Morphing Loops! Transform One Object into Another with Animation

1. Class Trailer: Have you ever wanted to learn how to animate dynamic morphing loops like this ones? Maybe you want to know how to transform one object into another one, or how to create a smooth and liquid transition. Or simply you need a cool animated GIF for your social media? Then this class is for you. Hi, my name is Giulia Martinelli, and I'm a full-time artist, animator and illustrator based in Zurich, Switzerland. I work with a various range of clients and studios worldwide, balancing commission with personal projects. Over the years, I learn how to make quirky animated loops and to play with morphing. I use this technique often in my practice for transitions to add some magic effect or to simply create funny animated stickers for social media. In today's class we'll focus on 2D, frame-by-frame morphing animation. In a few lessons, I will teach you how to create your own morphing loop from start to finish. I'll be sharing tips and tricks I've gained along my personal journey. I will guide you through every step. We'll start with a warm-up exercise and then move to the design and the actual animation process. If you have any animation software, that's awesome, but also pen and paper could work. This class is for you, if you are a creative of any level who wants to learn how to play with morphing. At the end, you'll leave this class with your own original morphing loop, and with the tools to push it forward. Whether you want to explore this animation technique or you want a new creative talent, I cannot wait to see what you're going to come up with. See you in class [MUSIC] 2. Introduction: [MUSIC] Welcome to the class. Morphing is a special effect in motion pictures and animation that changes or morphs one image or shape into another through a seamless transition. What we're focusing on today is a 2D and drawn morphing created frame by frame. As you can see, a morphing is a sequence of drawings to go from one initial image to another one. For the final project, you will create your own personal design and together we will go through all the steps to animate the morphing loop. The ingredients for this kind of loops are too many images, one for the beginning, one for the end, and a quick animation in-between the two which is a sequence of drawings. For this to be a loop, of course, not only A will turn into B but then also B we'll go back to A. Let me show you some examples to better explain what I mean. In this loop, I made for an animated lesson of TED Ed. I needed to show all the insect's mouthparts. The animation moves from one structure to the next one. This one is an animated portrait I made for a VR exhibition. I first designed four faces that represent myself and my passions, and then more of the transition from one to the other animating the movement as a rotating sphere. In those examples, we don't have only two poses A and B but some more. However, in our project, we'll focus only on two key poses to keep the exercise quick and easy. For the purpose of this class, I created a bunch of useful resources for you. Pause this video and go to the resource section to download them. There you will find some bonus material and some worksheets. I would refer to those in the next lessons. Talking about tools for the animation. I'm going to use Animate CC from Adobe. But it's not necessary to have this specific software or any animation software at all to follow and understand this class. No matter what tools you have on hand the skills I'm going to teach you work in any case, and you can apply them to your situation. Finally, a quick note about style. Keep in mind that not every morphing is going to look the same. Actually, one thing I love about morphing is that it's a very free technique. Don't hesitate to be flexible with your process and remember you can always go back to these essential tips and techniques. During this class, I'm going to create my own project together with you and I'm going to break down the process step-by-step. Up next, a little bit of useful terminology we're going to be using in this class. [MUSIC] 3. Basics & Terminology: [MUSIC] Without even trying to teach all the basics of animation into a three-minutes video, I thought I'd make this quick section about the terminology that we will need in the next lessons. Here are some important words and concepts we will use in the class. If you're already comfortable with those, feel free to skip this lesson. Let's start with a very basic concept, animation is a sequence of images. What we're doing is called frame by frame animation because we're actually drawing every single frame without using some computer-created interpolation. For our project we will be focusing on two main key poses, A and B. The in-between images will be our animation, the journey to transform objects A into object B. Key poses are the most important poses of an animation. In our case, they are the frames in which our two objects are depicted. Timing and spacing are two very crucial concepts and fundamental principle in animation. Typically in animation, one second is created by 24 frames. If we want to move from A to B in one second, we might want to fill the in-between frames