Transcripts
1. Introduction: Okay, you want to start
sharing your ideas through simple but expressive
animations like this one without touching any software like After Effects or blender. Well, same here. So let me show you the
easiest laziest way to animate that I know off. Well, hey, I went out so far and I'm an
architect, writer, and visual artist
who was born in Saudi Arabia and it's now
based in Addis Ababa, which is the biggest city
in the Horn of Africa over the past several years at facilitated several
participatory design, such as like the Berkeley prize funded community
Fellowship Program, where I guided a group of
booksellers to come up with a design for mobile library that they can use to send
books more efficiently. I've also conducted visual
brainstorming sessions, and it's Sandro in
work for organizations like the David and Lucille
Packard Foundation, best within plus one
and e capitalist. I also worked with
the Association of Ethiopian
architects to create a simple video that can
be used for rethink funds for building new
schools here in Ethiopia. And it's the style I used in that video that I'll be
sharing with you here. Now to animate the way I'll
be showing you in this class. You don't need a background
and drawing or an animation. It could be someone
was a beginner in drawing and editing, or someone who has been
animating for years, but want to pick up the
simpler way of doing it. The class itself is
going to be divided into two parts, drawing and editing. So for the drawing part, you're going to need
is either your iPad, your Galaxy Note phone,
which I'll be using, or any device where you can draw and it has a
screen record feature. It doesn't matter
what device it is. And to loosen up, I'm
going to be sharing two different exercises which will be followed by
the class project. We're going to animate a
silly pun or a joke that we either totally loved one or we heard from a
friend or loved one. In the second half of the class, we're going to be putting
your screen recorded video into an editing software
like premium pro. Spin it up, cut up some parts that you don't
want, and that's it. Now my hope is that you
will leave this class not just with a few drawing
and editing tricks, but also with a confidence to create simple
animations that can be a powerful educational
or promotion resource in this era of quick
information and virality, the video format is that especially potent
medium for communication. So knowing how to create even a very simple
animation video could extend your reach and help you communicate with a more
diverse group of people. So let's get too shabby.
2. Class project: Well hello. So for
the class projects, we're going to be recreating a conversation you had recently, whether it's with a loved one or a colleague in the projects
and resources section, I'm going to be sharing
a template that you can use for this class project. But I'm also going
to be showing you how to create this from scratch. But before we jump into that, I want us to warm
up a little bit. I have a couple of exercises. The first one where we're
literally going to be creating some random
shapes, lines, scribbles all over our
tablet or iPad or phone, whatever you're going
to be using to draw. And in the second
exercise, again, I'll be sharing a template
where you can create a diagram explaining
something you know very well. Following those two exercises where we'll be
loosening up our hand, you're going to be creating
your class project. You can upload a final
screenshot from it to the class projects
and resources section. And you can check
out the animations that other people come up with. For this class, we're
going to be needing a device on which you can draw either with your
finger or with a stylus. At the samsung Notes phone, I'll be using an iPad or any other device that has a screen record and
drawing feature. You will also need
an editing software to polish up your screen record. But any software with simple features will
do like cap cut, e.g. most of what you'll be
needing the software for is probably
adding some texts, speeding up the video, cutting out the
parts that you don't need and maybe adding
some sound effects. And that's it. That's what you need to create your
animation video. Adding sound to your animation
is an optional step. You can skip it entirely. Now if you don't
manage to finish screen recording or editing
your animation video. Now, I hope that you take a screenshot of whatever you did manage to finish and upload it in the projects and
resources section, any progress counts
and in the future, if you manage to finish
wrapping up that video, you can still
update your project to include that progress. So let's get to the
warm-up exercise. Shall we?
