Transcripts
1. Introducing HDA: The Mini Short: thanks for checking out my class, but this is going to be an awesome class. I'm super excited about it and being able to show you how to utilize a really simple tool called Stop motion studio. And it is an amazing tool that is incredibly inexpensive for what it provides and what it allows for you to do through your animation skills. I have continued to teach different principles and how to use different Softwares. And this is going to continue that tradition using very small drawings were looking at thumbnail animations. This is similar to an automatic, uh, projects that you might think about in the animation industry. They use Anna Matics to get the timing down of their their storyboards. There they're moving storyboards, basically not quite full animation, but not still shots either. And so I'm super excited to be able to share with you this really amazing tool working on it. And I know their teachers on skill shared who have done this Well, hopefully this is gonna provide something different with hand drawn animation incorporating in the end product is going to be your very own many short. It's not a short film. It's a short. So what you're gonna do is you're going to go through the planning process. You're gonna go through some nailing out your shots through getting out some ideas from your inspiration, whatever it might be if you use the stop motion studio on you by the paid version, which I highly recommend. Kerik men, that enough sound studio, sound, library, our effects, different things that you keep use. And I'm sure you capabilities are not nearly a za limited is what I showed their only limited by your imagination. Really? So the more that you can do more than think imagine more incredible your project is gonna be so. I hope that you will join me in this class and be as excited as I am about getting in and hitting the ground running and creating your very own mini short with stop emotions duty, we'll see. Inquest
2. The Ground Rules: So just to get started, I wanted to lay out a few ground rules that we're gonna be sort of drawing from to make sure that we're making our time in creating this little short animation as effective as possible. So one of the first things that I try to think about is to find some inspiration. So we're gonna find your inspiration. And, you know, that could be sound. It could be a story. It could be a color, Really. The inspiration is completely up to you because for one, it's your story, and you don't want anybody else to have a say in your story, right? And so find your inspiration wherever it comes from. Whenever I use Stop motion studio, I usually draw from sound because whenever you get the paid version, it really has an awesome library of sounds and you can compile them together and make something really cool. Um, so I I like to use sound as my my inspiration because the sound that I have will just sort of feed into the imagery that I have in my mind. So that's that's where I start. Do you have start there? No, but that's where I start and so number two would be backwards. Design explains in just a second. So backwards design. Um, that's essentially starting with the end in mind. So start with the end and mind when you do backwards design. Um, starting with the end is going to give you something to work towards. I can't tell you how many times I have tried to work on a story and I start with the beginning and tries that this happens. And then this happens. And then this happens. Um, and I can never resolve everything. But when you have a beginning point and an in point, then you know where you're going. You just gotta figure out some of the smaller details in between some of the minor conflicts and some of the action sequences or whatever it is that you're including in your story. It's really easy to do this when you know where you start and where you end. Um, so that's a really, really great thing for me that helps Meteo work towards my stories toe work my stories out and to really kind of get them in and out. Done simple, short. Which brings us to the next point. Um, keep it simple. Oops. Keep it's simple, but effective. We're gonna have a simple story that is not effective and can have this effective story. That's not simple. My goal for this class is for us to keep it both to keep it simple and effective to tell a really good story in very simple terms. So if you want to use color, you can use color. But that's gonna add some complexity to it. If you wanna add zooms, you can do that if you want to do that. But for for the most part, what I'm gonna be doing is just keeping it really simple. And I mean simple may be a something that we defined differently. Um, but you'll see, as we go through it that my story is gonna be very simple and very, very easy, um, to communicate a story effectively, um, let's see. And in the last one is this is a short So let's keep it short. We don't want to spend all day watching this huge story when we're not gonna be able to spend a whole lot of time like this is just for entertainment, maybe something you share with people. Um, these air kind of like my only ghost stories. I've done a few of them and they're really fun. And it's something that you really can do. Like if you're waiting in the airport or if you're waiting at the doctor's office or waiting somebody else's appointment or whatever it is. These are stories that you can do anywhere, which is awesome. Um, and so I guess I'll go in, write that down these air anywhere stories. Um, I got the idea for this whenever I was waiting a doctor the point with my wife and just started sketching out these little stories, wearing my headphones and taking pictures and using stop and stop motion studio Teoh work this out. And it was so much fun and something that no was was a really easy thing to do where I was . It didn't take a lot of planning, Didn't take a lot. Resource is, it just took some some time. Teoh draw these out to figure out a story and to make it work. So, yeah, let's go ahead and get started
