Motion in Adobe Fresco: Bring Your Illustrations to Life with Easy Animation! | Sarah Nelson | Skillshare
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Motion in Adobe Fresco: Bring Your Illustrations to Life with Easy Animation!

teacher avatar Sarah Nelson, Artist and Illustrator

Watch this class and thousands more

Get unlimited access to every class
Taught by industry leaders & working professionals
Topics include illustration, design, photography, and more

Watch this class and thousands more

Get unlimited access to every class
Taught by industry leaders & working professionals
Topics include illustration, design, photography, and more

Lessons in This Class

    • 1.

      Introduction

      2:08

    • 2.

      Your Class Project

      1:16

    • 3.

      Adobe Fresco Tutorial

      12:53

    • 4.

      Paths

      6:23

    • 5.

      Frames

      4:26

    • 6.

      Create Your Dancer

      5:57

    • 7.

      Adding Color

      3:39

    • 8.

      Zhuzh

      5:11

    • 9.

      Export + Share

      4:03

    • 10.

      Final Thoughts

      1:20

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About This Class

Have you ever wished that your drawings could move and groove without needing to know in-depth animation programs??? WELL LET ME TELL YOU, your dream has come true and it’s time to make it real! Learn how to use the motion features in Adobe Fresco to bring your drawings to life! We will learn how to use paths and frames, two different approaches to motion in Adobe Fresco. While we explore and master these tools, we will bring a character to life with a fabulous living room dance party scene! Not only will we learn how to add multiple types of motion elements to our illustrations, but we are going to have a super fun time doing it! 

Time to get out your disco ball, turn on some tunes that make you want to move, and get to dancing… I mean drawing! 

What you will learn: 

  • The basics of Adobe Fresco and it’s tools
  • How to use the Paths motion tool
  • How to use the Frames motion tool
  • How to utilize small additions to really level up your animation
  • How to export and share your animation with the world! 

What you will need: 

  • IPad or Tablet 
  • An Apple Pencil or Stylus 
  • Adobe Fresco

By the end of this class you will be empowered to bring your own creative visions to life with motion in Adobe Fresco! Your animations will be ready for sharing on social media platforms like Instagram Reels and TikTok and of course our beloved Skillshare! Be sure to share it with Skillshare in the Class Project Gallery and on Tik Tok and Instagram!! 

Let us celebrate you and your fun creation! 

Be sure to find me at: 

@sarah_ann_nelson on TikTok and IG 

Sarahnelson.art 

Original music by the wildly talented John Mark Nelson. 

Meet Your Teacher

Teacher Profile Image

Sarah Nelson

Artist and Illustrator

Teacher



Hi! My name is Sarah Nelson and I am a full time artist and illustrator in sunny Los Angeles, CA.  

I am obsessed with our incredible planet, so most of my work is inspired by all the new things that I am learning about wild life and ecosystems. My usual project docket includes large scale (6+ft) pen and marker drawings for art exhibits or private commissions, and illustration work for clients using Adobe Fresco! 

In 2017 I quit all of my day jobs and became a full time artist. I have had solo exhibits and participated in group shows around the country, all focused on environmental concerns and the overwhelming beauty of our natural world.

Some recent work highlights:

 - I completed a 3 minute fully... See full profile

Level: All Levels

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Transcripts

1. Introduction: Welcome to motion in Adobe Fresco, bring illustrations to life with easy ammunition. [MUSIC] My name is Sarah Nelson. I am an artist and illustrator in Los Angeles. I am so excited to introduce you to the world of Adobe Fresco motion. It has been such an amazing journey to learn these tools. For so much in my life, I have admired animation. But I've never felt like I could accessibly bring that to life with my own work, even on a small scale. Now it's possible. I've actually been using these tools to boost both my creative play and my creative career. These tools have allowed me to think differently about my creative practice. Then in the career world, I've actually been able to be hired to bring illustrations to life, to do music videos, to do promotional content. There's so many different ways that this can be useful. It's been so much fun. No matter what you're here for, whether you're here because you're just curious and you want to try something new or because you're trying to add some new skill sets to your tool belt so that you can get hired and broaden your ability to meet client needs, this class is for you. If you're new to Fresco, I've got a whole lesson that walks you through the whole program. If you're new to animation, we're going to walk through those tools step-by-step, and by the end of this class you're going to have put all of this knowledge together into one beautiful animation of a character of your own design. Having a wonderful little living room dance party full of ambiance, color, lights, everything. It's going to be really, really fun. I had a blast working on this. I really think you're going to enjoy this class. For this class, you're going to need an iPad, an Apple pencil or something similar like a tablet or a stylus, and then you're going to need the program Adobe Fresco. I highly recommend having a playlist, full of dance party inspired music. This class is going to teach you the things you need, but it's also just meant to be really fun. Follow what makes you smile and just let yourself have fun. I'm really, really excited to see what you'll make. I cannot wait to celebrate your projects with you in the class project section. Please share them with me. Let's get this party started. [MUSIC] 2. Your Class Project: [MUSIC] I'm so excited to talk about this class project. We are going to create a living room dance party for the character of your own design, from start to finish. We're going to use pads, we're going to use frames, both of Adobe Fresco's motion tools to create spinning disco balls, falling confetti, lights in the background. We're going to create a dancer that is busting a move and we're going to add color to them, we're going to add patterns to them. We're really going to figure out how to bring as much of our illustration to life in the motion settings as possible. Then we're going to press Play and bust and move ourselves perhaps, and share it with the world. I'll walk through how you can share it on social media, I'll walk through how you can share it on Skillshare because the world needs to see your amazing creation. I cannot wait to see the Project Gallery full of dancers. You'll need a tablet or an iPad, an Apple pencil or a stylus of some kind. You'll need to have Adobe Fresco. You can find that in the App Store. I am so excited to see what you create. Let's put on some party music and hop into the Adobe tutorial, and if you're familiar with Adobe Fresco, feel free to skip that lesson. I'll see you in pads. 3. Adobe Fresco Tutorial: [MUSIC] Let's open up Adobe Fresco and get started. Let's talk about this home screen. You can see current projects are stacked below the Canvas options. Click "Create New", and make sure that yours is 9 by 16 portrait instead of landscape. This is a perfect Canvas option for Tiktok or Reels. I also really like to have my DPI to 300, which is just talking about your resolution. The higher that number is, the higher your resolution will be. Three-hundred is my preferred option, just so that I can get more detail into my Canvas as I work. When I have all my settings in order, I can click "Done" and my Canvas appears with my program menu wrapped around the edges of my screen. First things first, in the top middle, there's this untitled title. If I tap on that, it allows me to rename my file. With the little keyboard that shows up, I can type in what I want the name of the file to be. Then under that naming area, there's also this option to save. I like to save regularly throughout my project just in case something happens. Next up we have brushes. You can find our brushes on the top left side of our screen. The first one is our Pixel Brush menu. I have a long set of brush categories. I have the ones that Adobe Fresco naturally comes with, but then I also have a whole bunch of additional Kyle's brushes and Adobe Fresco brushes, which you can do also by clicking that fancy plus. It'll open up a window where all of their sets of brushes are available just by clicking on the Follow, and it'll import the brushes into your program. Now let's look at some of the pixel brushes. You can see there are two menus, one that is a list of my brush categories and then another one that says favorites. This is a shortcut to a list of brushes that I use the most. You can select favorites by going to any brush that you like, then when you select brush, you'll see a little star that appears. If you click on the star, it will automatically enter that brush into your Favorites menu. I'm going to start with one of my favorite brushes, Kyle AM watercolor paper brush. Pixel brushes can hold so much variety in how they handle and express the texture, opacity, and even how they respond to pressure and layering. Every single pixel brush acts a little bit differently. The thing that pixel brushes cannot do is to create infinitely scalable illustrations. At some point, the pixel image does start to pixelate, meaning you can see the individual pixels and the image looks less clear. You can obviously still create incredibly large images by working with high-resolution, aka DPI Canvases, but they'll still eventually reach a limit in their printable size. You'll always know when you're working with a pixel brush because you'll see that on the layer that you're actually working on, we'll have a little symbol with the pixel grid inside of the circle. If you are on that layer, it'll tell you by showing it with a blue rim. Knowing what layer you are working on can be super important when you're working on complex projects or using a variety of brush types. Make sure that the one that you think you're working on is actually highlighted. Next up, we have our live brush menu. They are made to mix, look like, bleed like actual watercolor and oil paints. There's a small selection of each of these types of brushes in the watercolor and oil menus. You can see when I use the watercolor brush that it starts to bleed and expand and interact with my previous marks, almost exactly like watercolor can actually do on paper. Now when I add an oil brush, you can see the texture that it naturally comes with really