3. Ex. #1: Warm-up Doodles: Well, this is our
first exercise. We're going to be warming up. This is important to get
our hands comfortable with drawing fast
and decisively. We're going to be
creating lines, blobs, some squiggly shapes,
whatever comes to our mind, just to loosen up really. Well, this is literally
just doodling. It's warming up. So I'm
just scribbling around, filling up the page. And what I suggest you do is to just draw
the thing that you tend to draw when
you sit down in a boring meeting and you have
a paper in front of you, or you're in a lecture hall and you have a pen in hand and a piece of paper and you just
mindlessly drawing shapes, circles, squiggly,
arrows, lines, and all sorts of blocks. Maybe you end up
drawing characters. It doesn't matter as
long as it's helping, helping you loosen up your
hand and helping you get comfortable drawing across
the screen, That's good. I also suggest that
you practice drawing a few different types of
arrows because you'd be using those in
explainer videos if you're interested in
drawing that in the future and just practicing
your lines and how your lines overlap
with each other and how you draw shapes. Another thing I love doing
is overlapping my shapes. So even if it's going
to be like blob, like an amorphous shape. I like retracing
over that roughly so that it gives it that
dynamic quality. And as you can
see, I'm literally just scribbling
all over the page at this point and
it's filling it up. And it's also good to draw
inspiration from emojis, from symbols around you for
using things that usually, I usually at least tend to draw, whether it's a light
bulb or houses, lampposts, things from the
built environment or from the landscape
around you. So if you want to be able to draw that
in a simplified way, it's good to take inspiration from existing visual
vocabulary around it, whether it's in
emojis or it's in different signs and symbols
that you see every day. Also like hatching, I think
it's an architect's thing, but I also love
adding color more. And I think that adding
just the right amount of color can really bring
the whole video together. And I tried to keep things a
minimum because if you like, you can make it a
little overwhelming. But I love making the
brushstroke huge and coloring large swaths of
the page in one go because it really adds
that dynamism to the page, to the video when you are, speed it up and it
looks like it's magically just being
drawn all over. So instead of adding green
or different colors, I'm highlighting with
the existing brush. So when I layered on top of just different shades
of the same color, so it's darker and
darker yellows. I'm using a thinner
version of the same yellow just to add these
little shapes or little scribbles
around the shapes I've drawn so that it adds that dynamism and freshness to it and makes it look
like it's moving. And maybe add some shadow
effect, maybe some depth. And I'm going to
add the same thing to the other page
that I've done where I'm adding a scribble version of the same highlight, same color. I tried to keep the
colors minimum because I think the more we
tried to add elements, it might get overwhelming. So since my shapes are
already really rough, I tried to only play with
line weight and with opacity. And maybe if I'm
going to add color, it's gonna be two or
three colors maximum, because I don't want
the viewer's eye to go all over the place and to be overwhelmed by
what's going on. So I love adding color until
I feel like it's too much, but until I feel like okay, I think I can stop here. Also loves starting from color. So sometimes I will
just throw blocks or amorphous shapes like
this circular thing, and it kind of adds or
starts dismissed three of Q, where is this going? Like, What are these
shapes can turn into? I just keep adding and adding and blocking
different areas of the screen until I then moved in with darker hues
of the same shade. And also a defining bold
pen shape or like a marker. So I would go in with
a black or a dark blue or dark brown and
start adding these little, these bold lines just to
bring everything together. So see suddenly I have
a tree and a landscape. And then I'll start adding
these little details. Grass quickly, branches or
leaves all over the tree. I wouldn't be
defining it too much. I just wanted to add
just enough detail to show what the blob was. Gotta be in the first place. So see, I didn't know that. That was going to turn into this weird character
in the beginning. But now here we go. We have a friendly looking
monster and we have an arrow, I guess the other
one was obvious. So this is another way
I like to approach it. It's all about
surprising the viewer, not letting them know
where you're going with your drawing so that
the screen recording really gets elevated
to the status of an animation video
that's quite engaging. Now after we've warmed up, I want us to move to
another exercise where we can test our live
drawing skills. And let's get to it.