3. Finding Inspiration: All right. So I went through and looked at several of the sounds that I really wanted to use that I could see kind of fitting together in some way. Um, and the 1st 1 that I had looked at was this one with camera Creek, dark, hard rain, mystery and phone sounds. Um, and I was really going for, you know, this sort of feelings, because that's the name of one of the one of the sounds that they have is mystery almost thinking something with with a mystery theme. But for the sake of what I'm trying to do here in this class, it wasn't really gonna work because that was going to be too much of an exposition to too long of a story to utilize. My goal for this is to be no somewhere around 15 to 20 seconds, maybe, Um, not necessarily full animation, because 15 20 seconds of full animation might take about six months or so. And this is something I'm trying to do. And, you know, about an hour, uh or so on the other one I was gonna go for was, uh, Dingle, UFO. Uh, alien. Um, Bush. I think the other one was Whoa, um, and those were all gonna be kind of, you know, extraterrestrial sounds. I was gonna have some kind of alien type theme, but what I ended up going with is this idea of using air pane glass explosion and a jet fly by possibly, um, hydraulics. In my mind, I saw all of these things fitting together in an action sequence. Action is super easy to do quickly. There's not a long story. There's not a whole lot to explain or to explore on dso for the sake of what we're doing. I wanted to utilise something where I could show you my process and show you how you can get a really good story without having too much of a story. Um and so I'm gonna utilize these sounds thes elements and be able to use it. And it may not be exactly like you might think it's gonna be, um, right off the bat. Um and so so that, you know, I'm planning on in this maim or through the project. I have no idea. I'm gonna have a person or a robot, depending on if I use this or not. Um, a person in my airplane and he is going to jump out of the airplane. Um, there's gonna be one or two jets that fly by while he or it is falling through the sky. And so going Teoh a loud jet plane come by. Um, it's like it's in the middle of, ah, a war time sort of thing, and it probably futuristic. Um, Emma have him falling all the way through. I don't know if I'm gonna have a shoot sound yet or if this is going to be just some sort of like superhero kind of person or machine robot type person, um, that can withstand a lot of force. So he's going to jump out, jumped through the sky, um, and land or, like, fall through a glass ceiling. Um, and then when he lands, it's going to be the sound of an explosion where you just feel the force of what is happening. And, you know, this isn't gonna be like super amazing, incredible high intensity drawings. Um, he may be a stick figure. I don't know. It's totally up to you. Whatever you want to do with your story and with your drawings. If you want it to be super detailed in high tech like that's perfectly fine. Um, but for the sake of brevity and, you know, being able to show you something that I do very quickly and briefly, um, then my drawings gonna be simple. There might be some complexity to him, but I don't plan on there being ah, whole lot of complexity. Um, So here's my basic plan, and you can see how I kind of have a story with very simple things and maybe whenever he lands, then he hears the hydraulic sound is there's a robot that stands up. Or maybe he's the robot or something like that. I'm not sure exactly yet, and we'll see. I mean, I don't need to have the I said, Start with the end in mind. I know where I want him to end. I want him to end on the ground through a building. Um, having landed through a glass ceiling, Um, in my beginning is the airplane, and there may be a bunch of things that happened in between that time. But as of right now, all I want is for him to fall from an airplane and land on the ground. The rest of the things we're going to kind of work themselves out as I'm drawing in, going through the process. I have some ideas of things Don't happen. Like with the Jets flying by, um, maybe he's gonna be falling down from from the sky and, you know, going down towards the earth, he's going to be, uh, seeing explosions happening on the ground, and those will be very faint and things. But then there's gonna be the building that draws up from from underneath, and it's gonna be him zooming in on that and then, like, crash to the glass and then hit the ground. So there's a There's a bunch of things that could happen here, and I'm just gonna, you know, explore it and see where it goes. So next video, we're gonna look at the scale of the drawings Very basic, very small, basically thumbnail animation. So let's jump to it
4. The Setup: So when you get your workstation set up, I have my pages all right here on my computer desk and you can see all my panels air drawn out, same way that you'll have yours frames. And I have my rig set up just like this right here. I just bought this clip. I got this one that T. J. Maxx eating. You can get it on Amazon, I'm sure. Or you can use one that's more like a tripod. Tripod is gonna be a lot more steady. This one have to account for any movement that I have. I bumped the table, it's gonna move, So that's something that you just got to take into consideration. But just to get a look at how this works, we go. So when you get into the app, it will have options where you can look at the grid and have that as something to help line it up. Um, but this little bar right here, he's going to let you either see Onley, the picture that you're trying to take, or a ghosted image of the picture that you just tick and moving towards the next one. So that's really handy so you can see how one I just took a picture of one earlier, and I am going to be moving and adjusting my new frame to be in line with that. So remember, this first shot is kind of like a zooming in from an establishing shot of the original one , uh, from the original shot so you can see how my plane not perfectly lined up. That's OK, because I'm just trying to get it in there, and you can see the frame number in the number of frames in it, so I just bumped it. That's gonna the one issue that you face if you do it, I'm not terrible, but something just gotta think about. So if you look right here, so that shows me on Lee, the image that I just shot show me only my current frame. So put it somewhere in between and actually want to see more of the image that I'm trying to take, as in the one that I'm. But I just took So, uh, if you get in there, wait for it to steady out a little bit, then you can just take your frame. It just it just a bit. Take a picture so it's going to stay where we actually take a picture clearly. So that's how you line up your images and then just move forward from frame to frame. So let's see this next frame lined up. I'm looking for this one right there. No, now you can see they have that all figured out, zoomed in capture, and then I can move to my next frame. All I have to do is get my corners lined up. I can set my image so you just continue on with that until you get through all of your images. And the nice thing is is that you can also import images. But if you don't have enough space on your phone or you just want to keep them all concentrated within the app, then you can You can, uh, take your pictures from within the app and that will store them all in order. And then if you want to rearrange them, you just have toe. I can't figure how toe have a go in between and like, insert pictures into a certain spot. So that's the basic basic information for capturing all your photos from your frames within Stop motion studio. So I'm gonna go ahead and do that, and then we can see how we stitch them together.