with images. Timing is the amount of frames it takes for an action to take place. More drawings between poses give the viewer a slow and smooth action, while fewer drawings give the viewer a faster and crisper action. Spacing is the distance an object moves within a defined time for that action. It is also the distance it moves for every frame of that action. Spacing always works along an arc and denotes acceleration or deceleration. Smear frames in animation are those that create an illusion of motion blur. They are actually very quick, usually one frame long. Very fun and quirky to create. They can be very useful for our morphing, moving from one pose to the other. This is an example from my latest short film, Marea. The characters move very quickly towards each other. In this action, some smear frames were necessary to convey the fast movement. Follow through is the idea that loosely connected parts of a body or an object will continue moving after the character has stopped. Overlapping action is a similar idea in that it describes how different parts of a body or objects tend to move at different rates. We will use this when reaching the key pose to soften the arrival movement. For instance, in this loop, you can see how the plants are still moving while the head already arrived into position. We can say that some elements for example in this case the plants, arrive into position with a delay. Those are the most important and specific terms we're going to use in this class. Now, enough with the theory. In the next lesson we're finally starting to draw, so get your tools ready and see you there. [MUSIC] 4. Warm-Up: Let's start to warm up our animation muscle with an exercise. This is a good way to get your creative juices flowing. You can do it on paper or digitally. Go get your warm-up worksheet in the resource section and follow along. As you can see on this worksheet, we have different columns. On the left is the initial image A, and on the right is the final one B. Those boxes in between are where our morphing will happen. A is the image we're starting with, and B is the image we want to end with. Our goal is to fill up the spaces in-between and morph A into B. Now, how to start filling those boxes, you might ask. On the top right corner is the timing chart. This provides essential information for us to know how to proceed with the animation. Timing charts are tools to show how many drawings go between each key-frame and shows in a simple way how each drawing related to the other. Remember, the closer the drawings the slower the movement. This timing chart has a slower beginning, a fast movement in the middle and then it is slowing down towards the final key pose. We'll start with the middle image and move towards the key poses. The trick is always drawing the middle image and refer back to the chart if you get lost. The middle pose between A and B is four and we will start with that. What is in the middle between A and four, three, and then between A and three it's two and so on like that. Of course, the more we're getting close to the key pose, the more similar the image will look to the final pose. The great Roman numbers are showing the order we'll follow to draw the frames. I am bringing the worksheet on my animation software to work on it digitally. But you can also go on on paper. I want to retrace the initial and final frames A and B and position them in the timeline. I'm also drawing the timing chart on top to make this process clearer. This is the first drawing so I draw a circle around number 1, and here is our final pose so the star will turn into a moon with the nose. Use the onion skin and make sure that the two key poses are overlapping. Here you go. Our key poses are already in place and we can start animating. As you can see, this is the middle frame 4, and I'm going to start here drawing the in-between image, activating the onion skin I can see the previous and the following frame. If you're working on paper, a light table or a window could be useful, especially for a more complicated design. I'm drawing the first in-between. I need to imagine how the star will morph into the moon. What I'm doing here is to find the middle point for every vertex for a linear animation. For each vertex, I'm drawing a point which is in-between the A pose and the B pose. This is my first in-between. Don't worry if it looks weird, I think it's supposed to. Of course, the more we'll approach the key pose, the more the drawing will resemble it. Now we move on doing the same process. I want to draw the next in-between, between A number 1 and 4 that we just drew is three. This one is going to look a little more like a star and again, I look for the middle position, starting with the vertex of the star. Done. Now, I do the same thing for the other side. Number 5, between 4 and 7. This one, of course, we will look more like a moon instead. I played through quickly to see what is the current situation. Now I draw the last two in-betweens. Here it is. First thing I notice is that it is very fast. In fact, at the moment, the initial and final poses last only one frame like every other drawing. I'm going to make the initial and final pose longer, like three frames. Then color the frames to