follows the same as a brushstroke on a Canvas. They also blend really similarly too. Side-note as I'm demonstrating, you may have noticed that I'm pinching in and out in order to zoom in and out of my Canvas. This is an amazing shortcut tool. Next up we have vector brushes. These are exciting and unique to Adobe Fresco. When I select and start drawing with a vector brush, you can see that it immediately adds a new layer on top of my pixel layers and has a new label, which is that little icon, but it's a filled-in circle this time instead of that grid. Vector and pixel brushes are two very different types of brushes and cannot mingle on a single layer without the vector becoming a pixel stroke, which will happen if I merge this layer down into the other two layers. When we look at the Vector Brush menu, you can see that there are a few brushes. The variation is not really textural, but actually in the line quality. They are magical because they do not lose any clarity no matter how far you zoom in. Under vector brushes, we also have erasers. The first thing that I want you to notice is that our erasers will shift. If we have selected a vector layer, we will get vector erasers. If we select our pixel layer, we'll get [LAUGHTER] pixel eraser. The Smudge tool only works on pixel layers and can be adopted to mimic any smudge quality that we have referenced in our pixel brush types. Then we have our transform tool that allows us to transform objects on our selected layer. We can move, scale, mirror, flip. There's so many options and so many things we can do with this tool to make sure that our marks are able to do their best work. One thing to note is that vector and pixel layers transform differently. Pixel layers are restricted to the Canvas. If you scale a pixel layer beyond the limits of the Canvas and tap Done, the pixel layer will be cropped to fit that Canvas size. Vector layers can be scaled and moved outside of the Canvas and will not be cropped. But if you decide to export the piece, anything that is not shown on a Canvas will not be exported along with the image. Let's talk about our selection tool. You have a few options here. If you double-tap the icon, it will offer several types of selection options. For this demonstration, I'll just use the general selection tool where I can trace the outline or the shape I want to have selected. Once I've done that, you will see another menu specific to my selection appear in the bottom part of the screen. I can transform, erase, or mask my selected area. Just remember that it will only select on the layer you're actually on. You can adjust your selected layer by again, tapping on the layer you actually want to work from. Next we have the famous Fill Bucket. There are many ways to use this tool to create backgrounds, fill in shapes or linework with a new color, but for now, I'm going to fill in an entire Canvas on a new layer. As soon as I click on the entire Canvas, there's menu that pops up asking if I want vector or a pixel fill. This is important if you're working with vector brushes, and you want to keep your file consistent. It's time for our Shape tools. Just like with brushes, you can tap on the Plus button to follow new shapes. I like to use the comic strip images. I'm going to use this pow type symbol. I'm going to select a new color so that my symbol actually shows up. It'll give me options to erase, fill. You can discover many different ways to use this. The next menu item on our sidebar is the Text tool. I can select this and then tap on my Canvas and a little text box filled with gibberish is going to appear. It will also open a new menu on the right side of my screen, which is going to be specific to the Text tool. It's going to have font options, general text settings. When I tap on the actual textbox, a keyboard image will appear, and I can tap that in order to type in my preferred texts. Also notice that it automatically creates a new layer and that layer is marked with a T, which indicates that it is specifically a text layer. Next, this is our color picker. When selected, we get a little circle divided in half, and as we drag it over our Canvas, we can see that the colors inside of the top half are changing and the bottom half is consistent with the currently selected color. In the top right as you're doing this, it will also give you your hue saturation and brightness numbers just in case you want to find a matching color. There's also this new setting on the color picker, it looks like a pie shape, and you start to drag your sphere over the Canvas just like we did before. You'll start to see that it's picking up a whole bunch of colors, starting to select everything that it sees within the half-sphere shape. In the color preview circle where it shows you what color is selected, you'll start to see a sample of this wide range of color selection. To demonstrate what this can look like, I'm going to start to draw, and you can see that it's painting with all of those colors. Lastly, when I tap on that circle with the color sample, I also want you to see that it now shows up in my recent color selections. Below the color picker, we have a Picture icon. If we tap on that, it creates this menu where we can access our camera, we can access photos or files, or even our Adobe Cloud in order to import something specific onto our Canvas. We're finally to our color selection sphere. This icon shows us the currently selected color. If we tap on it, the entire color wheel opens up. The sphere helps us find colors and hues that we're looking for. Once we have selected a color that we're excited about, all we need to do is adjust the tone by moving the second dot in that square that's inside of the circle. Below the color wheel, we also have our opacity scale, and then we have the hue saturation and brightness, which can help us find a more exact color if we are trying to reference something specific from a different file or a different project. We also have our Recents menu which logs our colors that we've used throughout this Canvas and even remembers the level of opacity that we use it at. Then beneath the color selection sphere, we have a whole bunch of brush settings where we can change our brush size and we have smoothness and flow settings. Let's move to the top right corner next. These arrows are probably very familiar; undo and redo. Next we have our Help button, which includes access to helpful tutorials, has inventory to the shortcuts, and gestures that will help us gain easy access to things like eraser, zooming in, zooming out. Then we have an exciting ability to share in-progress work by creating virtual links to our current work. If you're working with a client or collaborating with another artist, this is a great way to share work without constantly exploiting new files. Any comments that are left by stakeholders or collaborators will show up in a little speech-bubble that's on the right-hand menu. Next step we have a big one. It's the box with the arrow coming out of it. This is the Export menu. It has so many options. We'll go into this menu more in depth in a later lesson. Next, we have our Canvas settings and we can revisit our basics like Canvas size, resolution, some of the things that we set up right at the beginning. If