are and what drawings are those key poses, especially if the movement we're trying to animate is a character animation. To make things easier, I followed these framework. Usually a character animation has this poses. First pose is the idle, anticipation, the action, overshoot, recoil, and then settle. What do these mean? The idle is the starting pose. The anticipation is when you anticipate before you do the action, it's usually the opposite of the action. The action is the action itself. The overshoot is when, because sometimes when you move too fast, there is a certain overshoot, and the recoil is the opposite of the action and then the last pose is the subtle. Let's take, for example, this jump. In your class project, later on in this course, you will design a simple character that is based from simple shape and then add legs and arms and a face makeup a character, and we will make it jump. We will animate it to jump, but we will go into detail into the jump animation later on in the upcoming lessons. For example, a jump, this is the idle pose. This is the anticipation, the action, the recoil, and then the settle. Notice, this is the idle pose and before this character would be able to jump, this character needs to anticipate and the anticipation is opposite of the action. If the action is going upwards, the anticipation is going downwards. Now, imagine that you would be able to jump without anticipating. It doesn't happen. You don't just magically float. You need to anticipate, you need to build up that energy before you can jump. For every action, there is always an dissipation. Although in some cases, you won't notice anticipation because the amount is only very small and as it's not anymore noticeable. But it's always there. There's always an anticipation, especially if the one moving is a living thing. There's always an anticipation. A recoil. Now from the jump, from the action, this character goes down and this character recoils and a spring. The recoil is the opposite direction of the settle. If this is the settle pose, the recoil is going downwards, then settle is going upwards. Now, you might be wondering where is the overshoot. Let's go back to here. In this framework, what is always present is the idle anticipation and the settle. Sometimes this street the action overshoot and recoil. Sometimes they are blended into one. Let's take for example, this bunch. I have animated a character punching. Now this are the key pose. This is the idle. This is the first pose. This is the anticipation. This is the action or overshoot, the recoil and then the settle. Now notice that the action here is not present. It's because in the punch, the action is very quick. The action key pose and the overshoot key pose are somewhat blended into one frame. Now the in-between of that is this one. Notice from the idle pose to the anticipation, the direction is moving backward and when this character punch, the direction is going forward. Now because the punch is very quick, this character overshoots a little bit and because of that overshoot, this character would have to recoil to balance. It's going backward and now going to his or her settle pose, the direction is slightly moving forward. Now, let's play that again. Now, let's take a look at the timing. This is a timing chart. Note that this is my own version of the timing chart. Different animators have their own way of doing the timing chart. This is my way of doing that timing chart. This is a way that I understand it more. If later on you'd like to apply my own timing chart or you could create one on your own that you understand more. Usually a timing chart is moving downwards from up to down. That's how you read it. But like in the previous lesson, it's in any direction that you want. In the previous lesson the timing chart is in a horizontal position now it's on vertical. It depends what works for you. Circle is our key poses and the line is the in-betweens. This is the starting or idle pose anticipation, overshoot, recoil, and then settle and here are our in-betweens. Now notice that the in-betweens are only a few compared to in previous lesson that there are a lot of in-betweens. It's a myth that you need to draw a lot of in-between so that you will have beautiful animation. That is a myth. It would depend on the movement. For this example, a bunch is very quick. You don't really need to add more in-between, you just need to get the timing right. From starting to anticipation, it's an ease out. I mean, an ease in, and then from anticipation to overshoot it's an ease out, and from overshoot to recoil then to settle there is no in-betweens because it's very quick. But if you look at the animation it works. Now, I'm going to take this opportunity to introduce favoring. Remember that when we do the in-betweens, we use halves. But there is, for example, from anticipation to overshoot. This is an ease out. But we only have one frame in-between. How do we show that? If we put the in-between in its exact middle position. So notice the character here represents the timing chart here. For example here this is the starting pose, and I'm going to click the on your screen so that you