Transcripts
1. Learn Animation With Me!: This is some first
films that I did the last few months
and years and have you ever watched something like this and wanted to do the same? Well, you can too,
following simple principles and essentials that
every animators use for movies like this. This is a great course
for beginners and even peoples that want to
level up their skills. If you want to know
more about the course, I put it two lessons for free. Hop on into this course
and I will teach you everything and more about animation that no
one will teach you. Okay. Hi. My name is Rea, and I'll be your
teacher for this class. We have tree main
sections in this course, and I wanted to
talk to you about your project called
the bouncing ball. The first part will cover
the basics of setting up. I will show you how to set up your workspace specifically
for animation. Then for the next part,
we will go through most of the techniques
like keyframes, in between, breakdowns, and some personal techniques that
I use for better animation. Understanding this
will provide you with a easy way to understand
difficult animation, and then we'll start to go into the details of the
12 principles of animation and our
bouncing poll where you will put every skills
that you learn into practice. And finally, I will show you how to render and export
your project. Be sure to share it in
the project section. Go check out the other
students projects and give me your feedback
in the discussion tab. I'm very curious how far you're
going to go and improve. I also left some resources for people that are more visual, so you can download
this over here. Okay, one thing that you might need is a graphic
tablet in styles, but I will say that is not
really required because I know a lot of animator
that managed to do their animation
using their mouse. This is my setup, and this
is my graphic tablet. It's a on P 12, and I also have a smaller
tablet that I use if I'm animating in the
library or a coffee shop. It's a XP pen DCM, and I really recommend it for people that
are starting off. Okay. So in the next lesson, let's open our software
and took a look around. Okay.
2. The Basics- Navigating Your Software: Okay, so first of all, the software that I
use is Clip Serio and it is for me one of the
best animation software. It is used for many
people that want to make short films on a
professional level. But every software
is work the same, open yours and I'll explain
everything you need. Okay, so when you're
opening your software, make sure to go to
the animation page. This is where you'll need
to set up your workspace. There's a lot of presets
already made for you, but this is a lesson to
understand those presets. Here is where you
can change the size of the frame dependably
of the sizes. The Lori will not be the same. In general, below 1,000
the Lori will be bad. 1920 for width, and ten, 90 for height is a good canvas. Next for the resolution, go for 1,200 DPE. It's the best quality
you can have for a satisfying looking animation. Then you need to choose
your frame rates. I'll explain what it is in
the next part of the video, but in general, 24 FPS
is the best one, okay? After you want to name your
project and click okay, here we are, ready to animate. But before you have to
understand what you're working in your left, it's where you're going to
have your brushes, color palettes, and select mode. On your right, you'll see
your Navigator and layers. Layers are like
transparent sheets of paper stacked on
top of each other. Each layer holds a different
parts of the animation. There are background
layer, it is the scenery, the character layer, it is what you're animating effect layer, it could be like rain, light or motion blur, and there's a sound layer or like the dialogue or background. Using those layers
help the animaors keep things organized and make
changes more easily. Okay, now that we finish
setting up our work space, let's go see our timeline.