better see the morphing. Of course, for this to be a loop, the moon will need to go back to the star. Because we drew a very linear morphing and the shape is very simple it will be enough to copy the same drawing's going back to the star. I made a second warm-up exercise and this time I'm going to show it faster. We're morphing this vase into a doughnut. The first thing I notice is that both images have a round shape in them and that the doughnut has a hole in the middle. During the morphing, we will need to create this hole, the height of the two objects is the same, which is something to keep in mind, and a good reference that will help us during the animation process. For my morphing, I imagined the round shape of the vase to expand, incorporating the upper part while the hole opens from the middle. [MUSIC] Here we go. Lastly, here is an idea for making the exercise harder. Use your initials or any other letter and morph them. I want to show you this exercise I did. G and M are very different shapes. The first one is very round and the second very pointy morphing can allow us to cheat a little bit sometime. In this case, I twisted the G and pop it into the next position, improvising in the in-between frames. [MUSIC] Bottom line here is try it out, experiment, and have fun with morphing in order to find creative solutions. Here they are. Our warm-up exercises are done so have fun and morph basic shapes. I even made an empty warm-up worksheet if you want to draw your own key poses. If you liked this exercise and you think you could do some more, try again with another couple of shapes, maybe two letters or maybe even a word. You can push it forward. You can add some details. You can add color. Go ahead and share in the project section your warm-up exercises. When you're satisfied with your warm-up, we can move to the actual project. In the next lesson, we're going to start designing our key poses. [MUSIC] 5. Design: [MUSIC] We are now ready to tackle our class project and learn how to animate a full morphing loop. This is the time to brainstorm, design our two objects, the initial and the final one. It is an important phase of the project because we define the shape, the colors, and we can start thinking about the character of our design and how it will move. These are the steps that we're going to follow. First, we're going to brainstorm and design the two main objects, our key frames. Then we will have to choose the colors and I will tell you why less is more. Finally, we will be planning the movement from A to B, and then again from B to A for a loop effect. Let's do it. Here are some tips from me then you could keep in mind while designing your key frames. To brainstorm, you can mind-mapping, pulling references, or just start doodling. What we have to do is to transform Object A into Object B. Now, we have to decide what's going to be the protagonist of our animation. It's time for your personal creative decisions. The two key frames are going to transform one into the other. They could be two random objects, but I think it's more fun if they are somehow related. Maybe there are too opposites like a balloon and a cactus, or maybe they are part of the same process like a caterpillar and a butterfly. Try to give them more or less the same volume. This is going to make the animation process easier. Draw with a minimal palette in mind, two or three colors top. Try not to add too many details. Try to avoid human figure and anatomy, with the exception of faces, which actually work pretty good in my experience. Start doodling and follow your free-flow. Don't be too precious, don't worry about the outcome. Depending how comfortable you feel, start with a simple object transformation, maybe a text or a face. Starting a level you feel comfortable with, you can always take the exercise a second time and challenge yourself a little more. Let's talk about color palette. Why does it have to be minimal? In traditional animation, the easier the design the more efficient the production. Even more for morphing, it is crucial to have a minimal palette. The colors are going to guide the eye and help our transformation to look smoother. For this reason, it is important to be aware of the volumes and use blocks of colors which move consistently throughout the frames. In the resource section, you will find some color palette, tips, and inputs in case you don't know where to start. For my project, I'm going to animate two heads. In particular, after a lot of doodling, I came up with this idea. I thought it could be fun to transform the big bad wolf into the little red riding hood. To play with this duality, like the bad and the good, male and female and all that jazz. I start doodling to define how the two heads of my characters will look like. You can see that they work around the same round shape to give them the same core and volume [MUSIC]. I am playing with complimentary shapes and composition and I try to keep the design simple, but adding some details. I like that the two characters are facing different directions here. In this way, she looks naive and unaware, and this creates more contrast. I noticed how the hood and the mouth of the wolf can have a similar shape. [MUSIC] I try out different