could see. From starting to anticipation this is an ease in. From the idle pose, get the in-between, which is this, and then from this frame to the anticipation pose, you get the in-between, and then so on. Then you get the ease in. Now, from anticipation to overshoot, notice that this is only two, one in-between. We favor this frame. Is it leaning towards the previous frame or the next frame? Basically that's what favoring is. Now, if you take a look at this, this is where our current frame is. This is the previous frame and this is the frame afterwards. Now, notice that the in-between is near this blue frame, the previous frame because it's favoring the top frame here. It's favoring the anticipation. Now, with this kind of timing it's an ease out. Now, let's take a different example. This is for standing up. Even a basic action like standing up there is also an anticipation. Now, if you try this yourself, try to stand up and you'll notice that you will anticipate. You have to go down in order to stand up. No matter how little that amount is, there is always an anticipation. Now, this is the idle pose. This is the anticipation pose, and now this is the settle. Now, notice that here, there is no more action, recoil, and overshoot, because the settle pose is blended into the action pose, the overshoot and the recoil. So it depends. Sometimes, the framework is being simplified depending on the action. Now, let's take a look at the in-betweens. Now, if you want to add an overshoot, you can. I've made a different version. See that. There is an overshoot here. From anticipation, there's a little bit of overshoot before it reaches the settle pose. Now, let's take a look at the timing chart for the first example. What we have here is standing pose or the idle pose, then the anticipation, and here, the action and settle are merged into one. Here from start, the idle pose to anticipation the ease is an ease in, and from anticipation that the settle pose it's ease out. Now, let's take a look at the timing chart for the one with an overshoot. Here, this is the start or idle pose. Still, it's an ease in, and from anticipation to overshoot it's an ease out, and from overshoot to settle, there's no ease. Just to recap, for a character action, this could be your guide. The first is the idle pose, anticipation, action, overshoot, recoil, then settle. Now, this three could be merged into the settle pose or depending on the action, only one of them would be shown.
9. Breakdowns: Breakdowns. Breakdowns are drawings that guide our inbetweens, they give certain information to make our inbetweens in a certain way. I consider breakdowns as a keypose. Now let's take a look at this example. We have two keyposes here, this is the first drawing, and this is the second. Now if we are going to inbetween this, naturally it would look like this. Because this is the first drawing, this is the second, and if we create the inbetween it would be in a straight line, like this. But what if we initially planned that this movement here would move in a curve instead of a straight line. Now, if we just have this two keyposes, it doesn't have the information, or it doesn't help us or guide us in a way that when we do the inbetweens that it would be in a curve instead of a straight line, and that's where breakdowns come in. Here, I have added a breakdown at the center. Now, if we are going to inbetween this one, it would now look like this. This is the first example. Now this is with a breakdown added in. Now let's take a look at a different example. For example, the jump, the character that we are going to animate in the class project. Here we have all the necessary keyposes, the idle, the anticipation, the action, the recoil, and the settle. It's looking good. Now let's add the inbetweens. Now notice here the jump feels a bit weird, there's something wrong with it, but we can't point out where. The reason why it's like that is because if you look at here from the anticipation to the action, it feels like the legs are floating, it's not really jumping. It's because from a anticipation to the action, the legs are bended and when it reaches the action it's also bended. Initially when we're going to inbetween this, all of the inbetweens would have its knees bended, like this. But that is not the case when we actually jump, because right before we make the kick, our knees would straighten first. Another thing wrong here is when this character lands, it's also bended all the way through. But that is not the case when we jump, because when we jump, when we go down, our legs would straighten in preparation for the landing before or after our legs would recoil. That's where the breakdowns come in. We're going to add two breakdowns. Now it's going to be idle, anticipation, and then a breakdown that the legs would straighten before it would go up. Then before it recoils, it prepares for the landing. Its foot pointed upwards and the knees straighten, then it recoils and goes back to settle. Now even it's just keyposes, you could see already that the animation is better. Now let's add in some inbetweens, now it's looking so much better than the one without the breakdown.