5. How It Works: Okay, so I'm gonna go ahead and go into my stop motion studio app. You can see it right there. So let's go ahead and get into that. When you first open up your stop motion studio, you can see that it's got your own library of projects that you've made and, um, one that I did with my own dialogue, which was pretty cool. Um, I think, you know, everybody has their own thing. So you can add your own dialogue. You can record from your mike, and, um then just go ahead and have your own thing. So just some experimenting, having fun with things like that? Um, no. I had a had a dog bark, very simple things. And those were really the same fiver. Five or six drawings just repeated over again. Um, no, this is this is my example of, uh, taking inspiration from sound. That wasn't a stock sound. Um, there was a few stock sounds put together, and, um, you know, just go through and have some fun with the things that you do, and this is just this is more just what you can do with it. It's not really one is inspired by sound, but I just had this idea of this giant reaching out from behind a corner and no ducking under, uh, ducking under seal because it doesn't fit in the room. No, just just some of the capabilities of Stop Motion studio and Noah's. Am I utilizing it to its fullest potential? Probably not, um, something that I had for fun. And then here's Here's what I showed earlier, the head on video that I made and let you go in and look at the stock sounds and things. So whenever you tap on it, you have all of these tools that you can use for all these everything so you can select multiple frames. You can look at the audio, um, you go in here and you can see it, and you can choose it toe play through everything and see what audio this is. This is the soundtrack that I used to create, so it's going ahead and playing over it. So these is the same ones before, when it's not using the laser sounds that I used. It's just the audio that I had, so it's going do this, have that going and shows you the track and at the bottom step footsteps and laser sounds. It was really awesome about this APP is they created something that is very capable of doing in your palm what most other people will only be able do with photo shop or Adobe Premiere. And this kind of combines everything all into one place. And, um, you can have one track that plays through the entire animation. Um, and then you can have, you know, some time, and then you've got another sound here. And so I think that was just my footsteps sound. Let's see. Yeah. So you can trim inside the APA's. Well, um, I didn't have anything that was to Excuse me. Um, I didn't have anything. And he sounds that I could used Teoh to get all the way through That had the same kind of pacing that I wanted. So I had to go in and Spice, um, sounds together. Um, but then you go into each individual frame, and you can add whatever sound you want on that frame. Um, and then you can continue playing that through. So as soon as I got right here, I had laser sound, and that's in each one of those individual frames when that sound plays. And I didn't cut off. Um, So right there, I think he used a door sound eso kind of using some fully sound design? Um, inside the app, which and I was just pretty incredible when you think about it. Um So let's see what the sound is. Yeah, shows you how far it extends. So I didn't have a sound of a body hitting the floor. Um, where he's jumping right here and then hits the ground here. The door sound many rolls up against this barricade right here. And then there was an explosion sound so naturally, you just let that one carry out wouldn't cut that one off. So had somebody else shoot him and go through and play like so. So again, Very simple, but really effective, Um, something that you can do pretty easily. I think that one overall took me an hour, maybe, um and then some other things that I've done in other spare time. So you click on new movie. Um, you can either take pictures, um, from your camera, or you can, uh, take pictures like brand new pictures. Um So let's see. So add images. You go in, allowed to use that and see some of the pictures that have cut it. Um, and it's really useful. Um, it really is just a powerful tool, um, to use for animation for short projects, and you can increase the frame speed of the whole thing. Um, that would be, like an action movie right there. You would have high definition. Um, gonna take a lot more data. Um, color correction. You know, things like that. It really is just an incredibly powerful, uh, studio. Um, um, totally worth worth using. Worth doing? Um, it's got some blue screen capabilities. Um, use different sizes. If you wanted to create a portrait movie, you could do it like that. Um I mean, just very versatile. Whatever you want to do, you can transitions fade out to black, uh, fade in and out, fade in from black, have some dramatic scenes, things like that. So it just depends on what you what? You want what you're looking for, um, and you can go through and play it, and you can extend frames as well. So let's just go ahead and take a picture of my computer screen. So when you come out here, you can say I want this frame toe last, you're gonna put hold. Pause, pause One time. Two times, three times, four times. So this used to be called hold. Um, I just updated. And so 1234 this is gonna hold for four frames. So then you'll see the bottom, the number down at the bottom that tells you how many frames lips. Um, it's gonna tell you how many frames it's holding for eso. Whenever you hold it for four frames, it's gonna last that long, So it'll stay there for a second. Let's see, setting That's hold for Let's hold for eight frames there is gonna be running at eight friends for saying, Is this the last half second? I say we hold it. One frame per second is gonna hold depending on what you do. It's gonna hold for that around time. 04 frames per second. Sorry it one frame per second, hold for four frames. It's gonna last four seconds. So a quick run down of the app, Um, and some of things you can do with it now we can go through and find some inspiration
6. The Features: All right. So in the paid version of the app, you can go in and add some audio. Um, so we need a picture before we add audio. So let's go ahead and get that right here. So if we want to look at the audio, I don't want to record any audio. At least not right now. Um, let's go to audio and we can go through. And we have a full library of different sounds that they've added four us, which is pretty awesome. They have all different kinds of things. Um, no, it's not complete, but, you know, for for what it is and for what you pay. This is a great deal s. So let's go through and let's see if we can find some good audio sounds. So sounds kind like, you know, the end of a video game where you've just had a victory at the video game. A whistle, water splash, UFO can We might be able to do something with that time warp, huh? UFO time warp and sent getting some some ideas in this swell UFO and some sheep. Mm. See, there's a lot of really cool things you can just mix together. And, you know, you're really, truly only limited by what you're thinking by your imagination. So whatever you think of you can create SciFi sweep. See, there was the rooster sound that I showed. Rocks dropping. Race car, huh? It's, um, creepy sounds happening. Morse code growl, baby giggle fire, evil electricity tingle So you can go through and look at some of those. Um, then they have theme music. They've actually added some sense. The new update conduce, um, inter music. You can have Ah, full theme theme song through the whole short, comfortable mystery. Mm. So, yeah. I mean, you can go through and do whatever you want. You can also do your sounds and, um, no premier Pro or some other editing software. But if you wanna have this, like, true on the go animation experience, then you have your full studio right here in this app, which, um, like I've said several times, is pretty amazing. Um, so I'm gonna go through, figure out some sounds and some music to create a short, and then we'll be back and it gets started on our little short
