Hand-Drawn Animation: Character Animation!

1. Character Animation!: everyone. I am really excited to announce my second class whilst inside opposed to my 1st 1 but this one is going to be character animation, and I'm super excited about it, something I'm really passionate about. And it's gonna be an opportunity for me to teach you something, hopefully new to you and something rewarding for me. Thistles. A really simple plus. It's very straight forward, working in a new program that I just discovered close Frieda and it's open source. Find it, Download it for free, something that I'm really excited to share with the world. All of my skilled share students before, um, thank you for taking time to look. This incident is. And if you want to learn how to create a character animation your very own from home from your computer, go ahead, jump in and let's learn together, Happy and a meeting 2. Welcome and Setup: Welcome Teoh Animation for characters Heart one. In this first part, we're going to learn how to animate a character walk using a program called Creed A. It's Kate, our I t. A. So if you want to go and download that, it's completely free. Um, so we're gonna be working in Creed A, and I'm gonna show you how to animate in this program so we'll go ahead and get started. Um, first things first, we're gonna start file new, and once this opens up the new window, we're going to work in a document. This might be a little bit too big, so let's just go ahead and do 500 by 500 pixel. I'm thing will call this walk simply enough at 300 deep ei. That's gonna give you the finest way. Finest picture. I got my background set a little bit tan, so we'll do that just so it's not plain white. I think it's a little bit boring just for my taste. So yeah, we can go ahead and do that. I've got my brush presets at over here. Your window won't look just like this. Whenever you open it up, some go ahead and come over to this and click animation. It's one of the presets that they have already for you, and then it will bring up your window and cause it to look like this. Um, this will not be here. So if you want to bring the brushes up, go to your settings doctors and then brush presets, it'll pull up a window, and you can put that over here. Also, go ahead and bring your and in skins over and slightly over. Wait till it's highlighted. Didn't stick that in there, and then you should be set ready to go. And then we'll get started with setting poses and getting your character anime. Okay, so if you want to go ahead and set your, uh, brushes up real quick, you go to all and then check out some of the brush is that they have. This one right here is one of my favorites, especially for sketching out the way that your pose is going to be in everything. I think it's probably the best brush in here. Use that. Then I use these two, I believe a good check that to make sure. Yep, it's these two brushes right here. Um, they're good for inking, and then I've got this one as well. I don't use this from his much. I mostly stick with, um, the pencil and these two pins. They just worked really well for me for what I want to use and do in this program. So that's how that goes for me. Okay, so we're gonna set our poses up. Yeah. Tricky thing with Preda is that it's not incredibly intuitive. The animation feature in this program is relatively new. Um, not very old at all. I think he has been around for a while. Um, but this is the animation feature has been probably in the last year or so. That being said, I like it a lot. It's very easy to use, I think just takes a little bit of getting used to. So this will be a lesson in that as well 3. The Walk Cycle: on. So right, click New frame. Um, and this will be our character, um, character roofs. So we'll do this. Probably use a really simple ball with legs and a couple of arms character that way. I'm not getting too complicated. Um, and I want this to be set on twos. So I'm gonna go and do this. If you right click. It brings up color. So if you want colors. And I think all those were the past colors that I've used, um, so I'm gonna go with the red. Yeah, you can see it's got a really good pencil texture and you go thick to thin. I mean, this is long. This is assuming that you have a wake on tablet, which I do, Um, get that right here. That's when I using what I recommend, and it comes on flight of the most wild. So I had to be What? Okay, so we're going to do a stationary walk cycle, so we're gonna set the first in the last frame. We're gonna be the same. So we'll go ahead and set that up. So get yourself a circle and we'll do this on the contact. Actually need to create a new layer. Let's draw a line hold shift so that it draws a line. No, across the line is drawn with the same brush that you have selected. So keep that in mind. I think it's gonna meet, you know, a lot of programs. I don't do that. So let's see. This will be kind of where his hip socket is. Very tall character. This is called the contact position, obviously, because it's got two points making contact with the ground. So just remember that we'll go back and animate the arms later. Get the primary