10. Your class project: So for your class project, we will be animating a cute, simple character jumping. You can use my design, which is basically just a circle and add arms, add feet and add a face, or if you'd like, you could also design your own character and use the principles that I've been teaching in previous lessons to make your character jump. So what's going to happen from this lesson onwards is that you watch the lesson and for each lesson, I will give you a task. I will then demonstrate the set task and after me demonstrating at the end of the lesson, I want you to do it and once you have finished a task, you proceed to the next lesson and you do that until we finish the character jump. So first what's going to happen is we're going to do the key poses and breakdowns and then we're going to plan your Es and then we're going to do the in-between, and then we're going to do a little bit of polish, adding squash and stretch to your animation. So let's get to it.
11. Project task 1: Keyposes and breakdowns: For your first task in your class project, we will create the keyframes and the breakdown of the character. First open an animate file, and then don't forget to change the frame rate to 24 and then hit "Create." Before we begin, let's save this file first. Go to File, and click "Save," and name this to class_project. The first thing we would do is, we will create the ground for the characters. Click "B" for brush, and hold the Shift button so that we could be sure that this is a straight line. This would be the ground, and I'm going to lock this so that we don't accidentally draw on this layer. I'm going to right click, and click "Guide" so that it doesn't show on the preview. Now I'm going to rename this to ground, and then I'm going to hit a "New Layer." Now I'm going to begin with the character. Let's click the ground and hit "V," and let's pull this down, giving the character more space to jump. Now lock this one, go to this one and rename this to character. I would always want to start with the body. This is a simple character, so I'm going to start with its body, which is a circle. I'm going to do the idle pose first. Now I'm going to hit "F7" and let's turn on the onion skin. For a jump action, the idle pose and the subtle pose are almost the same, so I could just copy or trace this one. I have the idle pose and then the subtle pose. Now let's do the action, which is the upward movement. Let's hit "F5" and then go to frame 2, and hit "F7." I could just trace this first, so I could be sure that the circle is consistent, and then select this one, and then place this on top. Maybe around here. I now have the idle pose, the action, and the subtle. Now, let's extend the ground. Maybe let's go to two seconds here and hit a 5, so that the ground would go all the way through here. Let's go back here. Now let's do the legs. The legs and the other details, the arms and the face. The legs is just like a rubber hose. Same with the arms. Let's use dots for the eyes, and add a smile there. Now let's do the action. Dots for the eyes, and then let's add a smile. Let's do the legs. When you jump, your arms would be in the air and your legs would be a bit bended. Then for the subtle pose, it's going to be the same with the idle. Let's turn off the onion skin and let's scrub through this three frames. So you have your idle pose, the action and the subtle. Now let's add the anticipation. Go to the first frame, hit "F5," then go to the next frame, then hit "F7." Let's turn on the onion skin. I'm going to adjust this one so that it would only show the previous frame. Anticipation is going downwards. I'm going to trace the circle here, and then move this down, and then add the legs, it would be bended. Just to emphasize when this character anticipates, let's have this character look down, and let's have its arms go up. Just to have a contrast from the idle pose to anticipation, here the direction is going down, so when it anticipates, the action goes up, the body goes down, and the knees bend. This is the action, and now let's do the recoil. When it goes down, it recoils before it goes to the subtle pose. Let's set a 5, then go to this frame and then hit "F7". Now let's adjust the onion skin so that it would only show the subtle pose, and let's draw the recoil. In the same way, in this anticipation, I'm going to have the recoil look down just to give this character a bit of volume that it's a sphere. The same way, I'm going to have its arms go up to contrast the subtle pose. Now we have finished the primary key frames. I'm going to turn on the onion skin and scrub through. This is the idle, the anticipation, the action, the recoil and the subtle. It's looking good. Now let's add in the breakdowns. The first breakdown comes after the anticipation pose, so let's hit "F5", and hit "F7". Turn on the onion skin, adjust, so we could see the anticipation, so that when we do the in-betweens, we won't commit the mistake that it's bended all the way through this action pose. The breakdown is going to have its knees or legs straightened up. Let's pull this up so we could straighten the legs. To emphasize, let's have this character tip-toe a bit, and have this character look up for emphasis, and have its arms go down to contrast the arms in the anticipation. Now let's add the second breakdown, which is after the action pose, right before the recoil, so that when we do the in-betweens, that it's bended all throughout until the recoil pose. Because in a normal jump, we straighten the legs to anticipate or to prepare for the landing. Let's straighten the legs, and to emphasize, have the foot point upwards and the arms also up because he is once in the air and goes down, so naturally the arms would go up. He's preparing for the landing, so this character is looking down. It is looking down. There it is. Let's turn off the onion skin and scrub through. Idle, anticipation the first breakdown, action, the second breakdown, the recoil, and then the subtle. Now you try, and once you have finished it, you can proceed to the next lesson.