we need to change those, we can do that here. The two diagonal arrows allow us to change our screen into full-screen. We have a layer stack button that allows us to reveal or hide our layers. Then we have our Layer Properties menu, depending on the layer type that you've selected, your menu will change. The Layer Opacity tool will affect everything that's contained in that layer. Then we have this icon with a grid in it. This is a Drawing Grid tool. You can create a general grid, but it also gives us the opportunity to work in one-point, two-point, or three-point perspective. You can even change the horizon line and the vanishing points. Next up, we have that speech bubble, which is where you can find the comments left by those that you've shared your file with. Then we have a box with a plus sign which allows us to create new blank layers. As a side note [LAUGHTER] on layers, you can reorganize layers by holding down on the layer you want to move, and you can move them up or down in order. Just remember that whatever layer is at the top of that stack, that is going to cover up whatever remains underneath it. The Eye icon allows you to hide or reveal your selected layers or groups of layers. Then you have the Mask Creation button, which will allow you to create a mask for the layer below using the current layer that you've selected. After that, we have the Color Balance menu that allows you to change the brightness, saturation, and it will affect all of the layers below the one that you've currently selected. It appears as its own layer and you can drag it up and down in-between your layers. It's not necessarily only applying to the layer that you've selected at the moment, it's a setting that you can shift throughout your stack just by holding it and dragging it. We have finally made it to our Menu option that is specific to motion. This whole class is about this menu, and I'm very excited to dive into it. When we click on the layer, we want to use the motion components for it. Then you can tap on the Motion icon. You'll see this new menu appear at the base of the screen. It offers Play, Pause, Path, and then if you tap on Path, an Effects menu will open. Then we also have the Setting menu. Above the selections, there's a new series of what look like layers in a horizontal row and a plus sign next to them. These are frames. Below the Motion Menu button, there is our Ruler icon. If I tap on that twice, I can see that there are a few options and my traditional shape options are tucked into this icon as well. We have the circle, square, and a polygon along with the ruler. My goodness. That was a lot to cover. Thanks for sticking with me. I hope this has helped you feel pretty equipped to navigate this platform before we dive into the rest of this class and more specifically into motion. I am so excited to see what you create in Adobe Fresco, and I'm so excited to dive into this class with you. Let's do this. Next step, we're going to talk about paths and we're going to start our motion journey. [MUSIC] 4. Paths: [MUSIC] It's time for paths. I am so excited to dive into motion in this great and wonderful world of Adobe Fresco with you. Let's start by opening up a brand new canvas with the settings of nine by 16 in the real or Tiktok format. We want to make sure it's at 300 DPI for high-resolution. Add that new layer right away by clicking on that little box with the plus sign. There are two types of motion tools that we're going to talk about in Fresco and we're going to use both of them in order to complete this class project. In the last lesson we went through all of the menu options, and towards the end of the run-through, we saw all of the different motion tools, including this fancy thing called paths, which is the first type of animation that we're going to talk about. I'm going to use my pencil pixel brush. This is one of the standard Adobe Fresco brushes. You can find it in the sketching menu. We're going to test the paths animation effects. To do so I'm just going to draw a super basic flower. Feel free to do the same if you want to try this for yourself. Now that I have my flower, I can tap the motion menu icon, and this menu at the bottom of my screen is going to appear and it's going to have this icon that says paths. Once I click on that, it will open up an additional side menu that we're going to look at shortly. But for now I need to create my starting point for my path, AKA my anchor point. Then I'm going to draw a path. I'm going to do this winding line down to the bottom of my canvas, and when I've done that, I can tap play all and you're going to see this flower follows this line that I've created and then just pops back up to the anchor point in order to restart that path all over again. Now, let's look at the menu button that appears when I touch the effects button. I can see I have these blending modes which really won't affect this drawing too much because there's not enough going on. Under that we're going to see familiar settings like opacity. This could be really, really helpful in order to help an element not pop quite as much. We also have some fun and new effects, add multiples, scatter, fun things like that. Add multiples will literally add multiple versions of my flower drawing and have them move along the path simultaneously. You can use the sliding scale underneath to determine how many copies you want to add to the motion effect. Then we have this cool thing called scatter, which allows the flower to change its interpretation of the path, making it more of a general reference and not a strict following of the path. If you've created multiples, it's going to do that effect on all of the multiples as well. The higher the bar goes on the scatter scale, the less strict it will be about following the path I created. We're also given these cool speed controls. It gives us some loose control over how the drawing might interpret the speed in which it travels the path. The original speed setting allows the way that I've drawn the path to be the interpretation of the speed, almost like I'm incorporating an element of gravity into the interpretation. Uniform speed regulates that speed, keeping it really consistent throughout the path. The easy in, easy out toggle, affects the way it starts and ends the journey along the path, and the frames element on this particular menu increases the rate in which you go through the frames or slows it down. This functions differently from other animation settings, which we'll see later. Next, we are given this aligned to pass toggle. When we turn that on, the image is going to turn and always face forward along the path, which is part of the reason we needed to draw our flowers so that we can see that it's actually changing its direction. Randomize, is going to change the way it interprets the path, which is pretty similar to scatter and depending on how you have drawn the path, its interpretation will vary. Now you know that there are ways that you can actually draw that path that can affect your motion settings. You may want to practice redrawing your path and in order to reset your path drawing, you can always click the X of your starting point and redraw the path. You can use turns, ups, downs, even variations on how quickly you