action going first, and the arms will be considered secondary action. So this is contact, And if you want to copy oppose, you go into the blank space after the frame you just created. And you'll have, um, that frame set for twice. So there is going to do that and then we get one frame shortest, that loops around. It'll make sense when you get there. Don't worry about that right now. Okay, so this is gonna be your light board. So now that we've got that in between making that actually highlight it and it will show us where we've been and where we're going. So if you want to turn that 1st 1 off, it shows you the frame before within the frame after is in green. So a little fun there. All right, so this next one, the right foot will be up front, and the left foot will be in the back. I don't want these to be completely, perfectly mirrored just for the sake of interest. So I'm going to redraw it, and it's going to be drawn a little bit shy. A little bit different from someone. Draw up a little bit higher. A little bit more forward. Remember, this leg is going to be behind. Way to go on that one. The end. I'm using this little circle right here as kind of the hip joint from my other leg. Not perfectly mirrored, close, but not exact coming down. So if we were to play it right now and just want this, this is gonna be your frame selection. So this is gonna be where it plays through on the timeline. So put this back it. Let's say six very simple and will play this 1/2 times, like please, just a little bit. So it's gonna be just like that. Every time he takes a step, it's gonna be going in between that. Okay, So to drag these out, just highlight them, and then we'll go into the breakdowns. Breakdowns are gonna be the drawings in between. Not quite extremes, but not quite just regular in betweens. So we're going to the breakdowns, and this will be our passing finishing. Okay, so for this one, we're gonna go into this, and this is where we're gonna be drawing our breakdowns. So we've got a contact positions, which are the extremes. And then we've got our breakdowns, which are in between the extremes but not playing in entrance. So this is going to be kind of determining the way that your character looks as they're walking. So the more pompous they might seem, you might stick the chest out and have them rise up a little bit. If you are on the same soul and you might happen squat down a bit, this really changes how your character feels in their walk. So this can give them a lot of character. Or it can kind of take some character away. Um, background characters on movies are going to be drawn more suddenly, they're not gonna have as extreme in betweens as probably make cared useful. So this is where you need to have a lot of fun and really play with what you're doing. So this will be our passing position. Go ahead. Right? That there it looks like it's a little bit jumbled. That's just because I have I mean, lightbox on. That's another contact. So here we go. Turn this light on and we'll have some fun with this. So this is the place in time for discovery. So you can do pretty much whatever you want on this part, and something's come from. It's not look really cool. Okay, so passing this is the right leg. So I'm gonna have him stretch his leg and ducked down a little bit, and this leg will come in. You struggle on here, so he's going to go down. Okay, That's not quite the passing position. That's really just kind of in the down position, huh? But will highlight these. Drag it over a couple frames. Come here. Right click new frame. So his passing position will be right here. This will be the passing position. So get a little bit of drag in this leg and my drag. I don't mean he happens to be dragging his phone, but I mean, um, get some weight, feel to it so it doesn't feel totally bland. Oh, how did these backwards? Sometimes you do that. Just play around with it. Have fun. Don't take yourself too seriously why we're doing this cause that's a good way to get stressed out. Happens to me all the time. Just go with the flow and have fun, Okay? This is gonna be the part where puts his toe down on the ground. Actually, probably just a wee bit. I help myself. We'll do this real quick. Okay? So his toes still up? I remember the way that you walk. Thanks for your own walk. If you need to record yourself doing it. So you like that. You can see him putting weight down on his legs. You probably need to mess around with some of the positioning of his knees. See how it changes right there. Make sure that that stays consistent. So we're gonna go to these right here. Go ahead. And the funny thing that this is if you highlight it and you go over something else that's already been highlighted, they won't let you do it. You have to go to a blank frame, so just make sure that you do that. You can figure out why it's not letting drag one over. Okay, so well, this up higher draw really, really stretching them out. That's not probably it's the back leg looks. This frames back up so that a 14. I don't see how he's moving right there. We've got a really funky walk. It's fun. So we'll go for the in