4. Ex. #2: Bubble Diagram: In this quick exercise when
we're gonna be creating a bubble diagram which
describes a process very well. Just to become more
comfortable with drawing in a simple
and decisive way. In the projects and
resources section, I've attached the
template that you can follow to make this
process easier, or you can create this
bubble diagram from scratch. Let's get to it. Here. I'm basically going
to be showing my flow from coming up with an idea all the way to publishing a full-fledged
class here on Skillshare. And I just start with creating these little blobs with different variations
of the same color. So as you can see, I just
increase the opacity on my highlighter tool and then
I color in the bubbles. Sometimes I start with
the outlines and I try to leave gaps in-between to
create that whimsical, messy feeling to it,
this hand-drawn quality. And I'll do that several times, while each time increasing
the opacity of the color. It's always the
same color I feel like the less colors I use, the better I can
communicate my message without everything looking
too messy or overwhelming. So I tried to stick to like
one or two colors, max. So I'm just repeating
the same thing and trying to go
throughout the process. You can sketch this out
beforehand or just eyeball it. But the more you have an
idea of what's going to happen or how you're going to be blocking the space in the page. I think the easier
it's going to be for you in
post-production if you're going to end up editing your diagram for
your bubble diagram. So I'm done with
around seven bubbles, each with slightly
different opacities of the same color with
holes in-between. And now I want to
add arrows to show a moving from this step to
that step, and so on. I like adding these little whimsical, fun,
curvaceous arrows. So I did a similar
class like this before. And it's become
something that I keep. Going back to. The first step I do
is record my idea. Now, when I speed this up, it will look like it's
being written really, really fast and it
won't be boring to see. So I'm just speeding this up, getting through my different
steps according idea, writing scripts, getting
a review for that script. But that since that process is something I keep going
back and forth to, I'm going to add an arrow that goes to the
review. And then back. Because sometimes I rewrite my script based on a few that I get the parts where I redraw my arrow or get a little
too annoying with it. I would cut that out
and post-production, but here I just
wanted to show you what that looks like when I don't mess with the or cut
out all of the mistakes. So after getting my review, I usually fill my lessons. I edit them, I add
some graphics, make everything consistent,
and then just publish it. So I want to add some
finishing into the bubbles. I feel like when
you speed this up, it really adds, it frames
everything really well. So I'm adding that here. And so I'm adding it to
each and every bubble, but like making it
messy and different, slightly different each time. Now I want to add
a little more text just to add some explanation. I'm gonna be cutting out all
the parts where I showed the editing or show me going
from one brush on other. You can leave that out. I mean, you can leave
that in the final video. But I like it looking like
it's all been drawn by itself. I don't want to show me switching from one
brush to the next. And then I also love having a big title moment at the end. I'll make the title
depending on how big, how much space I have left. So I made this pretty big and I'm adding the line
under it just to fill up that little gaping hole
and I think I'm done. Yeah, that's it. I had experimented with a
few different lines, but I think this is the
one I want to settle on. It's whimsical, it's fun. It's not overdone,
and that's it. Well, now that we're
done with this exercise, I think we're ready
to move on to the class project.
See you there.