make your lines in order to affect how your drawing navigates the path. Now though we have the basics of our paths well figured out, we can hide or delete our testing layer and add a brand new layer to start working on our fabulous living room style dance party. I'm so excited. I personally want a disco ball at my dance party so I'm going to draw a circle and start to add a grid of shiny and colorful tiles to my disco ball. You can use your pencil brush and on a new layer you can draw a circle, add your tiles just like I'm doing here. The disco ball doesn't have to be perfect. This is just for fun. If you need more time to finish up, please feel free to pause, put on some fun dancing tunes and rejoin me when you've finished drawing. Once I'm done with my disco ball, I'm going to keep that layer selected and I'm going to click on that motion tool again, and go straight to the paths option. I'm going to use my Apple pencil to draw the path that in my mind best reflects this slow spinning of a disco ball. Because I want just this small range of motion, I'm going to create a small loop and I'm going to start my path in the center of the ball just so that it doesn't move the ball up or down too much on my canvas. When I lift my pencil up, I can see that it's created just a slight sway. If you want to readjust your rotation, you don't like the way that it ended up, just feel free to click that X and try again. Also, note that how you draw the loop, left to right or right to left, is going to be the direction in which it starts to spin. I'm going to add a static line on a separate layer just so that the ball is actually attached to something on the ceiling and then next I want to add confetti to this party vibe. I'm going to revisit some of the colors I used in the disco ball, and on a new layer, I'm going to draw a scattered pieces of floating confetti. I'm going to draw them as if they are in various stages of falling. I'm going to add my anchor point, that fancy X in the relative middle of my confetti drawing and then I'm going to do a path moving straight down. Then I'm going to click on the paths, and I'm going to revisit that side menu that appears when I click on the Fx button and turn up the sliding scale for multiples. I'm going to increase the scatter field to spread out my multiples so that it looks like a lot of confetti falling fairly spread out but evenly from the ceiling. Then I can press play all, and watch the confetti lightly falling as my disco ball spins its magic. When I hit pause, it returns to that still image where only what I've actually drawn is visible. We did it. We have some super important party elements ready to go and in motion. This is so cool and now you also have a great understanding of how paths work. Now it's time to talk about frames and bring in our dancer. I cannot wait to see you in the next lesson. [MUSIC] 5. Frames: [MUSIC] Yay, it's frames time. This is personally my favorite form of animation on Fresco, and I'm so excited to dive in. Before we fully dive in, I want to talk about the basics of creating motion with frames. We're going to start on this new layer, we're going to tap the motion icon right away this time and instead of tapping paths, we're going to focus on that highlighted box that looks like a new layer with the plus sign next to it. These are our frames, and they're only frames for this layer that we're working off of. I'm going to hit the plus button until we have a total of five frames. It's going to show you how many frames you have, and which frame you're working on out of that total frame set next to the plus sign. Then we're going to scroll to the first frame and make sure that it's selected, and I'm going to draw a circle in the middle of my canvas, and give it a horizon line behind it in order to show the floor. Then I'm going to tap on the next frame, so two out of five, and I'm going to tap on my settings options so that I can turn on my onion skin. I'm going to flip that toggle on, and then there's a sliding scale, and I'm going to set it down to one. This scale determines how many layers will be lightly visible in the background while I work on this frame. This is an awesome tool to make sure that you create gradual transitions and keep details consistent. For this particular set though, I'm going to move it down to one so that I can only see the previous drawing. From here, I'm going to draw the same circle, but I'm going to draw it just hovering slightly above where the last circle was. Then, I'm going to redraw my horizon line in the same place as it was in the first frame. Then I'm going to select the third frame, and repeat the same transition. I'm going to make the sphere just a little bit higher, and I'm going to keep the horizon line consistent. I'm going to repeat this again for the next two frames, and then when I press "Play", it's going to look like a ball that's bouncing. It looks really fast, so I'm going to tap the settings menu again, and I'm going to change my frame rate. Frame rate determines how quickly it's going to move through the frames per second. Right, now it's set for 15 frames per second, but I only have five frames, so it's going to move extremely quickly. I'm going to move it down to five frames per second, and watch it bounce at a little less nauseating of a speed. Let's add a new layer, and hide or delete the layer with the bouncing sphere. It's time to take what we've learned, and translate it into a very basic moving figure. To go over this, I'm going to just draw a stick figure, you can do this with me. I'm going to go back to my motion menu for this brand new frame, and I'm going to add those five frames just like I did for this sphere, and after I've done that, I'm going to draw my very first stick figure drawing on the first of the five frames. Then I'm going to click on my second frame. I'm going to make sure that onion skin is on again with slide scale just revealing the most recent frame, and then I'm going to look at all the things that I can move. Unlike the sphere which could go up or down or sideways or change in shape, I can move the spine, I can move the arms and legs in, out, up, down, there's a lot of range of motion, and I can do even a slight combo of all of the above. It's up to me how I want to move my character, but I want to make sure that in each frame the range of motion is relatively small. I'm going to shift the movable elements just bit by bit each frame. I'm going to turn the head slightly by changing the shape of the head just a little bit. I'll shift where the face appears on the circle to emphasize that it's turning, and then I'll curve the back a bit, and move each arm and leg a little bit too. Then when I move on to my third frame, I'm going to see the faint lines from the second frame, and I'm going to use that as a reference to redraw my character in a slightly different position yet again. I'm going to move the head down just a little bit more, and then I'm going to use the position of the face to emphasize that again. I'm going to stretch out the arms a little bit more on both sides. I'm going to angle the back, move the left leg out a bit more and bring the right leg back a little bit. Now I'm onto frame 4, so this is my second to last frame I haven't