between. On these, you framed, he's gonna start falling. Good way to think about walking is falling in motion. Yes, Um, or something like that is explained to me in a similar way. Whatever you're walking, you're just perpetually falling. You just are so good at it that you never actually fall. So keep that in mind for these guys. They're just gonna fall and catch themselves while they're going forward. You want to have this perpetual access leaning forward so that they've always got some forward momentum keeping them, and they're always no rules that you can break in things that you can do to make your animation more appealing your bit more goofy. Just do. Do what you feel like feel animation more than anything. Okay, so I want him to have a little bit hungry leg there. Jews leg too short. Not sure if this is something is my computer does or it's the program, but you did click on another frame. If you're light box, see through frames. Onion skin Seems like it's not working. It's just, uh, like a play through thing. There are a lot of bugs that you gotta work through with create, but it's it's still really good or really like the way the animation feels. And I'll just the program itself. It's It's a good one. Okay, so there we go. That's kind of the first bit. And then we have to enemy the in betweens for only. So that was 1234 56 drawings in between. So half of this walk cycle is eight drawings. We're 16 frames. No, it is that right? Six drawings, 12 frames, 12 frames for this drawing a candy. Meth. Don't blame me. So we're going to go through this. You need to do the same thing on the other side. Get your passing position, then get your breakdown me and get your in between. It's and you will have innovation. Character walking before you know it. So once you've gotten all of your drawings done, um, body legs. If you're gonna do arms that I haven't yet, I'll say that for later. I just want you that that's a little bit of a different kind of pieced. But this is how it looks whenever you have your information running altogether. Um, and this is very rough. I did this very, very quickly. Just as a demonstration for you to see how you can get the feel of an animation without having to go all the way into huge depths of getting into the animation. I'm running this full speed. This is all on two frames per second. As you can see, there's a light blue and dark blue, um, frame for each drawing. All right, so this is 12 different drawings. Believe running on 24 France. Your second. Each one is being held for two frames, so it's got this sort of feel to it on. If you slow down, say, you did each one at a different frame rate. This is a 18 frames, 18 frames per second. Four frames per second. It's a much slower walk. If you want it to be smoother, you'd have to have more drawings. I'm still not being held on ones, but 12 transfer second disease. Each of these trends will be essentially help before friends. If we were I'm doing the math like that. So this is how you get a sort of basis for your want cycle? Well, and if you want to change things up, doesn't do like that. This is tens just a little bit different. Go play with it, dude. However you like, and then you come back. You do another totally different animation in, Um, next. All illustrate how again? With just this ball, Um, well, with legs how to do a jump cycle. So we're gonna get into how different kinds of cycles that you can sort of go through with Chinese characters. 4. The Jump: Okay, So I'm just gonna go ahead and create a new layer and turned this one off. Now, layer three is down here. So do jumped jump roofs. Probably won't do, and you get in this series. But just so that you have 1/90 house years. Um, So I want this character to jump from earlier this floor, You just double clicking on it in case you're wondering. And this is marks. So I want him to jump from here to here. This is going to be very, very simple. So have and standing here. And I might get his legs a little bit simpler. Not circles two and Tom quicker. Okay, just some from a platform. All right, so that's gonna be the first extreme chin on our light board, and he's going to go down, jump forward with that. You know, Brandon, stand back up so very simple. So if you're thinking through this, which you should always do whenever he goes down, his first extreme is going to be right here. I only have one foot then, uh, feelings forward. He's got a look off balance. So it's like, probably coming up for you. This way legend up that white. These are all the things that you have to take into account one over your hand. Me, your characters. Is she still the same character that I started with? Probably one of the hardest things about hand drawn animation. He was making sure that your character looks the same throughout this May or may not be extreme enough, but always push your drawings to the most extreme position that you can possibly think of. So I don't like this. I'm gonna restart. And yet a better pose out of this snow. It's how are you? Meaning more forward. This leg will be here, Ines. Okay. Want him to feel like he's leaning forward like