5. Record Your Video: Hello. We're going to be creating at least
two characters, along with some speech bubbles which will house your texts. I've included a
drawing template in the projects and resources
section that can make the step easier
for you or you can start drawing this entire
part from scratch. Good luck. I'm going to
be diving right into this I am drawing are starting with grounding
my characters. In this patchy ground. It's outdoors and
there's some grass and some weird
things on the floor. And this didn't really
happen outdoors. It happened in my
house, I'm pretty sure, but kinda want imagine the conversation did
happen outside and I want to draw my sister and this smug position
like she's about to, because she does
deliver a really lame, really silly joke. And I kind of didn't make
me giggle though later on. So I'm just doing her in this funny pose and I have this red dress on
that I don't really own. And I tried to draw myself as this character
with the stretched by showing the other character
that's supposed to present my sister a drawing or whatever it is that I
have on a piece of paper. But I don't really like how
I look in the stress first. So I'm going to be
drawing that again. And again. These are just rough
representations, so it's okay if you
start by drawing stick figures or draw in
any style that you like, but try to keep your
character spot away so that you have enough space
to draw your speech bubbles. Later on, I experiment by
drawing different heads, different versions of
heads that field, right? I know this is a rough sketch, but audits like a very
concept diagram or something that's not
supposed to be very detailed or fine artsy. But I still end up doing something over and
over again until I kind of like how it
feels and how it looks. So. But I do encourage
that you keep moving, that you don't really fixate
on a specific element in your drawing because that
keeps your animation moving. Later on you would
be editing article, cutting out certain parts that you don't
like they will be, I'll be cutting out a lot. I'm gonna be showing you how. But it's still better to do everything in
one go and move on. Even if you don't like
a certain drawing or certain elements
that you've added. So I'm starting with my
first speech bubble. As you can see, I'm filling it in because I feel like it
adds this nice contrast. Later on I'll be adding
white text on top of it. I already know what
the joke is gonna be. So I'm drawing the
speech bubbles to match the space that the
text will be taking a joke. And I encourage that
you do the same thing. So that if the character is not gonna be seeing a
lot in a specific line, you'd make the speech
bubble relatively smaller. And if the character is going to be delivering the punchline, or it's gonna be slightly
longer conversation or a longer piece of text, then you make space for that so that it doesn't become more
difficult in post-production. So I'm adding my speech bubble and then my sister
speech bubble. And then I want to extend
from my speech bubble so that I am going to
continue with that. So it shows that the speech
bubbles are overlapping. I'm going back and forth, I'm saying something, she's
seeing something back. And then she delivers
the punchline, which is gonna be
the biggest textbox in the entire video. So I'm kind of drawing a speech bubble
that's big enough to accommodate,
accommodate that. And I'm coloring it in. When you speed up the coloring, It's really looks good. It looks like it's
happening on its own. I'm gonna be showing
you how I do that in the editing stage. But right now that's kind
of how I would draw it. And sometimes I would
start with the outline and sometimes I would start by
filling it in immediately. So this part, I don't really wasn't really
deciding early on, on whether I want the
final part to come first, the final speech bubble, or whether I want to have my hair growing Kiki
or laughing first. But I recommend that
you try to draw the objects in the order
that you want them to appear in the
video so that it would be easier for you when
you're editing later on. So I want her to giggle first to school. Give me this lame. He, he he laughed her situation. And I'm just done with that. So we're kind of done with her. And I'm just like, never mind, I don't want your opinion. And moving on. Usually she would just come
around and be like, I'm just kidding around. But like when I'm in a
rush I would just be like, Okay, Okay, never mind. But then again, in France
fitted slides, pellets. So I'm trying to pick
a brush stroke that can help me draw the
ellipses because after she delivers the punchline,
I have nothing to say. And I wanted to present that here for the rest of the text. I'm gonna be adding it in post, but the ellipsis I want to show the white dots
just appearing. So I'm just told me
three white dots. It's like I have
nothing left to say, like I'm moving on. And after the lemurs joke or silliest joke that
I've heard in a while. But admittedly, it's funny. I found it funny because I've used it on other
people later on. So there are imagined
their reactions as like, wow, what a dad joke. So I'm kind of re animating the heat or
writing down the, he, she does this laughter my
sister where she kind of goes like a comic book
laughter like he, he, he or something,
the villainous type. So I'm just writing that down and I'm gonna
be speeding it up. But I'm just trying to show you guys that it's
okay if you don't like how it looks the first time
it can keep fixing it and then but don't
dwell on it too much. Again, because this is supposed
to be a quick animation. It's supposed to look dynamic. But if you do mess
up, It's okay. You can cut it out and post and speed it up so no
one's going to know. And now I'm adding
some embellishments. I like adding birds. If it's an outdoor setting, I'm adding certain lines just
to add this fresh quality, this dynamic quality
to this video. So it's going to end up looking really like all these little
lines just appear in. I like having that in my, it makes it look like
a real animation. So I am adding the lines all around the speech
bubbles, these curves. I'm adding the representation
of a wind and reaction. The girls for my action
does characters reaction. So it's just an a. Then I tried to remove things
here and there just to see, later on, I'm gonna be seeing whether it would be better
to leave that in or not. So I want to show that
the birds were canceled or remove them and then I draw them again in
a separate position. So doing that when you cut it
and then paste that again. I mean, when you cut
that part and then move to the part where
the birds have moved, it really looks like
the birds did move. So after this, I'm
going to be editing this video and I'll see
you in the next lesson.
