Illustrate & Animate a Digital Christmas Greeting Card GIF in Procreate And Procreate Dreams

1. Introduction: Et's get festive. Have you ever wanted to create a digital greeting card? Check this out. In this class, we are going to create an animated Christmas greeting card using Procreate and Procreate drinks. Whether you want to send some holiday cheer to your friends and family, showcase your creative skills on social media, or simply add a touch of magic to your digital portfolio. This class is the perfect way to do it. Hey, I'm Alexandra AKA the art mother. I'm an artist and educator specializing in digital illustration and animation. And I'm here to guide you through a delightful project perfect for the holiday season. Here's what we'll cover. First, we will create a festive illustration in Procreate, exploring some fun tools and techniques. Then we will bring it to life. I will show you how to animate your illustration in procreate dreams, creating a smooth, playful, looping animation that will captivate your audience. I will show you three animation techniques. First, the smoothly looping snowfall, then the playful snowflakes in the foreground, and lastly, a magical animated handwriting. You will export your artwork as a video and a high quality sharable Jif so that you can use it as an image attachment and actually a digital greeting card. This class is designed for beginner to intermediate learners. So even if you are new to animation or procreate dreams, you'll find the steps approachable and easy to follow. Plus you walk away with a unique holiday project that's sure to impress. So grab your iPad, fire up, procreate, and procreate dreams, and let's spread some holiday magic through art and animation. I can't wait to see what you create. Let's get started. 2. About The Class: It's so wonderful that you are here. Welcome. In this video, I'm going to talk to you about the class structure, the class resources, and the class project. So the class is divided into two parts. In the first one, we are going to create the illustration together and procreate. Now, the theme of this class is seta standing in the snowfall. But you are free to interpret it as you wish. But keep in mind that differently composed artwork would need some adjustments. So create a different composition. With the animation techniques that I'm going to show you later, only if you are comfortable with your skills. Okay? If not, just feel free to change my sketch or create one from scratch following my video guidance. Also, if you don't want to illustrate, you can skip the illustration part and use the elements that you can find in the resources. In the second part of the class, we are going to animate and procreate dreams. We will use our illustration and apply three different animation techniques onto it. We are going to create a looping snowfall some playful snowflakes, and I will show you how to create this magical animated handwriting. Lastly, we are going to export this artwork as a video so that you can share it as a real and also as a Jif so that you can use it as an email attachment, for example. And also, you can upload it as a Jif into a class project, and it will immediately show the animation. No, I have explored several ways to do so. Procreate Dreams doesn't allow you to export Jifs yet, but there is another application called Adobe Express that is free, and you can convert your video to a JIF there, and I will show you how. And this method comes with the least quality loss. I've tried several applications, but they came with a lot of quality loss. Okay? So this is the best solution that I have found yet to create chips, and I'm so happy to share it with you. Regarding the class resources, as usual, you will get a breast set, a color palette, my sketch. You will get the original files for reference, and also my original illustration as a procreate file so that you can use that if you just only want to try out the animation techniques. So the class project is to create a looping animation of Santa standing in the snow, right? As I already told you, you have artistic freedom. So interpret this topic as you wish, so you can have a snowman standing in a snowfall or an angel or whatever Christmas themed or just a simple Christmas tree. The looping part of the animation is not obligatory. Creating a snowfall a simple snowfall that is not looping is easier. But a looping animation is always more eye catching, so I wanted to share this technique with you so that you are able to create a looping animation in procreate dreams. A looping snowfall, actually. When you are done, make sure to upload your class project to the project gallery so that we can see what you created. Also, if you share your artwork on social media, make sure to tag me so that I can reshare your artwork. All right. So as a first step, download the resources, grab your iPad, and see you in the first class. 3. The Sketch: Welcome to the first lesson. In this video, we are going to create this sketch of our greeting card. And what I thought is that the topic would be, basically, that we will have Santa Claus mainly on the greeting card. There would be the snow falling and the writing Merry Christmas would appear in an animation technique that I will show you later. So the first thing we need to do right now is to create this sketch of this greeting card. You are free to do whatever you like, so you don't necessarily need to have a Santa Claus. You can follow along while creating your own design, or you can just take my sketch and redraw it, make it your own, or follow me 100% step by step. You decide what you feel comfortable with. I really want you to have some fun time with this while preparing the holidays. So it is really important to decide on the dimensions that you are going to illustrate in. I want this animation or Jeff to work on social media. I want to create a reel from it, so that is a