iPad Art: This Season Say It With A GIF

1. Introduction: Hi, aren't you bored of sending and receiving the same Christmas messages every year? Wouldn't you love to create something new, something unique, something of your own? Now, imagine you could do this all from your iPad. Welcome to iPad Art, create a GIF to celebrate the holidays. I'm Cova Sandes and I'm here to show you my process. I will guide you all the way step by step. All that we need for this class, is an iPad, the procreate app in the ImgPlay app. If you're new to all of this, don't worry, I will keep things very simple, and by the end of this class, you will have done a great GIF to send out to your friends and family. It's going to be fun and easy. So what are you waiting for? Let's start. 2. Class Project: Before we begin the lesson, let's talk about your class project. By the end of this class, you will have all the tools that you need to create your own GIF. So guess what? Your class project is going to be to create your GIF. Please make sure you save it in your project gallery down so we can now see. And now let's begin our lesson. 3. Tools and Apps: What do we need for this class? Of course we will be using our iPads, and then I highly recommend the use of a stylus. I will be using the Apple pencil, but you can use any stylus that you want or that you have. Now, as for the apps, let's go to the App Store, and the first app that we're going to use is the procreate app. This one right here. I think it's about $10 or $11 but to me it's worth it, I do a lot of work on my iPad and I use the procreate app and it's fantastic. If this is the first time for you using the app, don't worry because I will be doing very simple things and taking you step by step. The second app that we will be using is the imgplay app, this one right here. I think there's also a pro version of the app where they removed like the watermark. But for this lesson, it will be all right if you get the free version. Once you have everything, then we will be ready to continue with the class. 4. Finding Inspiration: Now let's look for some inspiration. I love to use the Pinterest app and as you know for this class, we're going to be creating a Christmas GIF. Let's look for some Christmas icons. Here we are. So as you can see, there are plenty. We have the Santa Claus hat, champagne, candy, the bell, the cookies, Christmas trees, Reindeers, Santa, Snowman, snowflake. There are hundreds of Christmas icons. I think I'm going to be using the Christmas tree. Christmas trees are a really strong icon and I will be creating a GIF inspired by a Christmas tree. So once you choose your icon or if you want to follow along my steps. Once you've set up your mind on the Christmas tree or whatever other icon. Let's start sketching some ideas for a GIF. 5. First Steps: Now that we've gathered some inspiration, let's jump straight into the procreate app. I believe that this is the first screen you see when you first download the app, which has some examples of the arch you can make within procreate but we're going to create a new canvas. To do so, press on the the plus icon here and create a custom size. Now, here you have the different units you can have your canvas in. I'm going to stick to pixels. I think I want a squared canvas. So 3,000 by 3,000 with the DPI of 300 will be perfect. Just hit the "Create button," and we're set to go. So here we can zoom in and out by pinching with our fingers, and we can also rotate the canvas, this is really helpful because we don't have to rotate our iPad while we're working. Now to start sketching, the first thing we need to do is to press on the icon with the brush, and here you will have all the menu with the different brushes that procreates brings. I have also some that are important ones, you can do that later. But to sketch, we will use the sketching pencils and you can see you have the technical one, HB, Narinder, pastel, 6B, we can choose the Narinder pencil if you want to. So just press back on the brush icon and you are ready to start sketching. As you can see, it's pretty simple. You can do with your finger or you can use the stylus as I'm going to be doing later. Now, things you need to know about the pencils to start sketching, and basic stuff to use the app. Here you can vary the size of the point of your brush or pencil. In here, you can vary its opacity. For example, I'm going to grab this big circle brush that I created. So you could see the size vary, for example, small size, something like that, or a bigger size, something like that. Now with the opacity it's the same. You can see the range over here, low opacity, medium opacity and high opacity. Now, to erase, all you need to do is press on the eraser icon and erase whatever you need to erase. There is also an option to go back in procreate, which is right here, this arrow to go back, back, back, back, back, forward, forward, forward. That's also helpful if you want to erase just the last type, you have done. Another thing that you will need to know, it's like the color which you see here. I have different palettes that I've created or some that come in procreate but you can use the disk, and move along the huge range of colors in the wheel or the tones that you have here or you can use the classic one where you have like the color and you can change the hue and saturation and the color value here. Or if you want, you can insert an RGB code or HSP code, or even the code of Pantone color or create your own palette. For this exercise, we will be using the wheel. I like it because it's simple, and it's very, I don't know. Yeah, fun to use it. I like using the wheel. That's all you need to do to start sketching. So we'll continue with it in the next lesson. 