6. Edit Your Video: No, I transferred
three of my videos. So I have my software open. You can use cap cut or
any other software. I'm going to just
be importing this, these videos into my software. So I'm just dragging this into Premium Pro and I
drop it right here. And now that once that they're
all laid out over here, I'm going to be changing
the framing here. I don't want this to
be a vertical video. As you can see, this is very
suitable for vertical video since it's a screen record
and it's done on a phone, it's perfect for creating
vertical videos. But for this class I wanted
to make a horizontal video. So I'm just going to be
typing the horizontal. 1920 by 1080, setting 16
by nine by nine ratio. And it's 24 frames per second. I want to set it at
that because that's also how my rest
of my class set. So now I'm going to say yes to whatever warnings
they want to tell me. And now it's all about fitting
this video to the screen, to the frame here. So I'm going to be rotating it. I'll be fixing everything
on one of the videos, the main video, as you
can see, the big one. And I'll just be copying the attributes into
the other two. I don't know if you can do
this on other software, but that's what I'm
gonna be doing here. So I rotate it to 70 degrees and I increase
the scale to Okay, I think 100 is enough. Maybe 100. Yeah. And I'll
be moving it this way. Okay. I'm just trying to fit it so that
none of the edges, none of the other functionalities
on the screenshot. Because after all this
is the screen record, so it's cropped or
showing a lot of the tools I don't want to
be in the final product. So I'm gonna be forwarding to the end and
seeing what it looks like. I want it to be in the
center more or less. So that's what I'm
gonna be doing. I want to move this a little
more maybe to the middle. And like, okay, I think this is more
or less in the center. I see like maybe
it's not perfect, but I guess that's fine. Once I do this, I'm going to
be copying the attributes. Right-click. Copy, then. Paste Attributes. Attributes means it's gonna
be the same qualities, the same Zoom size,
the same positioning. So I'll say Paste
Attributes to both. And it would work like magic here. So I'm going to be using my
rectangle tool right here. And I'm going to be
creating a cupboard for this, for these imperfections. So once I have this, I'll go back to my
selection tool. I will fit it to the
edge of the screen. And I will go to
my shape editor. You see the shape
here. It shows here. By the way, if not all of these functionalities
are showing, I suggest that you
go to your window and Press workspaces and
select editing mode. That's how all of
these functionalities will show at the same time. So go back to my
rectangle and then I press on my eye dropper
tool because this isn't exactly white and I want it
to look like this color so that it can cover the edge
that I don't want shown. Now I'm going to be
increasing the size of this. I like this size of the rectangle so that it
looks like a seamless frame. Everything that's just
cropped out though. So that's okay. Now
to the fun bit. And we're going to go
to the very beginning. And I'm going to be
increasing the speed, sore. Right-click Speed, Duration 200. I'm going to experiment two to 50 and see
what it looks like. Already cropped it a lot. See it's less than
five-minutes along now. I want this to be 250 as well, so I'll just say 25200, okay. Because already a small video and I want the last one
to stay as it is now. We'll get to the fine tuning. I hope it won't take us long. There was a mistake
in the beginning, so I'm going to be
canceling that. See, I, just by speeding
up your cursor, you can see how it looks
like an animations, right? So I made a mistake
here or a drill, the bubble diagram,
and I didn't like it, so I canceled it
and I started over. And that's the part
I want to cancel. See, it's until this part. Now, by pressing Q, you can remove
everything that comes below or before the cursor. You see the blue
cursor over here. If I press on q, is going to be deleting
everything before that point. And if I press W is it can delete everything
after that point, but I don't want to
press that right now. I might use that later. So I'm going to
be going forward. You see the different
speech bubbles being built. And so far it looks good. I don't think I need
to edit anything else. Right? Maybe I just have
to speed it up here. I want to speed it up
to 400 times the speed. Okay. Because I want this to be less than a minute long,
thirty-seconds as possible. So yeah, I want it to be
much faster than this. So I'm gonna go maybe 1,000. It can be too fast.