dimension that I'm going to use. But you are totally free to create a different dimension, Canvas and animation. The process will be the same. No I will create a new canvas. I hit the plus button here and hit this plus button here so that I can write in the dimensions. And the width will be 720 and the hate 12 80 pixels. So I will create it I don't know if you notice the DPI is 300, I always illustrate in that DPI because that gives me a nice resolution. I want to keep this really simple. When I have a canvas, I usually create with the sketching pencil and black color, an approximate rule of thirds. Rule of thirds is that if you divide the canvas into three even parts, you will be able to place elements more easily. And you don't really need to be like 100% precise. What I'm doing is actually, I am doing the hand measurement. I could use the canvas guide to help me with this, but I love to keep things like Sibyl. And if you see that something is not really even, you can just adjust it and move it around. Alright, so I think it is not perfect. Uh, this would look better. Alright, so now I have this rule of thirds thing. I will lower its opacity, and I will create another layer, and this is where I'm going to create this catch. Now, I want to Santa Claus, right? I always start with identifying the basic body parts that my character has. So he has a head. He has a bird. He has a hat, and he has a body. Now if I want to create contrast, I either create a giant head with a small body or a giant body with a small head. And with the Santa Claus, I think this giant body would work very well. So in the lower third, of this canvas, I will draw his body. And I can decide on every element, like what basic geometric shape it will have. I don't really want to go into character design stuff right now because this class is not really about that, but it will help you if you think about the basic geometric shapes and decide on them that the head will be, I don't know, round or triangular, whatever. Okay. So this is going to be the base for the body. I will adjust it a bit more. Okay. And I am now just sketching in the basic geometric shapes, okay? So he will have a small head here and a giant beard like this. And as you can see, I am using these lines as guidelines. So approximately this is where these lines come from. Okay? And in the middle, there is the head. Here is the beard. Here is going to be the head, face. And what is it going to do? Like, he's going to hold a present. So here is the present. And he's going to hold it. Like this. Okay. My original idea was to create a tattooed, Santa Claus. Maybe I can create that. He will have this thing here, and his arms will be here holding the present. And he will have like tattoos on his hand. That's cool. Okay. This is when I'm adding kind of character design things. Think about fun stuff that would make this, like, really funny. And I will add some cool sunglasses to this guy, and he will have a big moustache. Okay, I'm already in the flow state. So this is going to be the random, base sketch. And I forgot the belt. Oh, my God. So he will be kind of like this. He will have a belt. And there will be some trees in the background like this and Merry Christmas. This is going to be this body shape. Okay. This is cool. I love it. Alright. What I'm going to do now, and this is what I'm going to make quick or speed up, I'm going to create another layer, lower the opacity of this one, and turn the guidelines off so I don't really want to be that very strict. And what I'm going to do is to create a clean linework over this sketch and add some more details. So watch this sped up and have fun. Okay, so this is so much fun. Can you see this? I want you to have fun with this. Okay? So the composition is totally simple. His body shape is a big ellipse. You can even make him that big that you don't even need to take care of the legs. Have some fun. If you decide to have, like, tattoos, as I did, have some fun with the tattoos, so I like, have Santa forever. Right in here. Yeah. And the bird, you can play with the shape of it, as well. Okay, so let's just move on to the next video, where we are going to choose our colors. 4. Choosing Colors: In this video, we are going to choose colors for our illustration. Now, with a simple design like this, I love to create contrast with balance of warm and cool colors. My favorite combination is orange and teal, but I don't really want to lose this redness of the center that is like a signature color of him, right? So I will think about some things. Let's go to the palettes and let's create a new palette from scratch. And the way that I'm choosing my colors is that I choose base colors. So my two base colors are going to be one warm and one cool. My warm color is going to be the orange that I like. It is a very saturated color and find the perfect one. And I'm going to choose a teal like this. Okay? Very saturated colors. Now, I will choose a darker version of the same color, but I will push it to be a bit more reddish. This is going to give me that red color so like this. And for the teal, I will just go simply darker. I don't want that much of a color variation within the background because that will be the background. And now let's choose a lighter color. And I thought that a very light, but kind of neutral beach color would work great for the skin color here. And for the teal, I will just go with this really light blue. Now, we can lighten and darken these colors throughout the process, but I really love to give some base to my illustrations and, like, then go with the flow and not just have colors, you know, randomly. I will name this palette. Senta and you can find it in the resources. Okay. So we are going to work with these colors and then see how it goes through the process. Okay, so I'll see you in the next video where we are going to fill in the colors. 