12. Project task 2: Planning your ease: For your second task, we will be planning our ease. You will be planning are ease. So first let's preview what we have made so far. We have extended the ground way too much so let's remove some frames in the ground layer. Let's drag this then right-click and click "Remove frames". So let's hit "Enter". Since we are animating on twos let's extend all of the frames so that it would consume two frames. Now let's extend the ground so that it matches our character frame. Let's hit " Enter". Now what we're going to do is we're going to add in timing charts on each of the key poses. I've shown you a timing chart before and there's a lot of key frames in each timing charts. What we're going to do now is we're only going to create a timing chart from this frame to the next frame. A circle, symbolizes a key frame, and the next key frame is another circle, so this one is this frame and this one is the next frame. Now, in determining what ease to use for each key poses, it all boils down to where do you want to slow down the animation and where do you want to speed it up? Let's go to frame one and the next frame is an anticipation pose. Now in a jump where do you think the motion would slow down? It would slow down here on the anticipation because it tries to builds up energy and it would slow down here when you go up. Because when you go up, there is gravity, so you slow down and from that you're up position going back to the ground, begins to pick up speed. Here from this frame to this frame, let's add in an ease in. We're going to add an in-between here and an in between here. Now let's go to the next key pose. What is the ease from this pose to this pose? I will not anymore add an in-between here because I want this one, since this is a breakdown and I want this to be quick and not anymore going to add an in-between between the anticipation and this breakdown. Now let's proceed from this break down to this one the this pose. What is the ease? I'm going to draw here another timing chart.The ease here would be an ease in because it's going to ease in to this pose. We could hold this so that it would seem like there's going to be a hang time. It's going to be an ease in so I'm going to add three in betweens. Now from this pose, this is the action pose going to this pose the ease I would use here would be an ease out. Because of gravity from the air to the ground this would pick up speed so I'm going to add in three in-betweens. Now from this pose, to this pose I'm not anymore going to add an in-between because this one would be very quick because of the speed here, it's very quick to go into the recoil. Now from the recoil pose, the settle pose. I'm going to do an ease in out so that it would have a smooth ending. One frame here. Now we have prepared the timing let's now create some blank key frames. Let's go back to frame one so in our frame one, we have to in-betweens here, so let's add two blank key frames. Double-click" F 5" and hit " F 7". Now I have one blank key frame and the hit F 7. Now go to the next pose, so this one has no in-between, so I'm going to go to the next. We have three in betweens, so I'm going to add three blank key frames. Apply this to the rest of the frames so this one has no in-between, let's proceed to the next. This have one, two,three, four, five in-betweens. Now let's extend the ground so that it matches our character layer. How to do that is just click the frame you want to extend this layer to then hit F 5 there. Now let's try and preview this one and even if there's no in-between, we already have a sense of the timing. Now, you try and once you are done, proceed to the next.