this? That sort of motion going on there. All right, then. This next one picture there will Now, that's how at least one will be him coming in your landing groups. Is that one there? Sure. Yeah, I'll set up. And I want to make sure it's I've got these guys all at least relatively close. This guy's kind of like a tree. Excuse for that. Over Houston. Another has to be at least one year. Make it go with iron. Excellent. use. If you want to use your color picker, then holds control. You know what? You take a color. I do that all the time on accident. We'll have to right click. I won't do. Okay, so this is going to be mine. Stream position? No. Is it like the first leg? But you get He's tucked up. So if you've done the ball balance, exercise Syrians essentially what we're giving again. I do have that exercise on my my classes. So if you want to go in, take that one first. That's a good, good introduction to this kind of an me. Okay, so those were really similar, But that's gonna be more on the decline. So let's go ahead. You didn't start filling in the in betweens, so he's going to stretch out here. I think this 1st 1 will be stretched out with his right leg. So the back legs in stick and then it will be the last one down. So his legs you follow through. I love it. His back legs and start down a bit. No outs. One more stretch. Initially, this one probably to be closer. Is this still slowing down? If you don't understand. I need to go back and take that class. Um be really good, Couto. No, I understand. What What's gonna be trumping out and what I mean by slow down using out He's again all those kinds of things home. It's very I hope so. So que waltz also that class one I'm talking about that I teach the ball bounced is in photo shop. So if you want to use Photoshopped enemy, we can do that too. Case a little bit more extreme on this fert. You can play through real quick and see how it's so what do how One more frame it's now. I want that so recent going in, get rid of that frame like it before move to throwbacks, work on jumping portion of it. So instead of falling, you jump. So get your arm stretching out Once punching off, that feels all right. It's a large take off one's what? How this from still stretching out, given the feel of its and forces still carrying with them. Okay, it's let's have one more warm will make that you have this view the part where e sort of eases into this. The part This is very, very simple character animation to be a lot more conflicts. And just so you can get the feel and the idea what is behind the animation? See, There you go. You can see the follow through with this leg. Let's get some anticipation. So instead of him just popping up on jumping, um, you realize that he's going to jump before he actually jumps. So I want him to stand up and then squat down and then jump. So you noticed to do that? Is going to go in the opposite direction, stand up on his tippy toes. More objective test? No. Okay, so advice, toes, shoes. This was also highlighted. So the new frame here, if you just start drawing, it's going to add to the previous drawing in there. So here you go. It just copied the previous frame over and then added to that. So you do have to quick new frame. You're going to get that. So he's going to sort of lean forward here just a little bit. This a little bit speed as well. Do you feel how fast he's squatting down because his body stretching this a little bit squat real quick. I need to ease into that drawing right there just a bit. He doesn't feel so robotic. All right, let's draw a framed in there that way. Let's say he's holding for a second, becoming draw one. Former insights building a little bit of a little bit more anticipation. Yeah, just that little bit really helps. And this is how you can have fun, judge, and just really get lost website increase that often bring ransom frames so it pops up just a little too fast. The end. So I'm going to get him to leave forward me and what's that friend right there? So he's gonna settle into it and forward. Do you have you shapes movement right here, Legs, Come here. Further. There is a lot of this is it's kind of watching, but as soon as you get to feel for it, go ahead and take a crack at it. Come back Yum's double check to see if you're doing good. You can use this as a resource toe, come back and check in on first name since okay, I think for this one right here, I'm actually making him. He got this for just a little bit. I feel like catching balances each to Chad. Is this a lot of fun? It's kind of figuring out where you're going, since there's platform theater shifting. Okay, with this last just a little bit. Okay, so there's the character settling into his pose. His feet ship together so you can see how quickly that can come together. I mean, did that Maybe so. Character jumps. So he's got to anticipated. So he stands up for a brief second sports down, means forward and jumps, settles into it. And then So it's a very simple motion, but something that you can do a lot with. You can have a lot of character come into this. So you just gotta be patient, draw your keys, know where you're