5. Illustration Part 1: Alright, so let's just start illustrating this city, how I start my illustrations. The first step I usually take is that I'm lowering the opacity of this sketch. If you want to include linework in your illustration, you are totally free to do so. I don't really like to illustrate with linework, it's not my style, but you are again, totally free to do the Santa Claus as you wish. Alright, so I have the sketch lowered opacity, and I create a new layer below the sketches, and we have the colors as well, and I will just start filling in shapes. I think we will progress step by step. So let's just get started. I will choose this red color and I will actually start by adding that, and then I will play a little bit with this orange. So I will choose the clean shaper to have a solid shape, and I will speed these parts up so that it is not taking too much time away from you. Feel free to watch it, and then like work on your illustration as you go. Okay, so let's start. Okay, cool. And now at the face and the head, like, I will create another layer. I will choose this skin color, and I will just draw the head shape. Okay. It will be actually covered with the details, but you can basically see the base composition. So there's a giant ellipse, and there's a small little head on top of it. Then I will create another layer, and I will continue actually by adding the bird and the moustache on separate layers. So let me just choose white at first and the clean shaper. And let's add the moustache. Okay. And now I will create another layer below, and I will add the bird. Now, as this background is like white, I will just change its color to the steel so that I can see what I'm doing and I'm actually, filling in already the color for the background. So I'm on a new layer. I have white, and I will just add the bird. And I can actually turn off the moustache so that I really can see what I'm doing. And turn on the moustache. Cool. I will add eyebrows. So I will add another layer and make this brush a little bit smaller. And I will just add this eyebrows here. Like that. And I will add another layer for the hat, and I will again just add this white stuff here. Add another layer below this white stuff and choose this red, and I will just add the hat. Now we have the shapes of the hat. Let's move on to the next video where we're going to add shading and texture to this part. 6. Illustration Part 2: H All right, so now let's add some shading to this part. We will have the head finished and then move on to the body. Okay? To shade this massage and bird, I will use a bit darker gray to shade it. Or we can go a bit with this blue, but let's desaturate it and make it a bit like grayish. I will choose to shade a branch. Alpha lock the layers, all of them. So two fingers pe on a layer or hit the layer and click Alpha log. Okay. Now, choose the bird. Oops, it is here. And add a little bit of shading around the shape. You can actually make it bigger and just go through it a bit. We will add back that white feeling in a second. I'll make it smaller and maybe a bit darker at the edges, even smaller. At these edges, I will add even more of this darkness. Okay. And maybe below the moustache. This will be the shading part. Okay. And I will go to the moustache and add a bit there as well, but really lightly because it's on top. Okay. Like this. And what I'm going to do is to create another layer on top, choose white and choose the sketching pencil. I will turn off the sketch to see what I'm doing. And with the sketching pencil, I will add these lines here. I will need to add some shading to the mustache with this blue that I had that white, you can see that white, okay? We'll just go through it a bit. Maybe I will darken it even more here. Like this. Okay, cool. And now I have the sketching pencil and the white, and I will add on the top layer, I will add these little lines I will make this a bit smaller. I will go to this pencil and add a bit of a stabilization stream line because it is a bit wonky. Okay. And You can add some fun things into the bird. So you can add a bit of going out, like with these, you know, This is kind of line work. So yeah, you can have fun with these lines. I love to use this technique where I'm like, darkening something and then getting back it's light with details like this. So cool. I love it. It looks so cool. I will add a bit of this loose linework into the moustache, as well. Okay, looks great. We will add some more shadows a bit later to make or add more contrast. But now let's just move on and work on the eyebrows. And basically, what I'm going to do is to do the same. I will choose this light green. I will actually put it here into this color palette so that you know what to use. I will just go through these eyebrows a bit and maybe I will do everything like this. I will add this light to the heat as well. Cool. And I will do another layer white in the sketching pencil, I will maybe play around with some spirals here and there. So it looks funky. Okay. Look so cool. And let's add the shading to the head, and then we will continue with the sunglasses. I will choose this red or maybe this orange, yeah, and the shader brush, and I will add a bit of an orange to the top of the heat. Like this, maybe to the edge bit more. So it is like lightened. I will add back this red a bit here. And I will choose a darker version of this color. I will put it here, and I will add shading with it. How does it look like? Yeah. I think it looks good. It lost a bit of its vibrans so I will add that back in the middle. Okay, looks fun. And now I will turn on the sketch, and I will create another layer. I choose the skin color and make it a bit darker and maybe add the nose like that. Okay. And I will create another layer. I will choose a dark gray, and I will add the sunglasses. Oh, my God. This is so cool. I will alpha log this, choose light gray and the shader, and I will add some reflections to the middle, like this. And maybe I will choose the sketching pencil and, like, enhance it a bit. Like this. Oh, wow. I love it so much. Okay, so let's move on to the next video where we're going to work on the body. See you there. 