3. Time and Space- Timeline and Frames Rates: Welcome back guys. Today we will learn about the timeline. Okay, to start with,
what is the timeline? A timeline is a guide
that helps animators plan out actions that
happens in their animation. In general, we work with
24 frames per second. We will use that in discourse. That means that we have
24 images in 1 second. In a timeline, we have
timing and space. The timing is when a frame or drawing occurs
in this timeline. And the spacing is where the drawing is going
to be on the canvas. It could be in the left, the right, up or down. When there's a combination
of timing and spacing, we can see when an object moves, where it moves, and most
importantly, how it moves. This is why time and spacing are important and define the
meaning of a timeline. Because a time is a guide
with a lot of frames or drawings that each are situated in a specific place
to make a movement. That movement has a time. In a space, in the timeline. Okay, now that we know
what is the timeline, we can go into the details. Okay, we have two things
to focus on, FPS and DPS. Fps is your frame per second, and DPS is how many drawings
per second you make. So example, you make one
drawing per every frame. It's called animating on one. Your FPS equals 24. Your DPS equals 24. If we make one drawing
every two frames, our FPS is still 24, but our DPS is 12. We can animate on one, two, or even seven if you like to, and you could still be a 24 FPS. Okay, But what's the
difference between one, or two, or three? Two cut to work in half while
giving smooth animation. Personally, I animate twen
two while three is economic. But the point I'm
trying to make is that working on one or two doesn't really mean smoother animation and
better looking animation. Because for better animation, you need to know how to
space your animation. But I will teach you that in
the 12 principles later on. Okay, for the next lesson, we will go through
the type of frames, like the key frames in
between the breakdowns. Let's go into the next lesson
and took a look around.
4. Key Pose, Breakdowns and In-Betweens: Hey guys, welcome back. As you can see, animation
can be a little bit overwhelming even for
experienced animators. There are so many
things to think about. So that's why we will
use a specific process of key frames in
betweens and breakdowns, so we can make a work easier. Let's start with the key
frames. What is key framing? Well, before answering
the question, now that you understand
a timeline in frames, you know that frames are
situated in a timeline. Key frames are the main drawing that tell the essential
of the story. And they're also called pose
to pose because we create the most important
poses and then we fill the gas to get the most
out of key framing. There are a few extra
steps to think about, and by extra steps, I'm talking about
the breakdowns. The breakdown is the frame that comes between the
two key frames. It helps to smoothly
transition between the key poses and it's
the start of the motion. Without it, the animation
may appear shoppy or not smooth between the
transition of the key poses. After defining the breakdowns, we have to fill the space
with the in betweens. The number of in between
frames created depends on the desired speed and
fully of the motion. To be honest, it's
a simple process. Look, imagine, this
is your timeline. First, the key frames, A and B. They are the main drawing. After that the breakdowns the frame that
change the movement. It is the start of the movement. And after fill those empty
gas with in between. And that's it, it's that
sample for this animation. Of course, a character
is more complicated, but at the end of the day, it's the same principles. I wanted to add something
else for this course. As important as
the other things, it is the onion skin. The term onion skin comes
from the idea that the layers of transparency resemble
the layers of an onion. It's an important
tool because it's all those animators
to see how an object or sure is moving to not make mistakes when you're
drawing your frame. Depending of your software, you might have the options to customize the color
of the onion skin. As you draw each frame, you'll be able to
see the previous, in the next frame
as ghost images. Okay. Now that you know what is a timeline, what is a frame? What is a FPS? Dps. What are the type of
frames that is in a timeline? And what is a onion skin? I think we can go
into the next level. Okay, for the next lesson, let's go into some of my personal techniques
that I use in Animation.
