Transcripts
1. Introduction: Hello there. I'm Cé Marina, a Bolivian illustrator and graphic designer based in Barcelona. My work is mostly focused on illustration, but I took a step further and learned about how can I bring my illustrations to life? This is when animation came into my life. I always love experimenting by making gifts and stickers. Since I was a little girl, I always loved to collect stickers. I really like the fact that it was some a new way of expression for me. However, over time I couldn't find the right stickers that reflect my creative identity. Each one of us has something special to say and to show. Finally, let people find out about your creative identity by seeing your stickers on social media. Social media is a useful tool to express ourselves and use our creativity in new ways. By using stickers, we can communicate more about the creative work. Today, I'm going to take you in a fun process to create and animate a bag of stickers to show your creative identity. We will begin by learning the basics of animation and the principles that we can apply. We will do a practical exercise for this matter. This process can be applied to a commission from a real client. After that, we will move into the action. We will transform our ideas into GIF stickers. Before finishing, we will learn how to export these sticker GIFs and as a final step, I will show you practical ways to use your GIFs. This class is great, mainly for illustrators and artists, but it's also great for film photographers, side hustlers or even homists. If you take anything from this class, I hope that it will be a new way to express yourself and show your creative identity. Are you ready to play along and bring to life your drawings in a simple way? I am more than ready. Let's go.
2. Class + Project Overview: As our main project for today, we're going to develop a pack of five animated stickers to communicate our creative identity. This project will be the perfect introduction for you to play with the animation tools that Procreate has. This class is mainly for beginners, but if you want to review and refresh those concepts, you are more than welcome to take this class. To make it happen, we are going to learn some animation principles. We are also going to learn the animation tools that Procreate has. We will define what our creative identity means for us. Then we will sketch and decide our main color palette. And action, I will guide you while I create tabs of stickers gifs using the arc and the slow in and slow out principles. Later, we will learn how to export our stickers. Last, but not least, as a bonus, I will teach you how to upload your sticker gifs to GIPHY so you can use them later on Instagram. The tools that we are going to need for this class are your iPad, Procreate app, a piece of paper or sketchbook, and a pencil. Are you ready to bring simple illustrations to life and show your creative identity? Let's do this.
3. Basics of Animation: Hello, welcome to the first lesson. In this lesson, we will learn the basic of animation before diving into the world of the sticker GIFs. The main goal of animation is to create an illusion of life. Therefore, knowing the basic principles will help us to have the resources to create animations that are more credible. Think about it like when you're learning to play an instrument, you couldn't start if you didn't know the music notes. Like I said before, animation creates the illusion of movement and life. This is created by various sequential images played in rapid succession. To clarify better we will use the flip book example. I'm sure you've seen one of these. Take a look that with the help of the sequential drawings, I create the illusion of movement. Each one of these images is called a frame in animation. What about the speed at which these images are shown? That is the frame rate. For example, if I do a really fast one, or maybe if I do a slow one. In cinema, there can be up to 24 drawings per second, but normally there are 12 drawings per second in animation. When you work with the sticker GIF animation, you slow the rate of the frames per second because you don't need to show much details. We will clarify and practice this concept better when we do our sticker GIFs on further lessons. It will be useful for this class and in general, these principles are based on the book Illusion of Life by Frank Thomas and Ollie Johnson. They were key animators at Disney in the early 1930s. They created 12 basic principles based on their experience. Those principles allow the animation to feel more realistic, especially when work with character animation. I will cover each one of the principles, but I will leave some links in the Resources page if you want to deep type more further. I'll explain the three principles that are going to be useful for developing some of the stickers. Timing. It's a technical principal. It's the amount of frames the action takes to go from a point A to B. This refers to the speed of the action itself. If you have more drawings to represent an action, the animation is slow. But instead, if you draw less steps and keep it far from each other, the action will be fast. It's also useful to know what spacing means, because it goes hand in hand with timing. It defines the speed and read of the action. A slow in, and slow out. This principle adds realism to a movement. It creates illusion that your object or character is speeding up at the beginning of the action, and slowing down at the end. Think about the movement of someone when they are about to run or about to stop. When animating, add more drawings in the beginning, less in the middle, and more again in the end of the action. Otherwise the action will be seen as mechanical. The arcs. The movement of most living creators follows a circular path. Take a moment to think about how you move your arm when grabbing something. The movement of your arm forms an arc. If this will not be the case, it seems like a robotic movement. Now we will talk about the sticker GIFs. What are the sticker GIFs? You've probably seen them creating an Instagram story video. Instead of a moving GIF, the sticker GIFs, for example, if I search the word work, a short and simple moving drawn GIFs with transparency around the edges. Like for example, this. It requires at least 20 percent of the image to be transparent. You can create flat stickers like those you see, for example, in WhatsApp, or you can create GIFs like you see on Instagram, like this for example, a moving GIF. Before diving into the main core of this class, it was really important to know some of the basic principles of animation. Now, with this in mind, we can learn the main tools that Procreate has regarding animation.