13. Project task 3: Inbetweens: For your third task, we will now add the in-betweens. Let's turn on the onion skin and extend our onion skin so that it would show the first frame and the next frame. Here, we have an ease in. Get the halves here and get the half here. If you remember, an ease in, is we animate in a forward way. I go to the next frame and draw the in-between. I'm going to trace this first so that our circle would be consistent, and I'm just going to move this later on. Then select this one and move this through its center. Now we are currently doing this frame and then in between the eyes. Then let's go to the next frame. Let's adjust the onion skin so that it would only show the next frame. Now we're going to do the in-betweens for this. There are three in-betweens and it's an ease in. We animate in a forward way again. Now, if we're going to extend this, I mean, this one has an in-between with the next frame, so we could also see its timing chart. Then, don't get confused by this. Always refer to the current timing chart. Here we're doing an ease in. We move forward, we're going to do their in-betweens, the center for these two frames. Then I'm going to get the in-between of the eyes, the mouth, the arms, and legs. Then the in-between between these two frames. Then let's go to the next frame. Here, it's an ease out. We will animate in a backward way. We'll start here, this frame, and then move backwards. Let's get the in-between of these two frames. Then let's go back one frame or go to the previous frame, previous blank keyframe, get their in-between, and then go to this blank keyframe and get their middle point. Then let's go to the next key pose. This one has a timing chart so we need to add 5 in betweens. This is an in-out, so let's go to the middle first and get the middle point. Now you have to choose whether you want to do the left side first or the right side. If you're going to choose to do the left side first, then you would animate in a backward way. Let's do this, get the in-between, and then go back the previous then key frame, and then do the in-between. Now let's do the other side. Now we would animate in a forward way, go to this side, extend your onion skin, and let's do find the middle point. Now the last frame, and then you are done. Let's hit Enter. It's looking good. Now let's hit Preview. I think we have added just a lot of frames from the recoil to the subtle pose. I think if you look at this it's very slow. It looks unnatural. In animation, even once you already have planned your animation, what makes an animation great is not that when you do it the first time it's already good. Most of the time you need to correct and fix the errors. Now that's what we're going to do, we're going to fix the errors. Let's locate first the recoil, this is the recoil pause, and now let's delete some frames. Just maybe because this is an in-out, maybe let's just make this as an ease-in instead of an in-out. We will remove the frames at the start. We're going to remove this frame, this frame, and this frame. Now let's select this, drag this all the way here, and let's hit Play. I think that's better. Let's see, better. Now, you can still see the timing chart. Let's just erase the timing chart. Select then hit Delete. I'm using the comma and the period in the keyboard to traverse through the timeline. Let's hit Play. Now that's looking good.
14. Project task 4: Squash and stretch: For your fourth task, we will be adding squash and stretch to your animation. First, let's create a new layer. What squash and stretch means is that when there's an abrupt movement or there's a force, the character or the shape would seem like it's stretching or that it's squashed. Here for example, anticipation is going down, so the body of this or its head would seem like it's squashed. What we do is, we drag this layer, drag it upwards, hit "F7" and go back to this layer, hit "F7" and click this icon so that the upper layer would be an outline there so that it's easier to draw over and to add our squash. Let's lock this one so we don't accidentally draw on this layer. Now I'm going to zoom in. Now let's add a little bit of squash to exaggerate the movement just a little bit. Keep in mind that if you're going to increase the width, the height would be smaller. You don't do a squash and just increase the width without decreasing its height. Why? Because now it would seem like the object or the character has increased in volume and it doesn't work like that. When you increase the width, the amount of width you increased to the object that squash is the amount that you will decrease in its height. That's something like this. I'm just going to trace over the legs because this is already correct; so we're just changing the shape of the body. Next, we could add a stretch to this pose. Once it goes down, the force is going down then in squash and now the force is going up, we could add a stretch to this one. Let's select this layers, drag it upwards, go to this layer and then hit "F7". Now let's add a stretch, a little bit of stretch in this pose. If we're going to increase its height because it stretched, that is the amount that we're going to decrease in it's width; not too much, just enough. Now that's going to hit Preview. Our guide is being shown. Let's turn this into a guide layer so that it would not show on preview. This one extends all the way through. Let's