7. Thumbnail Animation: All right. So I have just created a little thing for myself. Um, little thumbnail squares for me will rectangles these Aaron ratio, um, these air in 16 9 ratio and so you can see that there we go 16 9 ratio. And with the overall, um, size of this is 32 millimeters are 36 silmi 36 millimeters by 64 millimeters. So 16 9 ratio. I wanted to keep it in that ratio so that I could blow it up, and it's still be in the right proportions. It may not be clear, but it will be the right size. So for my, uh, overall so as I have 16 9 ratio and I've created another document like this where you won't have have it bleeding up to the sides. I had reprinted this and scanned and copied it, so I didn't have to recreate it. But I'll be providing that on the skill share class page. So let's go ahead and get started. So I'm gonna go ahead and zoom in here just a little bit. It's so you will see it like it's full screen, but it's going to be a very, very small drawing. Um, so here we go. Got it. Send it up right there. So whenever you're thinking about how a story goes, you generally start with a wide shot. Um, so I'm gonna draw This is kind of an action sequence, so I want to draw kind of dramatic cloud. And each one of these pages is 20 frames. I have no idea how many frames this is actually going to take, um, but I'm going to go ahead and draw few. And this may be a quick zoom in, or here we go. So there is my first shot. Um, yeah, I'm gonna need some movement in it. So instead of having, uh, and noticed that I also numbered my frame down in the bottom right corner. So I'm gonna do a quick zoom where it's gonna be extremely difficult to keep everything, uh, size. Similarly, he eso solid drawing is gonna be a challenge. That's one challenge about doing animation in this way is that you don't really have, um a whole lot of forgiveness with hey, drawing and see, like, already look different. But again, this is gonna be a quick thing. So maybe the clouds are a little bit further away than my plane is. So frame to go to frame three. This is gonna be a little bit closer. Race space right here, closing in on the plane. Andi, you start to get close enough to see the propeller. Kind of get a little parallax effect on this to because we're zooming in closer in the plane isn't necessarily right next to the clouds. They're not all zooming in exactly the same rate. We're getting closer to the class, so they are getting bigger. But not as biggest. You would think they would be if they were all right next to each other. So that's kind of nice. And so already we have some movement in our stories, so they're zoo me, an getting closer. All right, so let's go to frame five. And all of this is, um, forward forward animation. So, um, instead of taking animation plan had this is, uh, breakdown innovation where you do one drawing and have a breakdown in between it have one drawing having in drawing. You have breakdown in one dry, another drawing breakdown. This is much more straight ahead. Animation and consistency and in solid drawing with straight ahead. Animation is difficult as you'll find as you create your own project. Um, but it's it's really a lot of fun. You can have a lot of surprises to. A lot of traditional animators will use a combination of straight ahead and, um, post oppose our breakdown animation. Um, and they love the unpredictability. They know where they're going and so they can keep keep the drawing side solid. But they can also have some really nice surprises between between drawings. So let's do another quick zoom here, and we're gonna have see the full size of the plane. We're not even to worry about the, uh, clouds anymore and notice this is not a great drawing. I'm not trying to get a masterful drying. I'm just trying to get a point across, um, which you can say clearly I can see that this is much more for storytelling than it is. For for the sake of excellent drawings, you can get some really awesome effects with some really simple drawings. Um, so we're gonna go ahead and jump in on the front pilot right here. The windshield draw him in slightly in a 2nd 1 pilot his helmet. Okay. And let's see, here we have Does it mean even just a little bit more on his helmet and shading right here ? All right, so that would be our opening sequence and maybe would stay here for a second. Since there's not really a whole lot that needs to move, we can sit here. We can play the explosions, we can play. Um, the airplane sound in the background kind of a drone, a muted airplane sound became If we have thunderclouds, that's not something that I thought about for We can maybe have some thundercloud of sounds right there. And, um, we doing that so that you get the feel that it's, uh, thing. But you also kind of feel like the pilot is feeling the intensity of the moment and feeling how how serious this is. And you kind of get the field. So we're starting to kind of build, build things a little bit. And so if you wanna see just how far, uh, let's see if I can actually get it Chinese my apple watch in conjunction with. All right, here we go. So you can see how small these drawings are. Um so they're decent enough to get some detail in, but not really have a whole lot going on. So in seven drawings, I've got sort of my opening sequence, and I can start to add more events and details in between, and I'm gonna try and go ahead and work through, um, at least a majority of this and see if we can get to an editing portion of it. Um, and just really, you know, think about how we're gonna don't if I get to a point where I'm going to be It is, actually, Yeah, we're just gonna go ahead and work through this together. So I'll see you in the next video. If you want to go and get your intro sequence planned and put out with the sounds that you want, go ahead and do that. And then we're gonna go to the next action sequence here in just a second
8. Increasing Action: all right. So, as you can see, um, my border right here is almost the exact shape of my iPhone screen that I'm recording. This whole thing is my phone just for the versatility of it. And this is like basically the exact site. So whenever I get to the part where I'm shooting this in my stop motion studio app, then I'll know that I just need to match up the corners and I'm gonna have every shot lined up, which would be nice. And it's also kind of does like a like a ghost film thing where you can see how closely things are lining up. You can see if it's going to be right on point or if you need to just a little bit. So it makes it really nice for using it for that purpose of lining things up in making sure that they're all squared away. So you don't have a huge, jumpy motion, and you can really see how far you need to adjust something if you're gonna be using, like, armatures or you're gonna be trying to draw through that. But it's basically the same is using tracing paper. So that's one really, really nice feature of the stop motion studio app and you don't need the full paid version . No, I do that. The paid version just releases like effects or unlocks effects and sounds and themes like that. Um, so going forward, I'm trying to figure out exactly where I want my person to go from here cause I'm like I said, I may may stay on frame seven for a little while. I'm not sure exactly how long, but if I can stay there for a little while, then that will make it interesting to play sounds of, maybe play thoughts and play memories or something like that. Things that he's thinking about, um and, you know, bringing some community character kind of drawing the audience into sympathize with him. So from there, uh, let's see, he'll probably, um, do a cut scene and go over the top of the planes so the plane is flying to screen right the whole time. So let's say that I don't want this plane all of a sudden to turn left. That's that's a no no, uh, in film and animation. You