4. Animation Tools in Procreate: In our last lesson, we learned the basic principles. Now it's time to learn the main tools that come with Procreate. First, let's start with the Animation Assist. Here on the gallery, on the wrench tool. You can activate it by tool in. The Animation Assist is a visual timeline of your frames. It has options like onion skin, playback, and other settings we will see in a minute. The timeline. It will show every frame of your animation. As you see here. I use the same example, stare flip book for this. You will see that each score here is a frame as the pages we saw previously on the flip book. Consider that also the layers you will see in your document will be shown as frames. The other is shown here from the left to the right. If you, for example, create now a new layer. This will be displayed on the right of your last frame. Also, you can add a layer by tapping on this button here and near to the last frame and click here and add a new frame. If you tap on one of the DOM links, it will display the actual layer you are in. For example, if a top here, here, here, I will see the actual layer. You will see it is underlined in blue. For example, if you tap on the Settings button here, you will see that there's a panel of options where you can change, for example, the playback options. Here. The frames per second variable. These frames per second variable, it will change the speed of your animation like I showed you before in the flip book animation example. This can make your animation move faster or move slower. You can slow it down by also adding more frames in between each one of your frames. Continue with the settings. Let's go with the onion skin frames. The Onion Skin is a tool that fades the previous frames. It is making visible when you're drawing and it shows your last drawing. For example, here you can see my previous drawing. Also, for example, if I be here my last frame and add a frame, I will see the previous drawing that I do. Also, here in the settings, you can set the onion skin frames and you can set it to none. It can show the current frame and nothing else or for example, set it to a maximum of 12 and next frames. But I don't suggest to do this mostly because when you're starting you get a little bit confused. As you can see here, there's a lot of lines. They are really opaque, but you can get confused. For starting is better to set it to one or maybe two. The onion skin opacity is, what I said a minute ago, is about the opacity in which your onion skin will be set. For example, I always set it in between 40 and 50 percent. The color secondary frames is really useful when you have a lot of frames. For example, if I activate it, I will see that my last frame will show as red. It's an indication for me to see the previous frame that I saw. I can draw the next one. If you also tap on a frame, for example, you have three options. You can hold the duration. This will create a pose by playing the same drawing over multiple frames. You can see it appears in gray. These multiple frames. Also you can duplicate easily. For example, if you want to set the same frame for the next scene, you can duplicate it here. As you see, is the same. Also if you did it by mistake, for example, or if you're not sure, you can delete it here. Then you can see that for example, if I press here or in the last one, I can make this one as the foreground. Foreground logs are framing to place as consistent foreground element. If I set this to foreground, I will see the leaf appearing in every one of the frames. In each one of the frames. I don't want that, but maybe this can be useful, for example, to set a background. What I suggest you do is that for example, I said this curved line as a background because I wanted to be maintain it in every and each one of the frames. If you want to set it, you can click on the first frame and then toggle to set as the background. Let's talk about the loops. There are three options to set the playback. You can set it to loop. That is the means that your animation will play endlessly until you physically stop them from doing so. For example, let's see what happens if I press "Loop". I will press "Play". Then my animation will play endlessly, like I told you. Ping-pong plays your animation backwards and forwards. Let's see what it looks like. The ping-pong, what it does is to play the animation from the start to the end and the end to the start. It's not like the loop. I don't know if you can get the leaf. It's like playing back. Sometimes this effect is really interesting. But if you want, for example, in this case, you want to show that the leaf is growing, you have to set the playback to loop. If you want to show that the leaf is decreasing, you can play with the ping-pong. The one-shot, like its name says, is a one shot play of your animation. As you saw, my animation, while I was talking, it has stopped. That's it. Is I want to play your animation. Also, another thing that is really important is to talk about the organization of layers. For example, it is really important to note that in this case, that I draw, for example, each one of the phases of this leaf growing. But for example, if I want to add something like another leaf and I don't want this leaf to be separated from its printable, I can group them and this can be a new layer together. Let's see how it looks. You see. I will stop the column secondary frames. You see, it is part of a frame. You can group two frames or two layers to be a one frame. It's really important to organize these because otherwise, it can be really chaotic to find where your layers are. In this lesson, we learned how to use a tools that come with Procreate. I know this is a little bit of theory, but in the upcoming lessons, we are going to apply whether we learn. Don't worry.