5. Secrets Techniques: Hey guys, welcome back. Today we will go through the personal techniques that
I use in to reanimation. Every animators have their
own techniques to animate for better quality and to
not waste time when you're animating a project
like a short film. The first technique for
your animation is by using the camera features
in your animation software. Think of your animation
like a movie scene. Just as filmmaking, you have the ability to
manipulate your camera through a scene that
you animated to captures a dynamic
animation look. Consider your camera like frames that you're
moving slowly, post to post to follow
an action example. This is your movement
and this is your camera. In this movement, you want to follow the object that the girl is throwing to make the scene
moral, life and animated. For each frame that
the object is moving, you have to add a frame for the camera that focus
on that object. Then you'll see
that the camera is following the object
in each frame. Okay, Now the second
technique is drawing some rough plane of your key
frames in a sketchbook or your computer just to see
if your animation is making sense and that you know what are the important frames that
you'll have to animate. I always use that technique
to save time on my animation, because like that I can already know how many key
frames are going to be. One last technique I also use is having references
for the movements, the characters, and
even the backgrounds. Having references
is not cheating. Finding clothes for
your character is not cheating even more if
you're studying animation. Because you can
expect to know how to draw everything from
the top of your head. Personally, when I want
to start a project and need inspiration for the
characters or for a movement, I like to navigate
on Pinturests. I also have a board where
I can take inspiration for my backgrounds or a movement
and it helped me a lot. References is very, very important to make your character or your world look believable. It's not wrong to use
references at all. Professional animators
use it all the time, and some animators
think otherwise, but they're also the same. People with crappy art or characters don't
listen to them. But tracing and just
copying everything and calling it your own on the
other hand is another story. Just because you change it a little bit doesn't
mean it's yours. Make your art yours. I also wanted to
add something else. Look at animation,
like the acting of the character and your background
is like a scene master, the acting of your
character and you'll have an animation that
makes sense in a life. Okay, that's it. Now that we finish with some
personal techniques, we will go through
the big part of this course where you really
understand how to animate. And it is the 12
principles of animation. Now let's go to the next lesson.
6. Secrets Behind Squash and Stretch: Hey guys, welcome back. Today we will go through the most important
part of this course, and it is the 12
principles of animation. The first principle
is squashing stretch. This is the principle that
animated objects will get longer or flatter to
emphasize their speed, momentum, weight, and mass. Here is a bouncing ball
that has squashing stretch. And here is one without
squashing stretch. The amount that an
object squashes and stretches says
something about its mass. The more squashing stretch, softer is the object. The less squashing stretch, the stiffer is the object. For example, the
first one looked like a water balloon and the second one look
like a bowling ball. Squash and stretch applies
to characters too. Look at how this
figure is stretching from the speed that
he's coming down with. Then he scuotches after he lands before settling
in his pose. You can also use it to
exaggerate facial expressions. Let's add some scotch
and stretch to it. When his eyes are closed,
his face squashed. When he opens his eyes, his face stretches up
and come back at normal. It's very important to keep the same volume
throughout the animation. This is what a lot
of people mess up with when they're first
trying to squash and stretch. They'll try to elongate
the ball like this. Flatten, it's like this. This is what you should not do. The volume of the
ball is not constant. If the ball gets longer, it also gets smaller. If it gets flatter, it also gets wider. The same goes for the cube. If you're going
in with one line, then the other lines
go the opposite ways. The next step is to
do it in treaty. Something else is that the ball does not
have to be stretching the entire time that it's
falling when it's at his end. Do not overdo the
squashing stretch.
7. Secrets Behind Anticipation: All right, so the
second principle of animation is called
anticipation. This helps to prepare the viewer for what's
about to happen next, as well as to make the action
appear more realistic. One example is when a character is about
to jump before going, jumping into the air, he has to prepare for the action by crashing down
to build energy. If anticipation didn't exist, our movements would
look like this. It looks really
unrealistic because the energy of the movement
comes out of nowhere. Here's another example,
a punch to add power and communicate to the viewers that he
is about to punch. He reaches his arm
back and then punches. Anticipation helps
communicate actions to the audience by preparing
them for the next action. And this happens
in very many ways. If a character is about to take something out
of their pockets, they make their hand
very visible and end up in the air before
going into their pockets. And the most important is that the viewer
notices the hand, and the pocket character
may prepare for that action by pointing their eyes and head to
look in that direction, leading the viewer
to also look there. It's important to
make it easy for the audience to understand
what's going on.
8. Secrets Behind Staging: The third principle of
animation is called staging. Staging is the
presentation of any idea. So that is completely clear. It can apply to acting, timing, camera angle, position setting. When you're animating,
you want to be in full control of where
the audience is looking. Example, you want
him to look at this, then look at this.