hit "F7" so that it stops here, "Right-click" and then click Guide. Now let's see the preview and see our squash and stretch. It's looking good. But I think we could also modify a few frames to make the squash more smoother. For example, here it's a circle and then here it's squashed and I think the volume is still big enough so we could erase just this one. To erase click "E" and just erase the part that you want to erase. I'm going to decrease the height. Let's preview that and see. It's good. We could add an in-between here because here it's still a circle and here it's a bit flat so we could adjust this pose. What I could do is, we can use the method before, drag the frame set this consumes, drag it upwards, go down here and click "F7" and then let's draw over this outline. It's a little bit squash, then between these two frames it's going to be like this. Let's hit Preview. That's good. We could also add an in-between in the stretch so that it's not too abrupt from stretch to going back to its original form. Let's modify this one, drag this on top, hit "F7", go back down, hit "F7" and now let's create the in-between. This would stretch just a little bit, a thing like that. That's good. There's also another opportunity we can add a squash and stretch or a stretch and squash. So here, from here to here, it begins to pick up speed. This one is the fastest so we could add a stretch here and as it goes down here, this would squash. Let's do that. Drag this frames, put it up, hit "F7", then go down hit "F7". Now let's add a little bit of stretch here. Then as this recoils, this one would squash because the force is going down and the character is trying to move up so now this one would squash. Let's drag this up, hit "F7", then hit "F7". Now this one would squash. Now let's take a look at the preview. It's actually looking good. But now let's add an in-between here to make the squash a bit smoother. Let's drag this up, hit "F7", go down, hit "F7" and let's add an in-between on the squash. This one would be squash, but only a small amount, so that it would have a smoother transition to going back to its original shape. Now let's hit preview and look at our creation. For the stretch here, we could also add another in-between from this frame to this frame. Let's drag this frame up, go back here, hit "F7" and then add an in-between to the stretch. Let's hit "Preview". Now we have a smoother transition. That's it, that is your class project. Now you try and once you are finished with it, there are a couple more things that you could do. You could export this already, hit Save first and click the File, Export then Export Video. Now this would be in a Mov format. Once you click Export, it would create a video file. Or, if you want to clean this up, feel free to do so. If you want to add colors to this one, you could explore the various tools in the Animate software; there's Fill, there's other things that you could add. But if you are already good with this, you could export this and upload it in your class project in Skill share.
15. Exporting and sharing your work: So once we have finished our animation, the next step is to export and share this on Skillshare. Here, I have created a different animation, still a jump, but I decided to change it up a bit. Now, to export this animation, first click File then choose Export and you'll have a number of options to choose from. If you want to export this as a video file like an MP4, then you choose Export Video. This is good if you're going to post this on You-tube or on Vimeo. But for now, let's choose the Export, animate the GIF. Just make sure that the transparency option is unchecked so that we could have a white background. Now, click Save, and then choose the folder and choose the filename. Save and then we're done. Now, when uploading your project on skill share, you would also need a cover photo. So in order to do that, we need also to export an image. So click File, choose Export, and then choose Export Image, and then click Save, and I'm going to rename this as cover photo and then we're done. Now, let's upload this on Skillshare. Then choose projects and resources, and then click the Create Project button. So now, let's choose a cover image. Click upload image, locate your file. This is our cover photo, click the submit button and now choose a title for your project and then click the Add Content. Click image, because we're going to upload the animated GIF, and I'm going to click Open and now you're done. Now, you could type here what you want to say about your project, and once you're done, click Publish. Then that's it. I look forward to seeing your works.
16. Conclusion: If you have reached this point, that means that you have completed the course. I hope you have learned something from this, and I hope you are now inspired to start animating. What is next? Next is, it maybe the end of the course, but this is still the start of your journey as an animator. If you want to be good at animating, you need to practice, you need to look at different references, and if you'd like, read more about animation. If you have finished your class project, please post them in the class project here on Skillshare , because I would love to see it. Now, if you want to follow me on Instagram or reach me via Instagram, you could also do so. This are my social media accounts. That's it for now. I hope to see some of your work.