6. Sketching: Now that we have seen the basic features, we are going to start sketching. I chose to do a Christmas tree so let's go. I'm going to keep everything very simple so you can follow along and this is going to be a rough sketch, very, very rough. I have my Christmas tree here to give me some eyes like a bass, one star there. Little branchy arms so we can move those to maybe some lights here and here. We can have snow falling down. Roughly this is going to be my character. Other things about procreate that are very useful to know. This icon here with the square its layers. You can add layers, which we will be using a lot when we start creating the colors and the different elements so far a character. You can swipe to the left and lock the layer, duplicated it or deleted it. Right now because we're just using a sketch, one layer is enough. If we click on the Data Layer one, we can rename also or layer and call it sketch. Another useful steep when tape one sketching is this arrow icon here, we have the magnetic zone free-form. We build the handles in the corners. We can resize our sketch, so we can also move it around our canvas and set it where we want it to be. Beware of this because if you're doing final art, sometimes it gets pixelated and it's not very good but for sketches is good. Now that we have our character here, we are going to have like Merry Christmas lettering or something over there. Now that we have our character, we can start thinking about how are we going to animate him. We'll see this in the next lesson. 7. Animation: Plan it out: Now that we have our character, let's think about how are we going to animate it and what do we want to animate? I was thinking we could animate the eyes, the arms, the light bulbs make them pop in different colors, have the snowfall on the background, give some movement to the text. That gives us five elements. Now it is very important to be organized. To do this, click on the square icon, which is the Layer icon, and click on the plus sign to create new layers. We need five new ones. If you click on the layer twice, hit the rename and these are going to be the eyes. Do the same thing with the arms, the lights, the snowfall in the background, and the text. We have different animations to create, and the technique that we are going to use is the stop motion animation. If you don't know what it is, it is simply when you have an object, take a picture of it, moving a little bit, take another, moving a little more, take another, and move a little more, take another, and then when you put all of those pictures together, it creates the movement. Because it is a gift, it's going to go on and on forever. We are going to do this in three steps. Like the eyes will have three different positions. The arms two, the legs two, the snow two and the text two. Create another two layers, eyes two. It's very important to be organized, as you can see, because we are creating a lot of layers and you can get lost. We have the three eyes layer. I like to group my layers, so I can, I don't know. It's just I like to see them clearly. To group the layers, we are going to swipe to the right, swipe to the right and when you have all of the three, just click on the group. New group, rename eyes. Another thing we have to do now is, we have the sketch and the different things that we are going to animate, but we need another layer for the things that are going to stay still, which I'm going to call like the body. You need to do these extra layers with the rest of the items, the arms, the lights, the snow, and the text. I will have this ready on the next video, so we can start creating our final GIF. 8. Animation: The Base: Time to get drawing. First of all, let me show you. As I told you, I have all my groups and all of the 1, 2, 3 layers inside of them. Now, I'm in my body layer where I will be creating the character parts that are not going to be animated. I've pulled down the opacity of my sketch layer just by clicking on the end here, pull it down a bit so it doesn't bother me too much. Now, to start drawing my character, I'm going to use the inking pen, the studio one is okay, and a green color. If you want to draw straight lines, all you have to do is start the line, draw it and wait, and as you can see, it snaps, becomes a straight line. You don't have to draw them straight if you don't want to but I'm going to do this now. You can zoom in and close that a little bit there. Now that we've created our perimeter in the body layer, we could just color it in. Or another nice trick is that when you have a closed perimeter, you just drag it inside and pop. There it is. I'm thinking I'm going to create another layer for the base. I'll click on the plus sign, rename base, I'm going to pull it down, and it's going to have a brown color, close it, because it's under the layer, it doesn't go on top. I think I'm going to leave it like that for now. Maybe I can turn it a little bit. To turn it, just click out the magnetic and very carefully, there we go, I think. We can move it too, there it is. We have our base for our character, and now let's start drawing the features that we are going to be animating. 9. Animation: The Eyes: We will now continue with the eyes. So go to the "Eye group", "Eye position number 1". I will continue using the studio pen, grab white color and let's zoom in to create an eye. Drag and drop. Now I will show you another thing you can do to create just the same eye, first I'm going to put the black into the eye. Now if you want to create just the same exact, just swipe to the left, duplicate, grab the arrow and move it. Click on the "arrow" again. Now you need to pinch those two together, and you have the eye layer, both of them on the same eye position. So now we want to create two different positions for the eyes. Then what is the tree going to be doing? Do we want it to wink? Yes, we could do that. So let's go to "Eyes 2". To select the same color that you have chosen, just press on it. You'll see here the color that you have grabbed. If I want the black, black. If I want the white, the white. The Green, green. To create another pair of eyes, I'm going to be using the white. I need to lower the opacity a bit here, so I can see clearly where I'm coloring in. I want to make my pan a little bit smaller. You can color it in or drag it in. That's too big because you see the one that I had here before, it's not that big. Now do the same thing with this. We duplicate it. Grab the arrow, put it here, place it. So I pull them together and here we have eye position number 2. Now with the last one, I'm going to just draw a line. Lower the opacity of these two. Be sure you are in the correct layer. The tree is totally winking here, it should be this way. Will this go into smile? Yes. Pull it like that. So make sure the opacity is on again. Now we have the three eye positions, 1, 2 and 3. Grab the eraser, check these eyes and start with the winking a little bit. We'll make the character cuter. Let me check, is moving from 1-2-3. So we have the three-eye layer, and now let's move to the arm. 10. Animation: The Arms: Time for the arms. Arm group; arm layer 1, picking the brown color that I had, and make sure my pen is where I want it to be. Okay. How do we want the arms to move? I think from this position, this position and that position, like going up and down. So, they are two. Of course you could duplicate each layer and rotate it instead of drawing it again. But I'm doing it this way because I think it's faster and I don't need the arms to be exactly the same. Okay, so we've got the arms now let's move to the lights. 