5. Define Your Creative Identity: As the first steps, and before doing anything else, we're going to find out what are the essential objects words that we will draw to show our creative identity. Consider that your Instagram account not only helps people know your work, but who you are too. This lesson is based on my real experience when doing a creative commission. I always start with a brief that consists of the main concepts, ideas, I will represent. For this lesson, in the first part, we will brainstorm all the possible ideas. In the second part, we will outline the main ideas you think will fit for the project. We will define the creative world by answering some questions. To do this, we will use the worksheet number one that you can find on the resources of the class. To do this exercise, take a moment with yourself. Play with your favorite song and listen to your thoughts. What are the 10 or more main tools you can't live without in your creative life? To help you a little bit, I created this worksheet so you can play along, write it down the most important things. Think about what objects you will take to an island. For example, if you're an artist, gouache paintings, your iPad, brushes, paper, a notebook. If you are a photographer, for example, you can take your camera, or maybe you can take your lights or a microphone, etc. The main thing of this exercise is thinking about the most useful and important tools that represent our creative identity on our creative world. Think about that. You will be covered with food and Internet on the island. Don't take and count that. Important is to remember that these tools will represent your creative world and also will be your main objects to representing your gifts stickers. You can also include words. I will include an example of the word, as you will see later. Now, let's start. We will do it together. To the word or the combinations of words, that is WIP, and it means work in progress. Because I think I am all the time, trying to show that I'm doing an illustration or doing a project, so I always I'm doing work in progress. Now, for the next exercise, it is important that you decide from the main list we already done which are the five and the easiest and most essential for you of these 10 to draw or the most essential things or tools you will take with you if only you have to pick five. The next exercise is about choose two to three adjectives that reflect your creative identity or your creative world. These words can transmit your vibe. For example, you can write optimist, dedicated, etc. Then you will see that there's also a blank page where you can doodle. You will see why it is important to doodle before the sketching on the next lesson. But the main point of this exercise is to mark the movement or the actions of the tools you picked before. I will explain it later on the next lesson. In this lesson, we learned how to create the main concepts that will guide our [inaudible] illustrations. We use the method when I worked for a real project. Those tips are not only valuable when doing the main project of the class, but for real commissions.
6. Let’s Think About Actions: Like I told you in the last lesson, the blank page I left on the worksheet, you can brainstorm on a goal. What the main actions of the objects will be. For example, I created these, but you can also do it on the worksheet. But for example, I can think about what a laptop will do, what the iPad will do, the pencil, how can I represent the music, also, and how can I represent the word wip. Because this will give us the idea of how later we can work our sketches. If it's necessary for you, you can check examples. For example, Google Images, YouTube, or Vimeo for animation examples. But I prefer for us to do this brainstorming with ourselves. Think briefly about the actions you want this objects to represent. For example, on the first one, I choose the laptop. I will think about the action. I can show that I'm working on something, for example, opening the laptop. I will do a doodle. This page is for doing doodles, it's not a real sketch. This page is meant to be just for doodling and to mark the movement of your objects. But for example, if you are a photographer, you can show the front part of your camera for example. We're going to do rough doodles in this step. The main point of this exercise is later, after you do the doodle to mark the movement or actions that the tool you chose will do. For example, you can choose red, and mark with an arrow the movement that your object will do. For example, I mark it here that my laptop will be open, that will open, and I can also draw, right open. For example, the iPad, I can show that, for example, in this perspective, the iPad and maybe that I'm drawing with the pencil, and I can say that pencil will move, for example. It depends on what move then maybe happy face will appear on the screen. This for the iPad, for example, for the pencil. In this case, I want the pencil to this path, it's like it's drawing without the hand but it can be fun. I am pointing the arrows to see the movement, let's develop the rest. You will see that I said the actions that, for example, indicates of music. I realize again I make the music notes appearing on the wip. For example, I would like that each letter will show one at a time to show that I'm working in progress. That's it, now that we have the basic idea of the type of movement for our objects or words, in the next lesson, we are going to sketch them.