Now look at this. This control is through staging. Here's an example
of bad staging. In this example, you don't
know what to look at first, but the camera has a
lot to do with this. It's important to
know when you have to be close up or far away. Far away is for big actions. While close up is
good for expressions. Don't have the main action
on the side of the screen. It should be either
in the center of the screen or in one of
the thirds of the screen. The main action of the
scene should be very clear in sample and also
have proper timing. Let one action finish
before the other person starts their action instead
of overlapping them, like sometimes you need to
put poses into an action if there's something
in the screen that has to be processed
before moving on. But staging is not just about controlling
the viewer's eyes, it's also about conveying ideas. If a character is
set, for example, you want to make sure that the viewer knows
that and feels that.
9. Secrets Behind Straight Ahead and Pose to Pose: The fourth animation
principle is called straight ahead
and post to pose. This term describes two methods
used to animate drawings. The first one, straight ahead, is when you draw
the first frame, and then the second frame, and then the third
frame, and so on. Basically, animating as you go. The second method, post to pose, is when you draw the
beginning and end of each main pose and go back
later on to fill the gap. Like we talk about it in the
frames and rates lesson. There's benefits
for both methods. But pose to pose is
generally better for most actions because it
gives you most control. Like this, you can
have a good idea of how it's going to look
like early in the process. Instead of worrying if the corrector is going to
end up in the right place, you decide where it ends up from the beginning and
work backwards. Also, choosing to work with straight ahead
animation can lead to the character changing size or being on a different level
from the beginning to end. Post to pose save
you a lot of time. If you were to animate a whole
sequence straight ahead, then realize that
one pose is off. You would have to change many frames to fix
that one pose. But with post to pose, you just have to
draw the main poses to see if it feels right, you fill the gap later on. Straight ahead
animation is good for animation that are
unpredictable, like fire explosion, water
cloud, and many more. The reason why straight
ahead works well is because it's hard to predict how it
will work, pose to pose. If you're animating fire, for example, you just
have to go with the flow. Another example of unpredictable animation
is overlapping action, which will be discussed in
depth in the next principle. Let's say that a character
has floppy ears. You can draw the figure
first pose to pose, and then the ears
using straight ahead.
10. Secrets Behind Follow Through and Overlapping Action: All right, The next principle is called follow through
and overlapping action. This is the technique of
having a body parts or object dragged behind the rest of the body and
continue to move. When the body stops, follow through and
overlapping action are often associated with another
technique called drag. These names all describes
the same thing, but in different ways. For example, follow
through refers to the way parts of the body continue to move after the body stopped. Overlapping actions
describes the offset between the timing of the main
body and its other parts. And drag describes the
technique of the lying, the movement of body
parts in relation to the main body follow through and overlapping at realism
to the movement. Here's a character with and without follow through
and overlapping action. Basically, when the
main body moves, the tip of the appendage should
be the last to catch up. When the body stops, the tip should follow through
before settling back. Also, something else that is
important is the mass and the time that you
give to the object that is following
through and overlapping.
11. Secrets Behind Slow In and Slow Out: All right? So the next principle is called slow in and slow out, and we already talk about it in the timeline
and frames listen. This is one of the most
important principles to achieving lifelike motion. Without it, things would
feel too mechanical. That's because robots are one of the only things that actually move their parts at
a constant speed. To use this principle, you take your extreme poses, draw a single in between them. Then draw the gap
closest to the extremes until you satisfy with the amount of slowing
and slow out. I suggest you to use
it wisely example. You wouldn't add a slow out to a bouncing ball as it's
colliding with the ground, but you would add it as
it's bouncing back up. Many persons that
start animation get impatient and draw
the next frame very far from the beginning.