going before you got a plan, your animation out. You can't just animate straight ahead. Um, with some things you can't and it's a lot of funds to do that. But the best way to approach the animation, um, or this character animation is to plan your posts like I didn't begin. I had him standing up on both sides, and then I put the squats, animation and the landing animation and then the upper are of the animation so that he could follow a path. And then it turned out really nice to have you completely disagree. That's fine. Um, you should go and make your own amazing animation. And that's That's the really cool thing about this is that you get to make this your own, uh, no matter what anybody else thinks that this is completely and totally yours can't for your mind. It came from your heart. He came from your pencil for your tablet. Um, so, yeah, I enjoy this. I'm do what? What you want to do. I'm gonna do a run animation real quick, and then you can see how that works, So that would be the next video. 5. The Run: again. Just going to create a new layer, turn this layer off and rename this right roofs. Just keep the thing going now. Um Okay, so this will be another. Um, actually, I'm gonna make this character right across the screen. I'm not gonna have him running in a cotton. Yeah, I just don't want him around. So let's see. We'll have the character. Is NASA and Bigelow feats. You still the circle body is right. Leg is being front first. Or actually, I'm planning for a walker. That's that's a watching those. So my daughter is going crazy over here. Um oh. What's seeing already? Made a mistake. I didn't create new frame. It's fun. Okay, so, actually, let's go ahead and do this. It's there. Ines, Honey, this is quickly is actually in city. Get a feel for it. He Nunes take out New Year old. That's what this is all about, right? You should be is really just you, like two steps is warm. This infest If you're wondering what that other foot look likes you, you know. All right, now we got those two in this morning. Well, Bill, relatively quick, right? Getting there. You run your body compresses, currents and explosives emotions and still continuing here. Hardly the body news very quickly and around, so you don't need as many frames. You're animating Ron convenience. It's perfect here in spring motion. This there is little monkey butt. Let's do this. So it's very, very quick motion. His friend is. Actually, the leg is a little too long right there. I get the feeling he's actually stepping you. It stops. So that's kind of the you get play around with. And that's why you don't want super secret detail drawings were you first start? Okay, what's going to keep it moving? Squat down? Here I liked is starting through. This guy's in a hurry to get somewhere King wins what through? Three. With you taken off kids should be. Yeah, that's kind of how ah, run cycle works. It was a lot faster, and you can see I use a lot less frames than I did on the walk cycle. It's been turn all of these on. You can watch the law happening at the same time there no more. You have me things that run, so he disappears off screen back. So 50 earlier so everything process to know, Mom. But you can see how everything kind of works together. Um, and in the same way, you can see how arcs are important. So drawing some of the ups and downs and that's gonna be hated. Your interesting movement is drawing things in art emotions. Arkin shapes. The body is going up and down as it walks in place. The ball goes up and down and round forward, backward. Everything moves in sort of a curve shape. So keep that in mind as you're drawing the's going forward. Um, the ball that's running across the screen kind of goes up and down very quickly. Even his ball is coming. Here is his body from top of his ball head, um, to his feeder conquers it just makes it more interesting to see something that's moving and curves. And it seems less robot. So keep the good work going. I know that you guys were doing some awesome things. I can't wait to see them. Oh, yeah, Yeah, I'm really excited about it. If you want to stay for a little bit longer, I'm gonna try and do a little bit of animation on the arms of the walking ball so you can see it in, um, in action. You now? Yeah. We'll see how that goes. 6. Swinging Arms and Final Tips: actually, Mr Drawing on this later. So money go ahead so bad in real quick he's here. My drawing is swung up a little bit on with one of these with these and just kind of finding out if you do that, you actually can't warm up the drawing homes, start sketching things together. See how they dio 30 was Want this to go back down to 20. Hate no. 25 25 is the magic number on this one. Okay, so for this one, uh, get the arm action in there and we want the arms to be a little bit delayed, so that's it's more interesting. He doesn't like, not everything is moving you seek, because that's not gonna be as as interesting. Some device time almost prefer ah, run cycle with hands. Because it ZZ most, most everything is actually in sync, much more so than in a walk cycle. Um, naturally. So he's gonna have some really