don't ever want the screen to go past 180 degree line. So I'm gonna have the plane still flying in the same direction. But this time I'm gonna do it, uh, from over the top. So I'm gonna go like this, have the plane's wings, and again, I'm really limiting my my animation. Um, I don't want to do full animation, so, you know, this is a real short story. Like I said, 15 to maybe 20 seconds or so. Um and so it doesn't need a whole lot. I mean, if you want to, by all means go for it. Um, but for the sake of my own personal animation, I'm not gonna have full animation. So he's got right there, maybe draw. Yeah, just kind of get the idea that his body is in the in the cockpit of this plane. Um, so we're just going to say that this top part pops off and maybe take two frames for it to pop and then see it go off, and then he's going to eject. We're gonna have see him come towards the camera and get the feel that he's been ejected out of a plane. So create some suspense there as well. Make sure going right frame. All right. Perfect. So nine. And this is where the solid drawing makes it tricky. So just try to draw as similarly as you can to the previous frame. You know, I'll have have this shortened a little bit so that it looks like it's spinning, but again, not full animation. And we're gonna have the windshield ejecting popping off. And if you want, can add something like the explosion marks that you see just so that it's clear that something happened there. I mean, we'll see. The sound will see it moving off. We'll just like Dad this a little bit so that you can. There's something through it. Not a full screen, but and I will draw him again right here, maybe most visible through the second window. The cockpit window windshield ejector. So shoot that out. No drop one more time. Ham in the cockpit. So this is almost like a, uh like an antimatter IQ, like an animated storyboard. It's got sound. It's got some movement, but it's not fully animated, so let's draw the window flying off side over here. Now the drawings gonna be wobbly. Inevitably. Whoops. Sorry. When ops beside a little bit. Forgets which frames. Um, so we're gonna see him going off over here. We're gonna see the window, The windshield, the pilot glass flying off to the side. Um, and he's kind of going to sit here for just a second. So let's draw one more frame. I said that was gonna be the last one. Let's draw one more frame with him. Just kind of sitting in the cockpit. Actually, we could reuse this frame right here to be the one because it looks like there's not glass on top of them. We can just go back to that one and let that Yeah, we'll just let that be the one that holds. And then we will draw this one where you see the plane, but he is getting ejected himself. We don't need a whole lot right there. Definitely don't need to see through him. Kind of takes away from the illusion that he's a solid being in person. Draw one more of him coming out past the camera. This is really fuzzy because we're not supposed to be in focus right here. All right, so rough drawing right there. But it's going to get the effect that he has flown out. So then we're gonna do one more. Just the plane by itself. No. So far, we have 12 frames. So he is no longer in the picture. He's no longer in the plane. The plane is just flying myself. And we could stay on the plane for a second, leaving that and just let the empty cockpit plane fly out. So 13 frames. So let's see. That was from 8 to 13. So that was six frames right there where we got another solid, solid bit of action. Is it to be long? No. Um, but it's going to help progress the story.
9. Filling the Story: So what I had decided on is gonna have the plane continue flying this way. But it's going to be, um, going to be flying myself. And actually, it doesn't have that top part anymore. So make sure that whenever you're telling a story, it stays consistent. So it doesn't have the windshield anymore. Um, that to So we're gonna have him flying. Uh, and this is where, um, stick figures really come in handy. And this sort of animation. So gonna have the plane continue flying after the sign while he still going up. You're gonna have so much fun with this, uh, style of animation just because it's so unlimited and like, it doesn't have to be spot on. It doesn't have to be perfect. Um, you can really just No, let your let your mind run with it. So he's slowly going up. He is slowly slowing down. I was 14 15 16 my friends. All right there. So boom, boom, boom plane is still flying off. Um, you were gonna start getting into more of the action with this 16 cream 17 the plane finally going off screen. He just got his feet or body. The top a team. See the plane going out this way. Now he turned over. Actually, that's gonna be too quick of a turnaround. So we see the plane leave screen, right? And then we're gonna go to the next frame, and actually, this one's gonna be blank for a second. And then we're going to see him come in on frame 20. So frame 19 easily the easiest frame in this whole thing. And then in to see him begin to descend, and we're gonna go and bring out the next set of frames. So we have our whole thing right here, sieving and pull out to see it. So we see frame one 21 see how how much they've changed, how different it is again. We're not trying. Toe do perfect finished Fallis animation. You can if you want to. You. Um, that's not my goal in this class. Do you have other classes? If you want to do that where we can figure that out. This is basically short on the ghost story. Something you can do in your spare time. Pretty much anywhere You are. So this is gonna be frames 21 through 40. Um So let's go ahead and jump to it. So he begins falling and I want him to be falling pretty fast. So from 21 give me simple frame. 22. Very simple. 23 is gonna be simple. It's just going to see the tail end of his body. Um, right there, we've got 21 22. 23 on 24 is gonna be another easy one. Like, I think it was 19 waas, um, where he just disappears. And so let's say that now this one is gonna be a top down view. So instead of, um, well, I guess we had that with the plane where he ejected and came up. This one is going to be looking down. We're gonna be kind of following him, uh, in from from like this. So it would be kind of perspective. Like like that. I guess that's seriously. So we'll be falling behind him, and maybe he'll be like, flying around a little bit and dodging things will have to jet planes going across. We can do some really cool things with this effect from this angle. Um, and yet it's still gonna be super simple and super easy. So let's go. 25. Um, let's see. How would be the best way to draw him? Straw his back like this, Draw his feet. So if you can do any perspective drawing this is a great place to use it. There's gonna do some suggestions. Gesture drawing right here. There's the 1st 1 This is gonna be some pretty unsteady flying, so it's fine that it's not perfect. It's fine that the cameras moving that he's moving kind of reminds me of the scene in Mission. Impossible. The newest one if you haven't seen yet. Um, where Tom Cruise is falling through this guy. Eso Pretty cool. Pretty cool scene right there. Um, I'm gonna go ahead and get him drawn out for the I don't know, 10 or 11 frames under. Maybe all. Maybe I'll draw all the way through frame 40 and then I'm gonna go back and figure out what the background is gonna be. I'm gonna get him worked out first in each frame and then go on and, uh, figure that out. So this part right here might actually be in. Go ahead, go ahead and do a time lapse with this so that you don't have to sit here and watch me through all of it. But know that what I'm gonna be doing through it is going to be having him working out, Uh, with his flying, you know, he's kind of duck tailing and dovetailing and just no getting getting put in in, flying straight down towards the ground and then work out the background with each one. So looking forward to seeing how this goes, I'll see you at the end of it.