12. Secrets Behind Arcs: So the seventh principle of animation is called
Arcs. Okay man. And I would say that
most living creatures will move in a circular path, otherwise known as an arc. Let's say that we were giving those key poses and were
told to fill in the gap. Simply fill the midway
point between the poses would not work because it
would look too mechanical. The balls need to follow
an arc, of course, we also need to
consider the slow in and slow out
caused by gravity. Now let's use a character. Right now, it looks
pretty dull and straight, but if we add an arc to it gives it a little
bit more character. Arcs can be added to almost
any figure movement. You maybe saw it in animation
movies too, like this.
13. Secrets Behind Secondary Actions: All right. The next principle
is called secondary action. This principle is often associated with
overlapping action. Secondary action describes
gestures that support the main action to add more
dimension to the character. Animation. For example, A character may be
walking angularly. The main action is the legs, and the secondary action
is everything else. The arm swinging, the head, bumping, and the facial
movements like this.
14. Secrets Behind Timing: Okay, so the next principle
is called timing. We went a little bit through it in the timeline
and frames listen. Okay? The principle states that the personality
and nature of an animation is greatly
affected by the number of frames inserted
between each main action. Basically, if you have
many frames that are very close together in
between the main poses, the action will be very slow. But if you have very few frames set far apart from each other, the action will be very fast. Less drawing mean fast, and more drawing means slow. One sample action can have ten different meanings depending on how many frames you give it. As you already know, the standard frame rate for movies is 24 frames per second.
15. Secrets Behind Exaggeration: The next principle is
called exaggeration. Basically, every action
pose and expression can be taken to the next level to increase the amount of
impact on the viewer. The early animators
in Disney would get confused because Walt would tell them to add more realism. But then when they changed it, he would criticize
the result because it wasn't exaggerated
enough in Walt's mind. He didn't mean to make the physics more
realistic with reality, but rather make the idea or essence of the action
more apparent and real. If a character was sad, make it sadder, bright,
make it brighter. Exaggeration doesn't mean
disorted but more convincing. It's amazing how you can always
add exaggeration motion. Or quick exaggeration needs
to be bigger in order to be noticed and push the
exaggeration level until it actually
becomes too much.
16. Secrets Behind Solid Drawing: All right. The next principle is
called solid drawing. This principle is about making sure that firms feel
like they are in a three dimensional space with volume, weight,
and balance. Thing that makes
animating a lot easier is being able to draw a
figure from all angles. This requires knowledge of
three dimensional drawing. For example, you're drawing
a line on a sphere. Well, it must follow the
contour of the sphere surface. A straight line makes
the circle look flat. When you want to draw a cube, avoid making Parlel lines. Lines should be bent towards
the vanishing point, otherwise it will look
like a flat symbol. When you're doing a rough
pass of the character, use basic solid shapes like
spares, cubes, and cylinders. This will help you mindful
of the space thorin. Another thing you can do is
draw perspective lines on the ground to keep track of their distance from the camera, so that you can know when to
draw them bigger or smaller. When you're moving on the clean line version of your character, be very mindful of overlap and try to include it
whenever possible. Without overlap,
everything appears to be on the same plane. Just add a single line
here and there so it can define where surfaces come
out and where they recede.
17. Secrets Behind Appeal: The last principle of
animation is called appeal. Basically, characters that you animate should be somewhat
pleasing to look at. They should have some
charismetic aspect to like about them. This doesn't only
apply to the hero of the story but
also to the villain. And every other characters appeal doesn't always
mean good looking. It can also mean interesting. The villain should be liable in the sense that they are
interesting to look at. The tricky thing
about this is that everyone has a different
standard of what is appealing. However, just giving
your character a dynamic design can
greatly boost its appeal. Here are three steps
for doing that. Instead of using the same
shape for every character, use original shapes
that are going to differ your character
from the others. Second, play with proportions. Cartoonists often magnify
the things that we find interesting and
shrink the things we might find ugly and boring. And the third, keep it simple. Too much information can
overcomplicate the character. There's a difference between
drawing illustration and animation with
animated characters. You have to pick and choose what details you want to keep, because you're
going to be drawing those details 100 times. That's all we have
to know for appeal. And that brings us to the
end of our 12 part series. Thank you for watching
this big part. I really recommend you
to listen again to the principles until you
really understand them. Now, we just finished the
theory part of this course. For next lesson, you
will put everything that we learn into
practice. Let's go.