exaggerated, um, movements with his hands. I was gonna do a ball with worms. Keep it simple, right? That's a good rule. Okay, so here's the first pose. So in this right here, he's actually making contact. So he's going to be. His arms are going to be a little bit delayed. So we'll make that his arms were still going there. Still on their way up from this position, and they're going toe linger there for a second since they've got some dragon snow. Now is when they'll start coming back down this get bendy here. So when he's going up his hands, you're kind of rapidly moving down. We're going to stretch a little bit, make it feel like it's a little bit more speed. Okay, so this will be where his hands going up? Just like before. Still going to be on their way up whenever his body down. My brother is a little bit dry, so they're going to stay in the air for a little seconds for the military for a couple frames. Well, he's on way down. Okay, Now, this hands coming down this kind of mass, you can turn down the opacity of the previous in French to come, um, so that they're not as, uh, opaque and distracting from what you're actually doing. So I was having having a hard time seeing what was coming up. Um, came jaw right here, his legs. It's years. I think today gets no momentum going here. It's by this point, is getting close to where he was before. So let's see how I was. Yeah, so you see, there's a little bit of interest there. His legs air, his hands or offset from his body and his legs. So they're not moving at the same rate. So you got to think I had it ahead and kind of loosing up a little bit. You can see the pause there where we do frames a little bit closer together, Um, moving fast through the side to swing and lingering at the top for just a quick second and coming back down right? That's kind of gets weight in there. It's very, very bouncy. Um, but you get the idea to see what I mean. And, uh, things aren't mirroring, which is tends to be born, So be careful when you're drawing through these characters that you don't make. The board makes them very appealing. Offsets and things make the timing different from the hands of the arms. Um, you could even straight both hands forward and have one. Um, I know, Just have fun acted out in person. Um, record yourself. Copy. Here. Your drawings are happy The recorded version of yourself and compare it. See what it looks like whenever you do it yourself. That's really important. To get an animation is too draw from life. You don't want to draw completely from your imagination. I've done this quite a bit, so I've got some some reference to draw back. Um, but whenever you're starting out, if this is one of the first times doing this, uh, record yourself, make sure that you're doing this from reality. That's gonna be your best reference. Don't draw from what I'm doing. Draw from reality. This is simply a tutorial on how to do it in a program. There's no replacement for real life. Um, so, yeah, there's there's, ah, character animation. It's a really simple, basic character animation. Um, I hope you enjoyed it. I hope that you have fun with this as much as I do. I hope you enjoy this new program. And, uh, happy animating 7. Rendering Your Animation: something real quick that is very important. If you want Teoh export your animation, um, Orender it as a gift or just honestly, that let me know in the comments. Um, you'll need to do a couple things first will be to go to your Web browser and to download F f MPEG. I'll provide a link for it in the description so that you can go and get that program and you don't have toe find it like I did because it's a little bit of a thing. Um, and then once you have that installed, go to file, render animation and make sure that you can remember where you put FFM pick because that's very important. Um, and you have to map it right here where it says ffm pig, Click the open thing, um, and then select the file, and that will allow you to render your animation once that is rendered, um, her. Once that is all set up, click on render ass and select G I F. Image. Um, then rename your file whatever you want to name it. I named this one, uh, run and then delete sequence. After rendering. Choose the file that you want to render it to, and then you can go and find that later. But after before you do all that, make sure that you name it and select delete sequence after it because it believes a bunch of nasty files, it will leave a file for every frame that you have. Um, and you don't want that taking up all over your computer space you don't want to do in all of that that junk that it's gonna do. So delete sequence after rendering click, OK, And then it will, um, do this right here and it'll render everything out and then you have your walk. Jump runs Jiff. Image file. He you can play that. And while a you have a looping Jif animation GIF animation, whatever you want, call it, um, and then you can post it on the web and show me what incredible animations you've done. I'm looking so forward to saying all of these incredible animations that you guys were going to do and and just have fun, happy, animating