10. Editing and Sound Design: Okay, so let's go ahead and look through this on a first pass and just see what it looks and feels like. These are the standard settings. Um, everything is the same exposure. Same number of frames. Here we go. So there's not a whole lot of drama. There's not a whole lot of movement or action. Um, because we have everything on the same number of frames. Everything is exactly the same. So we need to go in here and make some tweaks. Um, probably one of the first things that I would like to do, um, is let's see if there's anything on here where I could use as just a blank screen. So it's got things like speech bubbles has backgrounds. Um, here we go. So I'm just gonna go ahead and add one of these and let's see, so it doesn't move. Uh, doesn't go over. My first remit just goes in front of it, um, and allows for that. And it comes in at 15 frames. So you can see that by I think that so says pause 15 times. So, depending on how many frames you have, it's going to pause for that. So If I have this at five frames per second, this is gonna pause for three seconds and is going to stay on this frame for three seconds . So let's go and see what our frames air at, and it's at five frames for second. So let's see. I think I wanted to be a 12 rooms for a second. It'll move a little bit faster. And, um so this 10 so that's pretty cool. It just it adjusts for to stay frozen for the same amount of time, depending on how how fast your frame is. So that's that's a nice adjustment. Eso possibly six times still gonna pause for three seconds. So we watch it at 12 frames per second. It's gonna go faster, so that's good for the flying part where he's falling. Do this guy remaining to slow that down just a little bit, but for the most part, that's pretty good. That was about what I was looking for. And so right here at the end, I decided Teoh add just a slight bit of color. So he's standing in the dark and then has these lights come on. So I think that's whenever I'm gonna put in the, um, hydraulic sounds and lights are gonna turn on. And it might play the electricity sound too. Um, so then here at the end, I need to add another black frame. So I'm just gonna go down here to the bottom, um, back to this one. So I have my book ending. It's going to start in end at same time so I can go ahead and add a sound right here, because I know what I want to add. Um, actually, um, I may duplicate this one something, a copy, and then paste that same frame right there. So he's just gonna be standing there and then on this one, I'm going to add the sound. See this? Go down the hydraulic. It's the h. Uh, here. So play it. I gotta turn the sound back on so I can go ahead, put hydraulic right there. And then the nice thing to is that when you get into the audio, you can adjust for the volume as well. So I don't want that to be super loud, maybe 60. Yep. And I also want it to pause for let's see 12 frames for second. I wanted to pause right there, and then we're gonna turn on the electricity sound. I don't think there's anything that could make the sound of, like, big, heavy lights turning on. Um, so it's try? Yeah, so we'll start with electricity. Gonna just that volume. Turn that down, too. Probably 40. We could even slow it down a little bit. Um, 50%. Let's go down. 25%. Okay. Like that. And then let's because the frame for eight seconds Sorry. Eight frames. So then at the end, it's gonna look like this. Not sure if that gives the effect nearly as much. So Mm. We could go in and we could add some frames, which I might do later. Um, but that gives me a feel for what it is and how it looks. I could also causes to flicker a little bit too. Let's try that. So I'm going to give this a flicker effect. Where? Right here. We're going to paste. Let's go ahead and paste this three times, and then we will copy this frame based paste and then paste it one last time and we'll hold this one for said eight frames before so Let's see how that looks. Yeah, I like that a whole lot better. So we're just a slight edit. You can make a big difference. Volume is still way too loud. It's turn this one down to 30 and then we're gonna turn hydraulic sound down to we have. So when we copy that, we copied all the audio's. So let's delete the audio from each of these audio delete. Hopefully, this gives you an idea of just how powerful this really simple and really inexpensive AP is . I think I got it for six bucks, maybe. Um but it really is just awesome. And even Thea, the standard version, the free app, um, is really great. So whenever you get in and look for it, you don't have to buy it. That buying, it's just gonna like I said, unlock all the sound and everything. Let's see. Yeah, I think that's a good way to end that right there. Let's because this, for just a little bit longer, posit for one longer third of a second. So and then maybe let's see if we can trail off the audio, gotta make sure that you're on the frame that you want to change the audio for about that son on that one. So here it is. Audio fade, so we can fade it from at end. And I'm not sure if you can see right there, but if you look closely, you can see those little slider. It'll fade off towards the end of that one. And audio fade. No. The only thing about having a touch screen I said, I don't want to trim it still won't fade it. So let's see how that looks. Que Not sure Got that all the way through. So audio fade I need a fade a little bit faster. Done quite a bit better, So Yep. Some really cool things you can do with that right there. Um, now I just need to go through and find the places where it needs to stay a little bit longer, um, and go a little bit, so I might Let's see, select that one. And when you select you select, then you can swipe from there. Let's see. Um, I don't want to reverse them chief at it. Okay, that's gonna go into something different all together. Um, see, ad. Not a clip. That's gonna be a movie clip. So we're gonna see if I could figure out if we could. I've never done a transition in this before, but that's not important. So if we look into going right here, so we need to hold these for just a little bit longer. So this one I might hold for, uh, let's see, six frames and then here I'm gonna hold it for four frames and then hold it for two frames . Man in. We get a little bit closer, kind of the further away we are, the slower it moves. So and then it just kind of takes off because we don't have any control over it. So I need to go in and slow these down. Um, just a bit so that we actually have control. Over how long? If I think that I'm going to go in and, uh, put every single frame on twos, then that is going to be a huge hassle. It's just gonna take forever. One thing that you can do instead of that is go in here. And instead of putting everything on twos, if you think you're going to do that, go and put everything. Um just cut down the movie speed of the frames per second, um, and go down to six frames per second. And that's gonna give you a much, much shorter work time because you're not having to go in and change every single frame. So that's one shortcut on that. So I'm gonna go ahead, go through and adjust things, figure out, believe that 12 frames per second because the sky seen ah was really good. So go through, check on your scenes, and we'll see how this looks here just a little bit.