7. Illustration Part 3: Alright, so let's just move on to the body. At first, I will actually create a new layer and fill in the hands. So I will choose the skin color, the clean shaper, and I will add those. Okay. And I will create another layer and draw this gift. Let it be this yellow color. So with a clean shaper, I will just fill in the shape. And I will place this layer behind these heads. Okay. And now I will add this part of the hand. And what I'm going to do is to actually turn off the body and create a layer above the hands and choose the red colour and the clean shaper and just add these hands here. So that I can see just what I'm doing. Okay. And on another layer, I will choose white and add the. I will alpha log them both. Also the hands, and I will choose these green that I shaded the bird with, and I will choose the shader. And actually, I will just add the exact same effect to this thing so that it fits the whole. So I will just go through the whole with this light green. I will choose the sketching pencil and the white, and I will actually create another layer, and now I can turn back on the body. And I will just add these things here. Like this. Yeah. Cool. I will go to the hands at first. Yeah, it's alpha locked. I will choose its color and choose a darker version of it. Choose a shader branch. And I will add shading. I will make it a bit bigger. Okay, a bit smaller. And I will add shading. But I will make it even smaller. Like this. Okay. I will choose the skin color and now make it a bit lighter and into the middle, I will just add it back like this. Cool. I will choose this darker version again, make it really small and where there is this and I will turn off the sketch to see what I'm doing. I will just add That's a lot. Like this. Okay. Cool. I will choose the original color and smoothen it out a bit. Really cool. And if I need to add some details, I will choose this darker color, a sketching pencil, and I will actually just draw here some things that hands have. Maybe I can add two fingers, I can add nails just to make it, you know, L Real or more real, something like that. And Oops. Like this. There are some lines at the wrist. Really cool. And this is the time I'm going to add the tattoos, my favorite part. So I will turn on this sketch. I will choose this dark green, but I will push it a bit to the indigo, and I will keep this sketching pencil, and I will just draw this little cute snowflake as a tattoo here, and I will add Oops. Santa forever. Here. Really cool. I love it. All right. Let's shade the gift. I will alpha log the gift and choose this yellow color, choose the darker version, make it a bit orange. You will actually get a similar color than this one. Like this, I will choose a shader brush. I'll make this one a bit bigger, and I will just go through this little gift. Like this, I will go back with the original color, maybe go a little lighter at the top to make it a bit glowy, but still textuy. So as you can see, I have thrown several colors into it, and it gives a great variety. Of color and some interesting like effects. Okay, and now I will create another layer and make it a clipping mask. So I will draw into the shape of that. I will choose a clean shaper and choose the color for the ribbon. I will choose maybe red. Let me see. That would be too red. Maybe I will try the teal color. No, I will choose green color. Yeah, that would work. I will add this green color here, and I'm using it for the ribbon. Yeah. Cool. I will create another layer. Or this thing at the top. Looks cool. I will palock them both and also add a little bit of shading maybe with a lighter green. I will choose the shader and just add Oops. Yeah. Add some light into it. Also here. Really cool. Okay. Now I will create the belt. I will create another layer. Yes, I'm putting everything on a new layer. This is my I don't know how to call this. Obsession. This is how I'm solving things. I chose a dark gray color. I will draw the belt here. I will make this layer about the body. I will put it there, where is it? I will, make it a clipping mask, so again, it clips it. I will fill in this color. Cool. Again, the usual same thing, lighter gray, a bit of shading. So I will add a bit of shading to the middle, maybe even darker to the edges. This is how I'm solving stuff. Cool. I will create another layer, choose this light yellow and the clean shaper and at the belt. Okay. And I will just add these things here. That should be holes, but I think it would be really decorative if I would just add them here, and I will alpha. Look, choose a darker color, darker version of this color. Shader. Make it small. I will add a bit of a texturing into it. So also shading like outside, inside. Also these little dots, I will just add or throw a bit of this shading into it, and then I will choose a very light yellowish color, make it really small and actually lighten it up. Really cool. So I don't like how the belt is, like, positioned, so I will just select the two layers and just correct it. Yeah, looks cool. And now I need to shade the body. And yeah, let's do that in the next video and also add some things to the background. 