character design ideas, compare them, and then start thinking about color. I start by using this dark green and pink, and I carefully try to include both colors in both designs. One is going to be mainly pink with some dark details and the other one is going to be the opposite, mainly dark with some pink details [MUSIC]. I make the nose of the wolf bigger than I usually do to have more pink in the design. At first, I thought about adding some pink also inside his ears, but then discarded this idea as I develop the design. Now that we're designing, we see the key poses side-by-side. But for the animation, I will overlay them so that they are in the same spot. I'm cleaning up my designs now. I use a clean basic brush because I'm animating inanimate where there is not a big choice for brushes. [MUSIC] During this cleanup phase, I decide the black works better. This is also the step in which I decide the details, especially for the facial expression of the girl, I drew many options trying to make her face more interesting. I also decide to get rid of the wolf's teeth [MUSIC]. In the end, I came up with a couple of different options, especially for the face of the girl, I had slightly different designs. I'd recommend if you have the time to go for a break or leave the design until the following day and come back to it with fresh eyes. Here are our final designs for our animation. Those are going to be the two key frames. Can you imagine how A will transform into B? For this phase, take all the time you need. My process was sped up, but it can take some time to find your final designs. Go ahead and show your key frames in the project section. [MUSIC] Let's now go on and think about the movement for the animation. [MUSIC] 6. Plan the Movement: [MUSIC] This is the phase in which we plan what kind of movement we want to have in our morphing, and how exactly A is going to turn into B. In fact, there are infinite ways to create a morphing. First of all, a morphing could happen on the spot, so the two key frames, A and B, morph into each other in the same place. Or the morphing could move to another part of the frame. This is going to be your decision. I'm going to animate on the spot, meaning that A, red riding hood, will transform into B, the wolf, remaining in the same spot of the screen. Secondly, how exactly can the key poses move and transform? A morphing can be completely abstract, where colors and shapes can morph and change to the final position. Or we can think about an action that our object or character can do. For example, a face can rotate, a mouth or a box can open, a flower can bloom. In my particular exercise, I want red riding hood to turn into the wolf and then the wolf to turn into red riding hood. I like the idea that the wolf can open the mouth and red riding hood could come out of the mouth. I also like the idea that it's completely the opposite of what happens in the story, so instead of getting into the mouth, she gets out. Now you can think about it, you can sketch what idea you have on paper or just brainstorm about the movement. But when you feel ready, we could start to go into a timeline. First thing to do is to put your two keyframes into the timeline, and if the animation is on the spot, we want to overlay them. The first thing I'm doing is to retrace our designs in the animation software. Especially if you plan to animate the colors separately, it is useful to have them on separate layers. With the help of the onion skin, I can check if the two key poses are perfectly on top of each other. Regarding the timing, just to start off, we can start with one second fix the image. Image A, one second is the animation loop, and then one second again still image, but this time it's the final one, B. Of course, if we want to animate a loop, we'll still going to have to add another one second of morphing from B to A. We could play it back and check if the timing is working, and maybe seeing our two images with this timing could also start helping us imagine how we want the animation to be. A little reminder about our timing chart. I'm going to follow this structure and plan as low movement at the beginning, then a rapid middle phase, and a deceleration approach in the second keyframe. Remember that the more far apart the drawings are, the fastest the animation will be. The closer the drawings are, the slower the animation will look. What we want to do is to have an animation that goes from A to B, and start slow, goes faster in the middle, and then slow down again when reaching B. After checking the timing and imagining the movement, maybe you want to make some loose sketch or rough. This step is totally optional, especially if your design is quite simple, maybe you don't need to go through a rough stage, but I actually always like to do this. My rough are very bad and quite ugly, but this helps me to understand what kind of movement I can plan, so as you can see, I'm just testing things out and I'm going to do many many roughs before I finally find the movement I like. If you feel more confident with animation, you can plan a more dynamic movement or an action. For example, what I'm doing with the mouth of the wolf. If you're starting out with animation, it might be enough to animate