11. Fine Tuning: So I have gotten all of its finished as's faras I like. So I wanted to go ahead and play it for you so that you could see it now. Also, have it available on the scale share page so that you can watch it there as well. Um, so you know, this is a working title. And, um, this is something really new that you can do. You can go into the plus title and credits, and then as all of these options right here has some of those right there speech, bubbles, background, and then all of the stuff that you saw with me working earlier with the black screen just for some blank space. Um, good transition scenes that you want to do something like that, Uh, totally up to you. Um, there's also something else really cool that I saw. But, you know, maybe for another video. Um, so this is pretty awesome. Um, this is again new with the update that I haven't used in a while. Um, so yeah, let's go ahead and we will watch through. Actually gonna go back this way. You click on this button right here. The little play looks like you to button it will bring up a loading page for you and will open it up like it's a theater and you'll have it full screen. So we'll see some, like preview shots as it's going and loaded through everything. But we're gonna watch it and it's about 30 seconds, and then I will go through and kind of break down everything that I did and adjusted for. - Real , short, real simple, Um, but fun story, um, have a character flying through. And you know, the sound may not be as clear coming out of the, uh, housed speaker inside the phone. So there were some things that sounded like breaking glass. That was one of the explosion sound effects that I had created, so it doesn't always translate perfectly that way. But you can go in and always mess around with the sounds. And if it sounds good in like a pair of headphones or something like that, then you can usually trust that. That's what it would sound like on a big screen if you played it on TV or something like that. Um, so here's here's basically what I did. Um, I started the music from frame one. I guess not. Including this when I could shorten the title screen a little bit, Um, but started that one right there and extended each of the frames to be the link that I wanted them to be on the screen. Um, and I left the entire animation on 12 frames per second so that I could go in. And I could kind of customize the more frames per second that you set your animation to the more control you have over the amount of time that each, uh, each frame can be exposed. Um, so right here I played this noise. Um, this was the plane audio. Um, and it lasted quite a while and had a constant droning to it. So it was pretty easy. Teoh put in and play for a while. Then I repeat it somewhere else had some sound effects that I had put in here. So that was the explosion sound That was kind of going to be the things that are happening outside. Doesn't don't really know if it's going on inside his head with this shot or if it's going on outside, but after he gets ejected, then you realize that these are things that are actually happening around him. Um, so I had a bunch of frames that because I wanted to this screen to stay on him for a little while. Um, so nine times, like, six or seven right there. So however many frames, that is, um, and however many seconds I had him going on, and so each one of these sounds right here is like explosion lasers explosion just to kind of get some ambient sounds, um, all around him and go right up Teoh above him and then have it. You see, the plane changes shape a little bit, but, you know, it explodes. The the cap, the glass pilot glass. I don't know what the canopy comes off and, um settles back on him flying the plane, and then we hear another explosion, and he gets ejected out of the plane. And, uh, plane flies for just a second. Um, and so we see the plane fly off the rest of the way, and I hold right here on this blank screen for a second and 1/2. So 18 frames would be 1.5 seconds right there. Um, and then extend exposed the frames here for two frames each and in this one for another second and 1/2. And then we catch up behind him and see him flying through this guy. Um, had some thunder and rain. If you wanted Teoh, get some wind sound effects right here. You might use the rain hard rain. Um, and then just turn the volume down and you can draw it out, or you can speed it up. There's lots of things that you can do with the audio tools in each frame. Um, so I had the plane passing right there had in this one I played on the The moment the plane shows up and the second plane, I play the frame before it shows up. So right there, the plane starts, and then you see it because it was flying just a little bit closer than the other plane. Um, so that came out really nicely. I thought and had the explosion because it's so far away. I played the explosion after, um, after the actual the explosion sound effect after you see the explosion because he's coming up on it. Um, so here he's coming up really quickly on the ah, the building that he crashes into. So I played that one really quick goes through on ones technically twos because 12 frames for a second. But because it's we're talking in 12 frames per second, then we'll just say they're ones right here. And I hesitated before like actually seeing him crashed through the window. Um, cut to this right here. And this is on total for 12 12 frames. I had the sound effect on this one. That's why there's two copies. I had the glass sound effect on this one, but it didn't make much sense. And so I had the I moved the sound from this frame to this one right here. Where you here, the glass breaking. And then you see him come crash in. And then I had an explosion sound as well. I just muffled it, slowed it down a little bit so that I could change the dynamics of the sound, um, to actually have the impact where he hits the ground and you kind of hear the impact happened right there and then have some glass shards falling. Um, right there as well. And then I slowly had him stand up four frames, two frames and then fully standing for 18 frames and then have a 12 frame exposure. Same same drawing right there. There's nothing different. And, um then I moved him from that, but also played the hydraulics sound effect right here. Um, had it fade on, and then it ends before it cuts out to black. Um, and then right here was the electric Elektronik sounds. Electricity sounds, uh, sound effect while the lights flicker on and all you see your, like, the eyes, um, and then it ends with the eyes on and the light shining around him, and then it cuts to black. Um, if I wanted to write here, I could add, um, credits, Um, and let's see credits right here So you could do something like this right here and then go through and you just double tap on, whatever the names. All right there. So that gives you the text right here. And you can just backspace it and then put in your details, uh, and so that I mean, there's a lot of versatile things about this, uh, ap and