7. Sketching Your Stickers: It's time to add more fun into our exercises. Now that we have our concepts for sticker pack developed, we're going to draw them. Before sketching, we have to find references of our objects. I think the best solution is to photograph this objects. For this matter, I will ask you to first open your iPad, open block grid and create a new a file. I created a file of 1080 by 1080 pixels. We will choose a basic brush in Procreate from the sketching panel, Procreate pencil is the best one for me. You can import your first picture by enabling the reference panel in Procreate. Just go to the Wrench tool here in the menu, go to action canvas, and just slide the button. You can choose also the size. Yes, so I can set it here on the right or left or where you prefer, the reference of my laptop. If you're not an illustrator, you can trace the image. The only different step you have to do is to click on "Wrench tool," add, and insert a photo. You resize it like this. You will set the opacity to 29 percent here on the layer, and then you create a new layer, and then you can start tracing the image. This is sketch, remember. Then we will refine it and add color and all other stuffs. If you want to set some other buttons, for example this or add this, there's no need to add some details, very much detailed illustration is not the point. The point is that if you don't know how to draw, you can do it by tracing and then height by tapping on this square here and you can see your camera, for example. Another option could be to create and trace a word. For example, I created the word WIP on the last exercise, so I will show you how to do that. In the Wrench tool, you go to add and top on, at text. You will see, it will appear the word text, but you can of course edit it. Let's see, I will write WIP, and here on the AA, we can take a look at the evasion panel. For example, I can set the size to like this. I wouldn't worry about this, and I can change its style from Regular, Italic, Light. For example, you can choose from all of the options here that comes by default in Procreate, or also you can add a font of your preference. I will choose, for example these, or maybe I will choose this. You can play a little bit with this panel, so I can set it here or here, or underlined, or maybe outlined or on the vertical side. To move it, you can use the arrow here on the panel menu, you can do that here or maybe, for example, if you want to separate each letter to be in each one of the layers. You can duplicate it, click on the letter in the text, and continue on doing. If you want to move the three of them, you can slide like this for selecting the layers. So you can move the three of the layers. Remember to keep it simple or not to make a big sticker Gibbs, so choose a simple type. I will keep on drawing the rest of the stickers, each one on a different layer. We are so close to studying animating. The next step is to define a consistent color palette to apply to our stickers. Let's go.
8. Color Palette: I always give a lot of value to the color palette. It can give a consistent look to our stickers and reflect our creative identity. I insist on the fact of our reduced color palette because trust me, we have many colors, you can create a visual noise. Especially when it comes to creating animated is small and simple stickers. Better to stay on a reduced color palette side. Take a look at some of these examples of real commissions where I keep a reduced color palette to make a coherent look. These are some of the websites I use as a reference for choosing colors. On the firsthand is coolers, in this website, you can search between thousands of beautiful color shins. On the other hand, we had Khroma. Here is the other AI generator. We can get started also, and this is important in the first time that you choose set of your 50 favorite colors. For these, you have to set a time because there's a lot of colors and after that maybe they will provide the result of the type of colors you'll like following some aspects you choose before. Also, you can take their Instagram khromacolors, and then you can see, for example, that they generate palettes. I'll show you with an example how to choose a color palette based on how you want to reflect your identity. For example, if you want to represent given is positive attitude, etc, you can start thinking about using orange or yellow and pick further colors which work well with that color. On the other hand, if you have a concept that is more related to an elegant, sophisticated life, you can start thinking about blue and big further colors. Either way this is our reference for you to start. For example, if you start with yellow, you can continue, for example, with a palette of contrast like I did here on this palette. For example, if you're using the reference of the webpages that I talked about. You can start with the yellow and then you can look for another options, that you can see available that start with yellow or that has orange on it to transmit these kind of activities and vibes and the same for the blue and then black. If you want further guidance, you can take my last class where I explained color theory in one of the lessons. In this lesson, we discover many resources for choosing the reviews color palette for a project. It was really fun, wasn't it? We have everything we need to start animating your stickers. Are you ready to begin? I can't wait.