11. Animation: The Lights: For the lights, I was thinking that I want to be the chords in a static layer. I will just create a new layer and I need the chords, then for the color, I want to use a darker green. Make sure my brush is where I want it to be and just draw some chords. Now we will go to the light group, light number one layer. Going to choose a yellow for this and draw some lights. The second color of pink. I'm going to do the same exact thing in layer number two. First I'm going to lower the opacity here, but here where the yellow lights are, I'm going to put the pink ones and in the pink ones, the yellow ones, so it creates like a movement. I have my pink color selected. First I need to make sure the layer is on and just some pink lights and now some yellow ones. Now I will do the same thing for the third layer. I will turn this off, lower the opacity here, I have my yellow color on. Yellow lights, of course I could duplicate the first layer and then turn it into my layer number three but because I'm drawing them again and they're not exactly in the same place, this will also create a movement. Now I make sure the opacity is on 100 percent for the three layers and we're ready to continue with the snow. 12. Animation: Falling Snow: For this snow falling and I want it to be wide, so I'm going to need to change my background to do so, you could go down to this background color and change in here. The will comes up and you can change the color here, but because sometimes I play a bit with the back ground and the textures. I like to create a background color of my own. Here we are and drag it to the bottom if it lets me yeah, and let me see what color do I want? Pale, pink or pale blue? Maybe this one, I don't like it. This is okay, now let's go up to a snow group and snow. All you have to do is get the white color B and the layer studio pan going to put the size of the bed and just make some dots. I'm not going to have them come on top of the tree because I don't want to affect like the eyes or the mouth. I want it to be clear so I am just putting them there, so now you could duplicate this layer and then move it down a bit, but I like to draw close to it. oops back, because I can change the size depending on the pressure I put on my pen, and that looks good too, so just try to put a dot underneath the ones that you've done already and the capacity the same with the layer number three or more or less close to it, to give it that sense of Pauling's No, doesn't have to be. You can actually put some extra ones if you want to. Lower the opacity, I'm sorry, rise the opacity, make sure they're okay, and we're done with this. No, we can move on to the lettering and the text. 13. Animation: The Text: Time for the text. The Procreate app doesn't have text inside of it. We can't type, so we will have to write it by hand. I'm going to choose some blue color for it and I was thinking that because we have snow falling in the background, then maybe we can write let it snow. I'm not an expert in hand lettering. But it's okay. This is for your friends and family so the more personal it gets, the better. I like it. Now we're going to text number two. We lower the opacity and all you have to do is write on top of it. Naturally you want to write exactly on the same spot. When we do the stop motion movement, it will be like a wobbly text. Really nice. Text three. Remember to set the opacity to 100 back again. We're ready to export. 14. Exporting from Procreate: We are done with the drawing so now, it's time to export. The first thing that we are going to do is to make sure that this Sketch layer is turned off. Now, for every of the layers, for every group that we have here that is going to be moving, we have to turn off the second and third layer, so in the Eyes, in the Arms, in the Lights, the Snow, and the Text. Now, we come to tool icon, click on Share, JPEG, Save Image. We are going to do the same thing, but this time, leaving only the second layer on. This is why being organized is really important, because now, it's easy to know which layers you need to turn on and off when exporting, and less time. We leave the third layer on and save image. Okay. Now, we are ready to move on to ImgPlay. 15. Create The GIF: Now we have to open the ImgPlay on your iPad and you have all the library images that you have in there. Make sure to choose the last three that you have exported and click here on the Make icon. Now as you see, it automatically turns your three images into a GIF. Here you can make it go faster or make it go slower. It's just a matter of what you want. Now because we're going from image 1 to 2 to 3 and then from image 3, it jumps straight back to one, I would like to put the second image in again so it has a better syncing; it doesn't jump so much. Just click here to add a new image, in the icon with six little squares. Click the Add button. Pick again your second image. Click Add and you can see here it has inserted a second image again. Then click on Done. Now we just have to see how fast we want it to go. I think this one is good for me. If you're ready then, you just click on Next and you can click on Save. Then you can save it as a GIF high-quality. That goes on GIF Looping options and I always choose the Forever one like this. I also like to save it as video with the high quality that repeats three times just in case I want to upload it to my Instagram stories or wherever. We're all done. Now if you go to your photo library, you can see here, your GIF video. You're all ready to start your project now. 16. Final Thoughts: Hey. The class is over now and you have created a wonderful gift. Thank you so much for watching my class. It's been a true pleasure to teach you my process. Please do share what you create in the Project gallery below, so I can see it. Also, if you want to, you can follow me here on Skillkshare, to get all of my updates. Now, go and have fun with your gifts.