a linear transformation of the shape. Play more with colors instead of with the character itself. In this sped up video, I'm testing out my idea for the movement. I imagine what could happen. I'm planning to make the girl come out of the mouth of the wolf while they rotate. She will then rotate and reveal the wolf as her hood swooshes past. I start to imagine how the girl can turn to the left, and the wolf appears from behind her hood. At this point, my drawings are very rough, only helping me understand if the idea could work. The bow of her hood can help us giving direction. While the wolf appears, it is important to see both characters at the same time in the same frame, so that it is not red riding hood anymore, but it's also not the wolf yet. Playing it through or flipping through the frames helps checking if the movement could work. Here, I'm trying to imagine how the wolf will open his mouth. I had an anticipation, which is a preparation for the main action, and movement towards the opposite direction before the main action starts. So before the wolf goes up with his mouth, there's going to be a couple of frames in which he goes down. I will do the same thing for the girl later, adding a little anticipation before she starts her rotation. The frame in which the girl comes out of the wolf's mouth was not easy. I drew it many times before finding a solution. During this phase, you start to adjust the timing. We started with one second key pose and one second morphing. But maybe as we go we realize the movement is going to be faster. Going back to the wolf, I realized that the mouth was opening too slowly, so I redrew the pose of the mouth opening. I think the mouth of the wolf could open differently and could work better. It needs to keep turning while the kid comes out. Inside of the mouth, there could be a pink shape that could at first look like it's the tongue of the wolf, but then it's going to be the red hood. The girl comes out with closed eyes and opens them while turning and going into position. At the end of this phase, I get an idea of the movement and the timing I want my animation to have. Now that you have an idea of the movement you want to make, and you already have your key poses in the right place. Now, you're ready to draw all the in-between frames to bring your morphing to life. Go ahead and share in the project section your work in progress and the movement you are planning to animate. See you in the next lesson, where we finally jump into animation. [MUSIC] 7. Animation: [MUSIC] Now that we have our plan, let's dig into animation. The rough for the first morphing works already pretty well, so I start there. I clean up the poses that I sketched. This is the girl starting to turn left. The wolf will appear under the hood as she goes. The round shape of her head stays in place while the hood, the eyes, nose, and mouth rotate. The bow of the hood is a very important detail. It helps us giving sense of movement. I draw a little smear for the cheek. It gets squashed as she quickly turns. Also, the brows are stretched. The brush strokes help to convey the movement. Let's draw the next in-between. You can see the previous drawing in overlay and the following one. As she keeps turning and almost disappears look at the bow here. It really helps us feeling the rotation and giving a sense of motion. The ball will be pink, so it will be a nice pop-in trail of color I leftover of the girl while the wolf is already in the frame. This will help making the transition smoother. [MUSIC] Also, the tip of the hood helps us convey the rotation. Now, drawing the in-betweens to bring the wolf into his position. He will open his eyes gradually until it reaches the key pose. We can still see a little bit of pink behind him. Look at the hood here. We need to make it disappear. It's bushes past and I'm going to add a little tail in the last frame, our last little piece of hood before it disappears completely. Here I'm adding the ears from the wolf peeking out. It's the first frame we see some parts of the wolf. In this way, the hood is covering the wolf and then revealing him. It is important to have a hint of the ears in the frame before to trick the eye. Now, I draw the in-betweens of the wolf arriving into position. He gradually open his eyes and turns. [MUSIC] I'm going to draw the pupils here and I'm going to keep them fix, like if the wolf was staring at the audience. Now the first morphing is done and works pretty good. The second one is still a mess, so let's get to it. This is the anticipation where the wolf goes slightly down before opening his mouth. I'm going to make him squeeze his eyes as it goes down. Now, let's clean up this action. The mouth needs to open much faster and rotate at the same time. Here comes Red Riding Hood. Here she comes out of the mouth while turning and opening her eyes. Time to clean up and draw some in-betweens. I'm going to draw many in-betweens here for the arrival of the girl into position to make the action smoother. An extra in-between also for the anticipation of the wolf. In this stage playing the animation, you realize if some timing adjustments are necessary and if some extra drawings can make the actions smother. As you can see one thing