8. Illustration Part 4: All right, so let's continue with the illustration. Let's shade the body. So I have it alpha logged. I choose this darker brown to shade the whole at first, so I will take the shader brush. As you can see, this is organically evolving. I originally chose like six colors, and now I have nine, and maybe I will have even more. So where I'm going to put the shadows. I will just shade around this shape of the hole. To give it a three dimensional feeling. As you can see these hands are now not fitting there, but just wait for it. I will add a bit of a shadow between the legs and actually below the hands and this gift. And also here, I will add a bit of a shading around this bird. I will make it bit smaller and around the belt or below the belt mainly, I will add this shading. Cool. Now, I will go to the heads. Where are the hens? Here. And I will just add this shading to it until it blends kind of into it. So can you see that I can play around. Choose the slider color to be blended a bit. Darker one here, here as well. Choose a darker color. Just blend it a bit. Go back to the body and add a bit of a darker shading here, below the ints. And where are the nts. Here are the hints, and I will lighten it up here. And I will choose this red, original red, go to the body. I will add a bit back, actually. So it is not that dark. Going back and forth with these colors, we'll just add texture. So you can find the right amount of going back and forth. Don't worry. Okay. And I had this orange and I want it, actually, originally to add this orange. So let's try. I'll add this orange at the middle, maybe at the back. Maybe. It is an interesting combination now. It is a color variety. I I'm not really satisfied with it. I don't know. I'll go back. Maybe just a little bit go through it with this orange to make it a more vibrant red, but I don't think we need that orange that much. And what I just did with the hens, I will need to do that to them again. So kind of blend them in. Okay. And if I want to add some more details, I will just create another layer on top. Choose the sketching pencil. I'll need this brown. I will turn off the sketch so I see what I'm doing. I will just add lines here. It will just help me to kind of land these things together, choose a darker brown, and play with that and I will add one here. And well, I think I'm ready with the scena. And let's do the background. So into the background, I will create another layer. I will turn back on the sketch. I will choose a darker blue. Choose the clean shaper and just add these trees. I will actually darken this part down here as well. Cool. I will offer look as usual. Choose this bright steel, choose the shader brush, and I will add some light here to the edges of the levels. Now I will choose a very dark teal, and I will add this darkness to the top. So between these levels like this. And now I will create another layer, choose this light blue and this catching pencil and just again play a little bit. So I will add these lines to it. I love this. This is my favorite technique now, this loose Linework as details. I can say that because this is not like quite the original thought. Of Linework. Okay. This looks cool. It's kind of as if it was, like, a bit snowy And the reason I love adding details on top like this is because then I can play with blending modes. So just a second. Can you see that? If I go to this layer and just go through the blending mode, I can play around and have different effects. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't, but I wanted to show you slider color looks great. Maybe I will keep it like that. I will create another layer. Behind these trees, and I will choose the shade or brush, make it big. And with this light blue, I will create a gradient to the sky. So it is lighter behind the scena, and it will be darker at the top. So I will just make it a bit darker at the top. It already gives that texture. It is super fun. At this bottom, I will make it even darker. I'm not going, Oh, yeah, this is this shape, so let me just this is the trees. Yeah. Let me just darken that a bit. And if I want to, I can add, like, a little glowing stars to the sky, but I don't want to. That would be, I think, too much because we will have, like, animation going on right here, okay? I think that I don't like this part of the center. So what I'm going to do is to actually select the whole cena every piece of him. I will actually group. Let me check. Yeah, I need Uh huh. Okay. I degroup because I will need the hands as well. So everything, I will group him. Yeah. Turn off the sketch and I will make the Santa a bit bigger. Let me see how that looks like. So maybe, yeah, I will place him just like here. And so that I don't have his legs, you can always adjust your illustrations based on how you feel it looks like, Okay? I love it like this better. I think it will look even better. So I think we are finished here. So let's just move on to the second part of the class where we are going to do the animation. I'm so excited. 9. Animating A Looping Snowfall: Okay, so it is time. Let's create an animation from this beauty. So let's open Procreate dreams. Okay, so let's create a new file. And again, think about the dimensions you need. So if you click that plus sign, you can choose from several different screens. We are going to use this four case social, and I just realized that if you click right now to these three buttons, you can set the frames per second. 24 is totally cool, but you can also set the duration of this animation. And I think 10 seconds will work best. Okay? So I will open an empty one. Oops. Yeah. And what does it do? Yeah, we have a ten second timeline. Can you see that? We don't have anything on it, so we cannot pinch it. And now let's import the background. So I go back to procreate. I will actually create another layer because we cannot put the background color as a separate layer. So I will just create a new layer there and select this steel color and fill it with that color. Actually, nothing happens, but I will have the background color on a separate layer. And now I will select the things in the background. So the gradient, this background color, and the trees. And I will group them. So I will group them. And actually, if you click to the new group, you can flatten it, but I love to keep things. As I have a possibility to have