Okay. 800. 800 for now. Let's see what I would cut all the parts where
these show, this shows. So that's what I'm
gonna be doing now. You see Cut, Cut tool and then either cute
to remove everything before the cursor point or W to move everything after
the cursor point and automatically stick the
next part to the party. We're just editing. Think
it's pretty good shortcut. Okay. Now I'm going
to be increasing, Sorry, decreasing the speed here because I feel like
it goes way too fast. So I left in the, he, he, he liked the
silly goose laughing. And we see how it looks. The birds are added
way too abruptly. Let's see how that looks like. Everything is added
way too abruptly. Actually, let me decrease
the speed a little bit here. A little bit so that I'm going to
make it as easy to do you call it consistent
among the others. So I want to pick something that I can fit into the
other textboxes, the textboxes I made so that they can fit each
word of the joke. Very lame joke that my
sister told me and I stole. I still say it so I
guess I'm a name. So I'm going to increase this maybe a
little bit, make it 33. Okay, I think this
is good enough. Okay. So where does
the box first appear? I want to give the
illusion that it appears along with the box. Actually say something
and it appears with her. So the box get colored. And then immediately
this appears. This appears yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah. And then I wanted to go on until the
textboxes disappears. So I'm just going to extend the textbox until the point
where it's all rubbed away. So I think this is where it
starts getting rubbed off. So yeah. Let me make this speed
a little slower. Maybe to 70. Now, I'm ready to continue
the rest of the joke. Move to the next text
box. She's a car. It's interests issues I
have with this leaf neat. I'm going to move
the text box to the top and then to the right. I don't know why
this isn't working. So Alt and dragging an item
is just going to copy it, pressing Alt, log pressing
Alt and then dragging it. So I just want there to
be enough feeling like the speech bubble to be full enough that
I can write on it. All right. What do you think
it's interesting? Isn't an inch. It's resting. Clockwork aka make those tweaks. But yeah, don't take it too far. It's better for her to
just be speechless. Now I'm gonna slap
on some music. I put some links to royalty-free music in the
projects and resources section in my description box, you can look for it there. There's audio library on YouTube that's really
rich in these tracks. So I think this,
this one is fine. We cruisin. Let me
put that snapshot on. Little music usually stop some, like add some life
to an animation. Now I want to add a film
dissolve just to fade to black. So very cheesy camera
or editing trick, but just want to gives me that conclusion feelings
sometimes. You think. So. I'll copy this. Paste it also to my frame so that it fits at the same time. I will export it as it is. And if you can synchronize it with the
music a little bit, then I think that's
that would make your animation look a lot cooler without you putting in
that much more effort. So class project, and
I'll share it now. That's it. That's it. It's done.
7. Closing: And we are done. If this is the first
time you creating a video like this,
m proud of you. And I hope that you can
share this snippet of what you've done with us in the projects and
resources section. I really hope you can
let me know what you think about this class style, about what else I can
include in future classes or anything else by reviewing this class and leaving a rating. If you share your
video on social media, please do so with the hashtag, easy animation with winter so that I can check
out what you're good. You can follow me out
with that so far on YouTube, Instagram,
telegram, medium, the links are in the description
below and watch any of my drawing related classes
here on Skillshare. And finally, if you've even
started drawing anything in the exercise section or
the class project section. I hope that you can take a screenshot of what
you've created so far and share it with us in the projects and
resources section, you can always add screenshots of your progress as you go. In. Frankly, it's more
inspiring to see the making off process of
the final project. And until next time, I hope your abundantly blessed
take care of yourselves. If you don't.
Winta Assefa, Architect & Visual Communicator