selected, I'm keeping in mind that I'm one frame away from my final pose. Now I'm going to have him look up, and I'll raise the arm a little bit. I'll even shift his expression a little bit, and I'm going to move every limb a little bit more again. On my final frame, I'll move every movable feature a little bit more. Let's press "Play" and see how this character is moving. I may want to adjust something and I can do that just by going back through each frame and adjusting them as I see fit. I can adjust the frame rate again too to find the timing that looks best. We are equipped and ready to pull this together and bring our dancer to life. [MUSIC] 6. Create Your Dancer: [MUSIC] We're equipped and ready to pull this together and bring our dancer to life. Delete this stick figure or hide it and add yet another new layer. Let's start from the beginning. As a reminder for this project, this is really important. I highly recommend that you keep your character simple. Think one step above stick figure. You don't have to do a person, but you do want to have movable elements like limbs. You want to be able to move a face, arms and legs, the back. You want things that you can adjust throughout each frame. I'm going to, for fun, create a Cyclops. You do whatever will make you smile, but that you can also replicate over and over without too much of a headache. For my dancer, I'm going to add a total of 17 frames. In my first frame, I'm going to draw my Cyclops in some motion, but also as a starting position. Here we go. I'm just going to draw a circle for the head and a circle for the eye. I'm going to give my dancer a small single curl on the top of the head. A little bit of a baggy sweater, clubby hands just for minimal details, and wide-legged pants. Let's do some simple loafers. Again, I am keeping it simple, but I'm still giving it some personality. I'm going to set that onion skin to one frame at a time. I like to improvise my dance moves. If you have a specific move, pose, or jump you want your character to make, have that in the back of your mind. You want every single frame to move you a little bit closer to that position. You want to hit that main pose somewhere between the middle and the end of your 17 frames. Just remember to keep it within the range of your drawing capacity and don't make it too complicated. I decided I wanted a bit of a single leg lift and to end the move with an elegant bow. Simple, classy, but it is two poses. In my second frame, I'm going to start moving towards this leg lift pose. I'm going to try and keep my character pretty consistent. I'm keeping those rosy cheeks, hair is always going to move a little bit. Eye is going to move a little bit too. The mouth is shifting slightly and I'm going to adjust the movable body parts so that the arms go down a little bit, the legs move out a little bit, and maybe the other one's going to just increase in the bend and the feet will start to adjust slightly too. I'm going to follow this pattern throughout my next 15 additional frames for the total of the 17. I'm going to move on to Frame 3. I'm going to angle the arms, adjust the shirt to fit the shifting pose, and turn the head a little bit too. There's a lot of fun facial expressions that I'm going to really work on throughout these moves. Then I'm going to move the legs out in the motion that I started them in again, just taking it a step further every time. In Frame 4, I'm shaking things up a little bit more by dropping the eyelid and shifting the smile to a new expression, allowing the arm to fold over the chest and kick out the leg that's headed towards that final pose, lifting it a little bit further, and the supporting leg is going to get a little bit more of a dramatic bend. In the next frame, I'm going for that full blink and increasing that wobbly smile. The arm is going to get close to the heart in this next frame, and the other arm is going to fold in a bit more. I'm going to have the leg kick up a little bit more and I'm going to shift the feet into a position that helps it look more lifted. I'm going to keep making these slight adjustments across the next few frames until I've brought the leg all the way up and I have that supporting leg's foot fully on its toes. I'm going to adjust the eye and the facial expression too, to keep my character's personality shining, and I'll move those arms out. I'll even tilt the head back a little bit. I'm about halfway to my final frame. I'm letting that eye slowly open again, tilting the face, and we'll stretch out that back arm to really help keep the balance. The other arm is helping balance as well and we had the leg at full lift and that pointed toe. The Cyclops has nailed the move. Next, I want to go from this pose to an elegant employed bow. They're getting ready to accept the inevitable resounding applause. [APPLAUSE] It's time to start moving the arms and legs back down. Everything's coming back to center, which is going to take us a few frames to accomplish. We can add some bend back into those knees, flatten the supporting leg's foot. I'm bringing the arms back a bit towards center, keeping in mind that I want one of those arms out for the bow and one folded in over the body, making sure that as they fold in, they're moving towards this new pose that I'm looking for. Now, to start moving into the bow, I'm going to have the Cyclops fold over. In order to do that, I'm going to move the head down into the body and I'm going to show more of the back of the head. In order to emphasize that, the face is going to move down and the hair is going to feel more towards the center of the circle. Because our point of view in this dance scene is really straight on, so I know that I'm going to see more of the back of the head as they bow. I'm folding in the hand even further and allowing the hand to stretch wider. Now, I have to bring them back up and I'm going to start to have that head moves backward and the eye and the face is going to start becoming more visible. To improve the loop ability of this animation, I'm going to use this little trick. I'm going to bring my character back to what is a very similar pose to the starting pose. In order to do that, I'm going to scroll back to that very first frame. I'm going to tap on it and this frame menu will appear. I'm going to select "Copy Frame". Then I'm going to scroll all the way back to the last frame that I've done and click it twice that the same type of frame menu appears and I'm going to select "Paste Frame". Then I'm going to increase the onion skins that I can see very faintly both the previous and the upcoming, aka the final frame. This way as I'm drawing, I can create a couple of good in-between or transitional frames so that I end on that final frame. [MUSIC] We did it. Let's press "Play" and see how our dancer does. It looks so good. [APPLAUSE] I hope you're so proud of your little dancer. You made an animation. Oh my gosh, this is so exciting. This is so great on its own. But there is so much more that we can do, and for the heck of it, we're going to keep pushing forward and we're going to elaborate on this animation by adding some color, and later on, some zhuzh in the following lesson, so don't go anywhere. Hit that "Save" button. I'll see you in the next lesson. [MUSIC] 