lots of layers. I will just duplicate this group and flatten one, okay? Hit flatten and I will have that on a separate layer. And this is what I'm going to import into procreate dreams. So that I have the separate layers, always, yeah, that's just a preference. So I will make it this big. Don't worry about the stuff that is not finished. With drawing, we will just place the Santa Claus in a second onto it and it will cover it up. Alright, so it is fitting our timeline. With two fingers, you can zoom in into the timeline. I will go back to procreate. Now, the reason I'm having separately the background and the Santa because I want this snowfall to go behind Santa and in front of Santa, but that will be different snowflakes. Okay? So for the sake of it, I already grouped Santa, so I will again duplicate this layer group and flatten one, grab it, go back to Percreate dreams, place it about the background. Now I can make the Santa as big as I wish it to be. I'll make it a bit bigger like this, and I will make him fit the timeline. Okay, cool. So now I have Santa and the background. So let's create the snowflakes, and I'm going to create them in Procreate because I really want a seamless pattern, okay? Because I want a looping animation. So I want the beginning of the animation to be exact at the same point as the ending, if that makes sense. So I will go to Procreate and create a square sized canavs and now I'm going to choose a darker background color so that I can see what I'm doing. Create a new layer or I'm on a new layer. I will choose white, and I will choose the textured shaper. Now, you can do this sims pattern with real snowflake drawings. So if you want, you can just spend time creating, like, snowflakes. You know, like, simply, you can look for snowflake patterns. On Pinterest, for example, or you can have a stamping brush. Like, I have a stamp brush of snowflakes. Let me just show you. So you can do this with this. But I would really love to make it really simple, so use a texture chaper. So now what I'm going to do is to fill this all little snowflakes, the whole canvas, okay? Okay, cool. Now I want you to choose one snowflake and make it bigger. You will be able to erase it later if you wish. But it will be a good reference or just remember one. I will make this one a little bit bigger, and I don't know, make it like with this little thing here. Now I'm going to hit the select and the rectangle and select the half of the canvas. It doesn't really matter if you are precise, but make sure that you are not really cutting any of these snowflakes or if you can do that, as well. Free finger pipe, cut and paste. And I will This will make half of it on a different layer. I will select the top one, make it down here, and this one up here. So I can edit. And now I will merge these two together, so merge down. Now I can refine this a little bit. This will help me to create a nicer. Pattern. Okay. So once you have this little seamless pattern, let's just bring it to Procreate dream. So I hold down the layer, go to Procreate dreams and bring it to the timeline between the two layers. Okay? So between the Santa and the background. I will make this fit the Fit D. Mm timeline. So I hold down and make it big. Yeah. Okay. I will make it bigger a bit. Okay. And can you see the reference snowflake here? Cool. I will place it somehow up here so that, you know, behind the Santa, you cannot see the snow. It will fall like this. And I want it to continue, okay? So I want this reference thing to reappear. What I'm going to do is to duplicate this little snowfall. So I will hold down, go to Track Options and duplicate the track, okay? Cool. Now I will go to whichever one. Let's make the top one. I will select it and bring it out of the frame and place it here. Cool. Okay. Can you see that? I will just zoom in. So I have my Santa and here is one time the square and the second time the square. And here is another reference Snowflake and here is my reference Snowflake. So my goal is now I will just select it. Okay. Just it a bit. My goal is now that this reference snowflake arrives here. In this 10 seconds. The way I'm going to do that is I'm going to place display hat to the beginning and hit it, move move and scale. It will add the key frame to this motion track that applies to this one. I will go to the end of this motion track. I put the motion track here. I placed a keyframe here and I will just change its position and I will make this to this reference snowflake so that you can see it aligns perfectly. Yeah. Let's play it. Let's play the whole. Yeah, I 10 seconds, it will just arrive there. Super cool. Okay. And what we're going to do with this second one? Basically, what I'm going to do is to again, click on this layer, the move and move and scale, this keyframe, add the keyframe to the end of this track. The end of this track. So I'll just hit this button or just, can you see that? Or just place it here as a keyframe. And now let's put it to a position. It will be somewhere here. Okay, let's play the whole. Can you see that? It is a perfect loop. There is a jump at the end. Here. Mm hmm. Not perfectly aligned, so I can. What's the jump about? Let me see. Mm hmm. Okay. So at this final position. I will just place it er. Like this. Okay. Now it's played. The whole, I mean. Perfect. This is so wonderful. I love this looping animation. Now, let's see if we can erase from this reference Snowflake. So let's go to the drawing mode to the eraser. And actually, yes, we can. So let's see the whole. Yeah, here it is again. I will just erase this note for myself. Super cool. So let me just summarize what we did, okay? We created a square sized canvas and put snowflakes on it. We divide it into it into halves and like, exchange their position to have a seamless pattern so it can continue like this because this is the direction of the falling on the snowfall. We created