really allows you to do a whole lot and very quickly as well. It's not extremely time consuming. You can do it pretty quickly. You can edit everything on your phone. You can add effects. There's, like, sound effects. You can, um I don't just do a bunch of different things that, um there are a whole lot of other acts that won't let you do as much as this one. Um, So what would be something that I would I would recommend is going through and just playing with it at first? Don't try and tackle the whole maybe 30 seconds short. Right? At first, Um, the 1st 1 that I did were like that one that I had showed you before That said what? Um, and I just, you know, played with it, Try to do three and four drawing cycles. Um, with a walk cycle with a bounce cycle with, um voices barking. Um, try looping sound. See the most effective animation that you can get using the ah fewest amount of frames. Ah, fewest amount of drawings. And see if you can work through that to make something effective, and then that will get you to a point where you could do something way better than this right here. This is very quick. You saw me planet from beginning to end. Um, and just some really cool things. And I mean, you got Teoh. Watch that I drew out all the thumbnails and you don't need to have a full page drawing for an animation. A lot of people think that they need to have the 16 by nine ratio paper. We just use 16 by nine ratio squares. Um, and it was still just a defective. So there's a lot, a lot that you can do with very, very little. And that's what I love about this app is it's so accessible and it's so easy to use. It takes a little bit of work to figure it out, but once you do, um, there's and I wouldn't say that there was anything better right now, and I would highly encourage you to go and buy the paid app just because it's so worthwhile . It's so versatile. There's so many things that you can do with it, and it's going to really expand the abilities that you have as an animator and as somebody who who creates really amazing shorts and, um so I mean, this is just a mini short that you created, so hopefully this has been awesome for you that there's a bunch of things that you can use this for and, um, go ahead and get started.
12. Publishing the Short: So now that your whole animation is finished, you can go in and you can name it. Um, I had named mine, uh, machinations. I don't know if that's a good title or not. I don't have a board of directors that air. Tell me what is a good idea and what's not. Um, but you can use some of these buttons down here is tools to make sure that nobody changes it. Or if you wanted to make some differences but keep the original, you could also duplicate your project. Um and so I'm gonna go ahead and lock this because I don't want anybody do it. And then, uh, I put in that my pin or a pin, um, to go ahead and do that, Um, but not necessary. Something that I have to worry about right now, since I'm the only one who uses this phone. But if you have kids or, um friends who might go in and start tinkering with this, you don't want it to be accidentally believe it. Um, after all of that work that you just did, it may not be a ton of work, but it's enough t be frustrated about if somebody messes with it, so to get to publishing that is not this button right here. It's not the YouTube looking button. That's again just to kind of have your own personal theater on your phone. If you wanted to publish it, you could do it. All right. Here it has all of these different, um, I guess, capabilities or formats that that you can publish to so you can publish it as, ah, export movie to your phone. That's gonna put it just back on your phone. Um, if you want toe, you know, take a picture of a friend and put some text on it. You could make that an animated GIF or Jif. However, you say that whatever that is, um, you could take a picture and you could just publish all the pictures, all the images that you drew back to your phone, Um, and put that all so that you have all of the individual images. I have never done that. I don't really want to. Um I don't Honestly, I don't know what flip book is. Um, I'm not gonna worry about that. The only ones that I want to worry about really um, our expert movie, an animated GIF. Um, if you want to just create something that a loop, you can create your GIF or GIF. Um, but if you want to export and put it on YouTube or Facebook or share with your friends, send it as a little movie. You don't want to send a project or the all the images or a flip book. You don't want to send any of that stuff. You want to send the movie, so you click Export Movie, and then it's going toe give you an option about the kind of stuff where you want to publish it, too, has the option to published to YouTube instagram Facebook. I'm just simply going to save the video because I'll go in and all upload it later to YouTube, um, or just put it directly on to skill share or Facebook and have the freedom to do with it what I want. So that is very quickly and very simply how to export, um, projects, and you can do that with anything. This middle button right here is simply just to edit your project. You can do it right there or click on the image itself, and they'll both do the same thing. Um, and again, the delete button right here. But never use that unless you absolutely don't want something anymore. Eso? Yes, it quickly and simply that is how to publish. And I hope to see all of yours published on the project page very, very soon after you finish this. Thanks.
13. The Finished Product:
14. Outro: Thank you so much for taking the time to work through this class. I hope that you were able to get as much out of it. I did. It was a really awesome time in a really amazing class on that. I got to that. I'm thankful that I got to be a part of. You have some skills, hopefully that you didn't have before. You have some tools that are going to help you in every day. Animation. You could do this. Why? You're sitting on a park in longer at the doctor. To do this while you're riding on a train or plane in a car, you literally do it anywhere. That's the awesome thing about stop motion studio you don't need are leg. Hold your phone up. I all I'll have another animation posted that I had on my personal page for a while, where it was another action secrets, and it looks like it's got the feel of intensity. Everything that you do is going to add something to what you create. So I hope that you have even more tools, even more variety of things that you can do and so that you can create animation on go stories, no matter where you are. And it doesn't have to just involve a video camera, but it on actual short animation. That and your schedule are down several. In my sketchbooks. You have some amazing skills, so I hope that each of you will show me what you created. What Post? I want your, uh, thumbnail sketches. Well, what you created for all of that? So I will look forward to seeing your projects and happy.
Isaac Ramos, Animator. Artist. Husband. Teacher.