7. Adding Color: We have our dancing character, we have a disco ball, we have confetti. It is time to add some colors. I want to add a little vibe to this dance party and there's a disco ball involved. We know that the lights are turned low. I want to add a darker background. I'm going to select my Kyle AM watercolor paper brush. Honestly, you can use any brush that you prefer. I found this one in the Megapack brush set. I'm going to make it this dark grayish red for the room, and I'm going to add multiple layers of this color, not new digital layers, just layers of color. Every time I covered the background, I want to be sure that I'm not picking up my Apple Pencil so that the layer looks smooth and consistent, and when I'm done with the mark, I can pick it up and add another layer of color. Just making it slightly lighter around my dancer, giving them a bit of a spotlight. I don't need to do anything with the motion menu for this because it's going to stay static. On a separate layer, I can emphasize the darker aspects of the walls. This is just going to help the room have a feeling of depth. Yes, the setting has been set. Now it's time to start adding some colors to my dancer. I'm adding a new layer, and I'm making sure it's right underneath the outline of my cyclops. When I'm going to go ahead and go to the motion menu and add all of my extra frames that I need in order to keep it consistent with the original 17 frames of the Cyclops drawing. Then I'm going to use Kyle's letterers dreamy color brush because I really liked the way that it layers. It's not really the ideal brush for this type of work just because of the line shape, but what I really like about it is that when I pick up my pen, it's not going to show an overlap in color layers. Use whatever brush you prefer for this process, our goal for now is just to create a simple base color layer for all of the different parts of our dancer. I'm going to make the cyclops's skin this bluish color. I'm going to use the color to fill in the face, the hands, the feet, and then I'm going to clean up the edges using my eraser tool as I go. Before I move on to any of the other colors, I'm just going to make this easy on myself and go through all the 17 layers with that blue brush and add that skin tone. This color works really well within my palette, helps my character stand out from the dark background. I'm going to turn off that background color for now just to help me get a more accurate idea of how my edges are looking to allow that white from the background to shine through. For this work, I'm just going to turn off the onion skin. I don't need to see previous frames while I'm adding color. I can press Play and see how they overlap, and when I press Play, I'll also see that all of the motion layers are working together. Now I'm going to go through on the same layer as my blue face, and I'm going to fill in the sweater, the pants, the cuffs, the loafers, all with different colors, and again, I'm going to keep everything in my current palette. For my own preference, I'm going to make everything slightly dulled. The color that I imagine if you're in a dimly lit room, I'm going to go with a dusty coral. I love how that looks with the blue skin tone, and then I'm going to add some greenish khaki color to the pants, slightly lighter version of that for the cuff, and add some darker red to these loafers, and then I'm going to go ahead and fill in the eyes with that bright white. Yes, I'm happy with this. We've just leveled up our dancer and brought them into the flat 2D color world, which is super exciting. We're going to do one more step of leveling up. If you're ready, which I know you are, let's do this. In our next lesson, we're going to add some refinement. We're going to add a little bit extra personality, some simple textures, and some shadows just to help it all flow together be this extra special animation. I'm so excited, I'll see you in the next lesson. [MUSIC] 8. Zhuzh: [MUSIC] We have come so far. We're going to level up just one more time by adding a little bit of what I like to call it a zhuzh, which in the dictionary just means that we're going to make it more lively, more appealing, more stylish. Basically, we're just going to elevate our character with a little bit more refinement. How you want to add to your character is really up to you. I'm going to walk you through the areas in which I'm going to be adding the zhuzh. I'm just going to add some basic elements on all new layers that I know are relatively small additions, but they're really going to go a long way. I'm going to add some texture to that sweater. I'm going to refine my lines and make sure that they're sharp and really intentional and I'm going to add some extra personality to my character. Lastly, I'm going to add some light shadows to the clothes and also on the ground to really emphasize the moves. I love the clothes I gave my Cyclops, but you could totally make your character anything, a farmer, a fancy butler, truly anything. In this phase, you may opt to add eyebrows, freckles, a nice, a hairdo, a peg leg, the world is your oyster. I really find that what makes you smile should be your guide. I'm going to make my Cyclops a little bit more feminine. I'm going to add a brand new layer above the initial Cyclops drawing, and as you guessed, I'm going to go to the motion section and add 17 frames to keep consistent with the rest of the framed animations. I'm going to use my pencil, pixel brush, and start adding some personality to that first frame. I'm going to make that little curl, a little red hair. They'll also help it pop against the darker background. I'm going to add a simple pattern to that sweater using a halftone brush. You can find the halftone brush sets with that plus sign at the bottom of your pixel brush menu. I'm going to add some eyelashes. I'm going to go over some of my lines to sharpen them. I'm going to clean up the area around the eye and mouth and friends, [LAUGHTER] I'm going to give her adorable buck teeth. I think they look amazing on her. They make me smile, add things that make you smile. Also note that I'm going to give her some eye shadow to emphasize some of the emotions that she's going to express throughout the dance. Might even add a little gesture line to show creases where the elbows are bending or the knees are bending and I'm going to repeat this for all 17 frames. This is exciting. [LAUGHTER] Now I want to add another new layer on top of the last one that I just did and add another 17 frames and I'm going to use my Kyle am watercolor brush. I recommend any non live brush that has a watercolor setting because they naturally have a lower opacity and they're just perfect for this next edition of light shadows that we'll be adding to the clothing and face. I'm going to think through where the shadows usually are and add a relatively soft shadow using slightly darken colors, but I'm going to lower their opacity and I'm going to add it to every part of the clothing. A slightly darker blue for the face then a slightly darker version of the sweater and add it under the armpits or where I think there are creases. I'm going to do the same for the pants with a slightly darker version of that green. In order to get those darker versions, I'm