is missing. The mouth of the wolf closing and then disappearing. Let's draw it. That's done. Now, it's time to clean up some frames that are still rough and then color. Good job. You did the biggest chunk of animation. This process can be quite long. Again, I've been speeding up my process. Take your time. If you have the chance, leave it there for a while, go for a walk, go for a cup of tea and come back with fresh eyes. This could help a lot. In the next lesson, we're going to polishing up a little bit the animation and export it. [MUSIC] 8. Final Touches: Almost there. Our morphing loop is animated, we just have to polish it a little bit and add some final touches to make it perfect and then we can move to export. If you haven't done it yet, this is a good time to go ahead and color your frames. One thing that helps me to spot mistakes and oversights is to lay a bright color as a background. This makes the coloring mistakes pop out, like in this case. In this phase, I played through the animation and see if there is anything that needs to be polished or fixed. Sometimes the timing needs to be a little adjusted, maybe the key poses need to stay a little longer or as me here could be faster. I realized that the pink nose is not working in this sequence where the wolf disappears. During the animation phase, I drew the nose but ended up deleting it while coloring because it didn't make any sense to make the color pink reappear only for two frames. I can also draw some lines of movements which are basically small smears. They add a nice touch to your morphing. In this case, I added some pink color following the movement of the hood. I don't get it right at the first attempt. It is okay to try it out and delete it if it doesn't work. I did the same thing with the opening of the wolf's mouth, adding some white lines. While the main action is in-between the two key poses, I found it very useful to add small animations to the poses themselves. Red riding hood and the wolf are our main protagonist. This is the reason why their designs stay for many frames on screen. It is important to see them and recognize them, so the pause after the morphing animation is important. But a nice touch is to give them a little life in their stillness if it makes sense. I usually like to add small actions for the key poses. For this reason, I added a blink for the little girl and a little sparkly effect for the wolf. For the girl, I also added a follow-through for the bow in order to get a smoother settle. As you can see at the moment, it is early animated. I'm going to add some in-betweens, a follow-through, and an overshoot. It's called overshoot when the movement goes beyond the final position and then comes back and settles. Here are some other examples and ideas for smaller secondary actions. As mile, a follow-through of some elements like earrings, a scarf, hair, plant hair, a tear, their reflection on the sunglasses, a wink, et cetera. Another useful tip can be to give different timing, two different elements, offsetting, for instance, the arrival of some effects. For example, if you want to add both a wink and a sparkle effect to your key pose, it's better if they don't happen with the same timing. When I'm satisfied with my animation, what I usually do is to export my loop in different formats. Mp4 and GIF are the most useful ones for me. Sometimes I also need a SWF or a PNG sequence. In this way, I have all I need for all the possible platforms and usage. In the project section of this class, you can upload a GIF. In the next lesson, we wrap up things and I'm going to tell you all you can do now with your animated morphine loop. 9. Wrapping Up: [APPLAUSE] Congrats, you made it. You created your own animated morphing. Here is a little recap of what we learned. We learned a little bit of a morphing, some basics of animation, we did a warm-up exercise and then we move into the design of our keyframes. Then we planned the movement, then we animate it, we polished the animation, we exported it, and we just made it. High-five. [APPLAUSE] [NOISE] How to use this morphing and how to push it forward? You can use your morphing as an animated sticker or GIF. Those are great for social media, but also for newsletters and presentations. Recently, many animation festivals started to include a GIF selection as well. This morphing could become your next submission. Your morphing could also be part of a transition in a bigger animation or a short film. Take again the class, if you would like to challenge yourself and try something harder. Practice is good to make your morphing better. Try the exercise again and maybe challenge yourself a little more. Try something a little harder instead, maybe not only two key poses, but multiple ones as I did in this example. Instead of two colors, try three or four. [MUSIC] I cannot wait to see all the beautiful results and work in progress in the project section so be sure to upload it. Also you could share it on social media, tag me, and use the hashtag morphing loops. Thanks for taking my very first Skillshare class. It would mean a lot if you would let me know how you liked it and if you could recommend it to your friends. [MUSIC] Thank you for taking my class. [FOREIGN] [MUSIC]