18. Animating a Bouncing Ball: Hey guys, here we are in your first project called
the Bouncing Ball. But before you start, you'll need to take your
graphic tablet, go to your animation software, and listen to discourse
on a different device, like through your phone. Are you ready now? Let's start. Before animating the ball, you have to start with the arc. Arc is the red thing here
is putting the direction of the ball to understand the action is not only
to understand an action, but also to make it
easier for you to draw the animation. Okay? After drawing your arc, you have to draw
your key frames. Okay? So here in this animation, we have two keyframes. Those keyframes are
here and there. After knowing where
you're going to put your three keyframes
on your arc, you have to know
where you're going to put it on your timeline. Here, example for mine, I put the first key frame on the first frame
of the timeline. And my last one, because
you have to put the first and the last
keyframe first, I put it there on the 49th
frame of the timeline. Now you have your arc, you know how much key frames
you're going to have, you know where you're
going to put the first in the last key frames, but now you need your in between frame between those
two key frames. I'll explain to you
here is the animation. Like you can see we have
the first key frame here that you have and
the last one here. After that, you need the frame that's going to
do the difference between the first key
frame and the last one. This is the in between
frame is this one. This frame is really
important for your animation. That's going to
make the difference between frame A and B and B2c. Okay, Now it's time to
draw the in between. But before that, you have to
put in consideration one of the principle called
slow in and slow out. This principle is referring that pretty much every
movement starts slowly, gets faster, and finishes slowly as we saw in the
first part of the course. Okay, here for the
bouncing ball, you can see that the three
first frame is slowing in. As it's slowing in, it's getting faster here. After that as it's bouncing up, you can see it slowing out. Okay. Now that you put
it in consideration, the principle about slowing
in and slowing out, you have to put
another principle in consideration called
squash and stretch, okay? For the bouncing ball, you know that the ball have a certain weight that you have to respect when the
ball is falling down. You know that the gravity
of the object is going to stretch a lot when the
ball is hitting the floor, you have to exaggerate
the movement as possible as you
can like that. You can see that
the ball is really hitting hard into the floor. As it's hitting the floor,
it's bouncing back. There's two places in the
timeline that you want to exaggerate the stretch of the
ball as much as possible. First would be before
it hits the floor, like the frame when
it's still in the air. And secondly would be the first frame when
the ball hit the floor. I would exaggerate
those two frames because you want the viewer to sense that the ball is really
bouncing back into the air. And don't be scared to
exaggerate those two frames. And remember that exaggeration is one of the 12 principles, so you can play with it. I also wanted to
clarify something. You see those two frames here. Those two frames, You're not
obligated to put it there. But personally I put it
there for more details like that is going to amplify my animation and
make it look better. I know that there's animator that wouldn't put
those two frames because it seems like two extra frames that
you don't need to put. But for me, those two frames are putting more details
into my animation. Details are really
important into animation. It makes it look
real and more alive. We finally finished
this project. If you have any questions or you need help to understand
a part of this course, contact me on my e mail and
I'll be happy to help you. This project is a combined of all the principles
in one animation. Remember, there's not failure. You either win or you learn. Be patient and do a little
bit more every day.
19. Outro: Finally, the course is finished. We talk about and went over everything you have to
know to start animation. Don't forget to
come in and ask me questions if you didn't
understand something. I'm always here to
help you get better. And don't be shy to send your bouncing ball or any
animation improvements. Now I just hope that
you're going to love the process of animation. And thank you for
watching this course. Remember, just try new
things and don't be scared, I'll hope you do great things in animation and I'm
excited to see it.
Reda Balkhity, Animator 2D and 3D