one reference snowflake. We brought it to procreate dreams and duplicated it. If you need more of the snowflakes, you can do the exact same process with another layer. So you can duplicate this one again and just align those reference snowflakes, okay? Then, yeah, we duplicated these two layers and placed outside of the frame. These two squares, okay? And then added a frame to the motion of the first one to align with the reference Snowflake at the end of this track, and then did the same or similar to the second one where we actually didn't have to align because hoops, you cannot see it because of the Santa. See you in the next video where we are going to add some more of these snowflakes to the front and then add the Merry Christmas animation to it. 10. Playful Snowflakes: Okay. So what I want now is two little snowflakes falling down here. I will record their motions and paint them in procreate trims. My first step is to create a new track, so hit plus New Track. It is about everything. I will enter the drawing mod by clicking this button. I will choose white and the turpentine brush, and I will just paint a snowflake here. It is a bit transparent. It is textured, so this brush will work well for this. I will go from the drawing mode, make this fit the timeline. Is one little frame. All right. I will make this tracket to the beginning, find its position outside of the frame. I have something here, so I will just erase it. Okay. So you have its position outside of the frame because we want this looping animation to look good. So if it starts without that snowflake being there, it will still have this looping animation feeling. Okay? So I will hit record, and I will keep my eyes on the track. I have 10 seconds to make it leave the image. So I will hold my breath. Oh, that's slow. Let's start again. And this is very quick. Start again. That's cool. Okay. Now I will create another track and do the exact same thing. I will enter the drawing mode. I will draw a little snowflake there. I hit done. I will make it fit the timeline. Cool. I'm at the beginning of the track. I will find its position outside, hit record, keep my eye on the timeline and make it fall. Really cool. Okay. I love it. So now we have two kinds of animations included and let's do the Merry Christmas one in the next video. But 11. Magical Handwriting: All right. And let's get to the last animation part where we are going to create a nice leathering writing Merry Christmas up here. The first thing we need for that is a base that we are going to draw over and then we are going to actually delete it. So what I want from you now is to go to Procreate, create a new screen sized canvas. I will change the background color to gray because I'm going to work with white leathering. I will go to add text and write Merry Christmas. Select the text. Oops. Okay, I will place it to the middle, select the text, and I will look for a font that I would love to recreate. Now, with this animation technique, this handwritten font would look the best, and you are totally free to write yourself the Merry Christmas now with a brush here, okay to imitate your handwriting. So you don't necessarily need to have handwritten font. I will just go through my fonts. I use them. Yeah, I've chosen this one. But again, you can totally just get a sketching pencil and on a layer just right. Merry Christmas. Okay? So it can be totally like your handwriting. I will use this font. I will now go to the layer of this text and hit Rasterize. Rasterize will make actually an image from the text, so now you cannot edit the text. I will hold down this layer and go back to Procreate dreams and place it to the top, and I will make this fill the track. So I will just select it and fill the timeline. It is filled? Yes, it is filled. I will select it. Where is it? I will place it on top up here to the middle, right? Now, we are going to do the flip book method. If you have done the other animation class that I have, you already know the flipbook method, and it is that you are drawing actually every frame of the animation. This can feel really exhausting because that's a lot, but this will be a really sweet process. It can be very meditative, and let me just show you, actually. So the first thing is to create a new track above everything, I will create a new track and place the play had to the beginning. And now I will enter the drawing mode with this sign. I will choose white, and I will choose the luminous brush set the light pen. And what we are going to do is that we are going to open the flipbook mode, swipe down, and it will open up the flip book, okay? Now, what does this mean? We have a ten second animation with a 24 frames per second frame rate. This means that we have 240 frames during the whole animation. Now, we are not going to fill the whole animation, but we are aiming to fill at least 200, okay? With this. And what we are going to do is that we are going to as if write out this whole Merry Christmas, and then it will also disappear. Okay? Let me just show you what I mean. So I'm at the flip book. This is the first frame. I will just draw one segment of the lettering. I will go to the next one. And as there is the onion skin, can you see this purple dot? This shows me what I have drawn before. So this will help me to track the motion. So now I'm going to draw a little bit longer line and also a little bit longer line again. And let me just show you what this does. I'm always starting from the beginning, okay? Let me just show you and let's play it. I will show you here. Did you see that? So we are going to fill the hole like this. And it will look super cool. So let's just get into it. We are here. We are in the drawing mode. We are the flip book, and let's spend some time with this. You can follow where you are in the timeline down here. This means that we are already in 1 second, so we have 24. This flipbook pages