just pressing on the color that I actually used, lowering that dot in the tone square and using one of those colors. I'm going to do this for every single frame. Then on a new layer with new 17 frames, this time I'm going to drag that layer to be underneath all of the Cyclops layers and I'm going to add a floor shadow that looks a bit blob like and is going to emphasize the changes in motion that our Cyclops makes an each frame. This is a lot of zhuzh but relatively simple additions that are really leveling up what we've worked on. Let's press Play and see how it all came together. [LAUGHTER] This is so fun. There's just one last thing that I'm realizing I'm missing and it's the way that the light reflects off the disco ball when it's rotating. I really want to add some of that magic. On a new layer, once again, 17 new frames, I'm going to use this brush called noise control, and it has this spluttery effect. Any brush with that various size splatter would work. I'm going to find some of the colors that I used in the disco ball, and I'm going to make my brush size pretty large. If I put this layer underneath the Cyclops and above the darker background, I'm going to just scatter the reflected color around the room. Also going to change the opacity on every single one of these frames as I go. I'm doing this because I think that they look too bright when they're at full opacity and I like them better at 29 percent. I'm going to be sure to correct that for each frame because if I don't, it won't look consistent. This is a really good reminder of how consistency in motion generation is so important. Let's see how it feels when all of our hard work comes together and let's press Play. We have our disco ball, we have our confetti, and most importantly, we have our fancy and wonderful dancer. It's time to share this with the world. To pure slice of joy and it's going to make everybody's day better. Join me in the next lesson where we're going to talk about exploiting and sharing your work. [MUSIC] 9. Export + Share: [MUSIC] I am so proud of you and I'm so excited to see your dancer and their moves. I can barely contain myself. I just want to see that class project section full of dancers. From the very start, we created this animation in the size that is intentionally perfect for sharing on Instagram Reels, on Stories or on TikTok. But before we actually go to the export settings, I want to make sure that the frame rate really is good for whatever music you hope to pair with our dancer going to export mine at seven seconds because it feels right. [MUSIC] Once you've picked out your frame rate, let's head to that Export icon, which is the box with the arrow coming out of it at the top right of my screen. When you select that, there's going to be this drop down menu that's going to appear with a few options. Click "Export", which by default is a JPEG or a PNG. This is a still format image. Definitely export it like that as well because I would love to see your original drawing. There's a lot of other options. One of the ones that I'm really excited about though, is time-lapse, which is an awesome record of your creation process and a really fun way to share your workflow with other people. I would love to see it posted with the rest of your class project if you're willing to share it. Finally, the export option that we're all here for, the motion export settings. We can leave it as an MP4, which is a general movie setting, or we can create it as a GIF or a PNG sequence. I'm going to save it as a video file MP4. Then we get to determine the file size. Automatic maintains the file size, which in our case is high res and really large. Definitely export a copy like that for yourself. But for sharing purposes, we also want to export a web-ready version. This makes the size digestible for uploading to various platforms. Once I have all that sorted out, web-ready, MP4 file named, I can tap that "Generate Frames" button. This can take a minute, especially if you have an older generation iPad like me. But once it's done creating our film, it gives us this preview of our videos. Hit "Play", make sure that you're happy with how it feels and then you can press the "Export" button. This gives you a wide range of options depending on the apps and the devices that you have. Can always AirDrop it to your phone or your computer, or you can share it to Dropbox or other file-sharing programs or if you have social media platforms on your device then you can share it directly to those apps from this export setting. You also want to save the video onto your iPad or your tablet, or export it onto your computer so that you can add it to your class project. Go to the Projects and Resources section, you can hit that beautiful green "Create Project" button and upload your video with words about the process, your time-lapse, everything you want to share, I want to see. There currently isn't a way to pair music with your animation directly in Adobe Fresco, but there are so many different apps that will allow you to do it once you've exported it out of Fresco. You can also, this is probably the simplest version, upload it directly to Instagram or TikTok and pair it with the music that you're most excited about in that app. Then once you've posted that and shared it with the world, you can save that video from TikTok or Instagram, and it'll include the music and you can use that file to upload it to your class projects section in Skillshare. Let's celebrate together. This is so exciting. If you do decide to share your dance party on social media, be sure to tag Skillshare @Skillshare, and also myself, Sarah-Ann-Nelson on TikTok and Instagram. Also, please let me know if you're willing to let me share your awesome creation with the world. I love featuring students on both Instagram and on Skillshare. We did it. So exciting. [LAUGHTER] I cannot wait to see your dances and hear about the process of creating your animation. Stick around for some brief final thoughts and maybe even a little bit of a dance party time. [MUSIC] 10. Final Thoughts: [MUSIC] You did it. You have created a animation from start to finish. You've learned how to use Adobe Fresco, if you're brand new to it. You have learned how to use paths. You've learned how you use frames and bring a whole room, not just one thing to life, but multiple things to life and make them work together in this really beautiful way. How cool is that? I am so proud of you. I'm so impressed, I'm so excited. I cannot wait to see what you've made. Please post it in the class project gallery and tell us about your experience. Share your stills, share your time-lapses. I want to see it all. I want to celebrate it all and I cannot wait to celebrate you. I hope that you feel empowered, encouraged that this brings your world of creative play or creative career into a whole other level. I hope you had a smile on your face the whole time that you were listening to the best music. Please review this class. Let me know what I can do to improve your experience as you continue to grow and explore your creative path. I love hearing what worked for you and what can be improved. Thank you so much for being on this journey with me. I cannot wait to see you in another class. Until next time. [MUSIC]