drawn plus ten. So if I add one more frame, it will jump to 11. Can you see it will count until 24 and then change the second. Okay, now that I'm at the end, I will write five more little flea books, flip book pages with the full so that there is this steady writing for five frames. I'm at 5 seconds now. I did this very detailed. So maybe you didn't progress in these small steps, and you might have a shorter amount of time. That's okay. I will show you in a second why I'm saying this, but let's just make that five little frames right now. Can you see this wiggling? I love how it looks like. It just play the hole so that you can see what we did. Okay, so the snow's falling and Okay. And now it just stops, right? What I want to do till the end of this timeline, because if you wish to just write it here and then pm it is gone, it is cool. That's new. I want to fill this frame by, like, this writing disappearing. And I don't I will not do this in a way that is that detailed as this one, because that would like but as you can see, it is like 6 seconds, almost 6 seconds. And I have four more seconds. So four more seconds to make this disappear. So I will make this disappear from the beginning. So I'm going to write it, like, again, the Merry Christmas, but always a little bit less, if that makes sense. Okay? So I'm going to do that. And yeah, this is taking me, like, a long time. You might see these writings, like in maybe 20 seconds. But I'm already at like 40 seconds of creating this animation part. So, um, yeah, keep this in mind. Okay, so let's get into it. I will make the play hat where my last frame is. Oops. Yeah. Drawing mode, flip book. And let's do this. Okay, I think we are done. We are 9 seconds. I done, I will turn of the visibility of this layer of the lettering, okay? And let's play it. Oh, wow. It looks super cool. I love it. Can you see that? This looks incredible. I love it so much. Okay, so we are finished with the animation. What do you say? I love it. Okay, so see you in the next video where we are going to export it and create a Jiff from it. So S you there. 12. Export Your Animation: Alright, so now that our beautiful animation is ready, let's export it. Now, we will need two files. The first one is going to be an MP four. This is going to be a video file, right, that I'm going to share as a real. And I will need a JIF file as well so that I can use this as a digital greeting card in my emails. And actually, it will work as your class project as well, okay? We will have a different application to create the JIF because dreams doesn't support JIFS yet. So if you want to share it, click the Dreams button here. Okay? Hit share and hit Video, and it will export your file, right? I will pop out and save video. Cool. And now what I'm going to do is I'm going to switch to my phone because it is going to be quicker for me, but you are totally free to do this on your iPad. We are going to use Adobe Express. That is a free application. So you can download that onto your iPad. I'm going to do this on my phone. So I will just at first share this to my phone. So here is my phone, and I will just select the animation and air drop it to my phone. So I have it here. I will put this to the background. And what I'm going to do now is to open Adobe Express. Again, it is a free application. Okay. And you will need to create an account or login with your Google account or Facebook account, okay? All right. So when it opens up, there are several things you can do in Adobe Express. The easiest way to do a Jif is to click to the search bar and write Jif. And it will open to convert to Jif mode or possibility. So you just tap to upload a video, choose it from the photo library. Okay. And now that it loaded, you can set it too large because I want it to be high quality. Like, there are other modes or applications and websites where you can convert a video to Jif. But I found that there is a big quality loss in those, most of those, and I found Adobe express to be less quality loss. So I will just set it to large high quality and wait until my media is uploading. And when it is done, hit the download. It is exporting your file, and you will be able to save your Jif Save image. And it has saved to camera roll. So now when you go to your camera roll, you will see your Jif. And it is a pretty good quality. When I want to write an email, I can write Merry Christmas. And at from my photos, this Jeff and it will just play like this. How cool is that? So you can send this as Christmas greeting card in an email. But it will work in your skill share project as well. So let me just show you. In the class, in the project and resources part, hit Submit project. You can add the project title. So you can name it. Yeah. Hi. Christmas. Merry Christmas. In the description, you can add the image that will move as it as a chef. Wawa. How beautiful it is. So cool. And as a cover image, please just screenshot your artwork. I'll just upload your illustration itself that you have done in Procreate. It will work like just fine. And I love how this looks like. And then hit Publish, and you will have an incredible class project. Okay. I hope that you enjoyed this class. See you in the last video where we're going to wrap it all up. 13. Final Thoughts: Congratulations. You did it. You finished the class, and I'm so proud of you. I'm sure your artwork is stunning and I can't wait to see it, so make sure to upload it into the project gallery and make sure to tag me if you are sharing it on social media. Also, follow me on social media and here on Skill Share to stay UpToDate. Don't hesitate to leave a review for the class. It is really important to me to know what you think about it and for others to know if it is a great fit for them. It was such a pleasure to have you here, and I hope to see you in my other classes, too. I wish you all the best, happy creating and happy holidays.