9. And…action! Arc Animation: Now, it's time to bring our illustrations sticker to life. I will provide tips while we work on it. In this lesson, we will transform our ideas into moving GIF stickers, keep in mind that you have to draw more than one illustration action. Because this will be the animated part. In Procreate, we will select one of the illustrations to do. In this case, I will select the laptop here on the same layer. Check that. We will select it here with this tool. Menu it has like a form of an S. Freehand. With that, we will swipe down with three fingers like this, and we will activate an option panel on Kiran this option panel. We will select Copy. Then on the gallery, we will create another file. We will set as core size to 720 by 720 pixels, depending on the details of your stickers, you can check the bigger file size, like 18,000 by 18,000, but I think that with the first size will be okay. Just to check the size of the canvas, you can come here to the wrench to action canvas, Crop and Resize. You can go to settings and check that I create 720 by 720 pixels. DBI says okay. If I want to reset before doing the illustration, this is really important. I can change it to 18,000. We will see it's much bigger. This depends, of course, on the details of your GIF stickers. Now, we will go to the menu panel here on the left, and we will tap on the wrench tool select Add, and we will select Paste. Now we will do a resize here on the corner with our pencil. You will see that our previous illustration from the other file has been pasted to this new file. This illustration will serve as a guide. Don't forget, that we will draw the sketches of our animation first. This is because we want to take a look at how our animation will look before applying colors. I suggest that you begin drawing the first and last frames and then we will draw them between. Really important. In this phase, think about how smooth you want the movement of your sticker to be. But don't forget that the smoother you want it to be, the more frames you have to draw. Also, consider that your sticker will be small and maybe the details of a more elaborated animation won't be noticed. This class is to make the easiest animations, so you can later continue on learning to create more elaborated animations. Before beginning, a good tip is that I suggest that you refind your sketch because the copied illustration is a little bit pixelated, as you can see here. This happens because we enlarge the size. If you remember if you click here on the arrow, if you alert more, the illustration will look more and more pixelated. We create a layer below. We will set click here on the end. We will set the opacity to 20 percent. We will create the Procreate pencil, basic pencil. We refind our illustration. It is very important when you are doing your sketches before animating, that you have to start with either the first or the last frame. I started with the last frame. This will be the last image that will be shown on my own GIF. We can make easier the process by enabling the animation assistance. As you remember, we can go to canvas and mission assist, and it has our previous frame. Now, I can, in the settings, set the opacity to 40 because I think it's better. I will start. Now, I have to check that between the first and the last frame, I am doing the arc principle really good. As you can see, this is the form of the arc. We have to check that first. Then I will keep on drawing the second, third frame based also on this arrow. I will add a frame in between two frames. First, I will draw, like laptop is open a slightly, I will set the onion skin frames to one because this allows me to have the reference of my previous frame. You can press "Play" to take a look at how the animation is going. If you see that it's going too fast, you can change the frame-per-second variable here under settings. It's set to six. If we set it to three, we can see that it's better. We can see the movement of the arc reflecting here while the laptop is opening. It doesn't matter if all the details are not perfect. For me, this is the essential part of the sticker gives that it can be moving. If it's not quite detailed or reflect the reality for me, it doesn't matter in this case. But if you have a commission where it is really important that you keep the reality reflected, please try to copy the last frame the best possible as you can. Now that we have our layers and our frames, we can now pass to color the illustrations. I will use my palette and I will set pink as the main color for my laptop. I will create a new layer. Forget about the animation timeline now because this part is about coloring your illustration. If it's better, we'll take out all the frames, and I will concentrate all my effort into this first. I will set the color above so I can see if I am painting well inside the lines. I will set the opacity to 37, for example, and I will start to coloring the illustration. I always draw different colors in each layer because if I want to change something, for example, later on the illustration, I will not have to erase the entire illustration. For example, here on my new layer, I will select this color and I will set part in white. Also, you can add a black border to the illustration to give more definition. It is very important to, like I told you in the beginning of the class, name your layers. I will rename this layer because I might get confused in which one is the sketch or which one is the original. I will rename it Sketch 1 because it's the Frame 1. We're going to group each of these color layers and border layer here because these groups will be the frames of the animation. I explained to you this in the first lessons. This group now, if we activate the Animation Assist, is now our frame. If I set it like this, if we activate it, we will see that each one of the layers will be a frame. To avoid that group, the elements that you color. This group, now as you see on our timeline, is our frame. Now, we will continue with the next frames. If we take a look at the animation assist and the timeline, we will see we have the two main drawings. I will continue on drawing. You can also grab and put the sketches on the frames and rename also Frame 2 because you don't have it. It has activated this layer so it won't display it. I think that's it. We will check our animation looks by enabling the Animation Assist. I have to review all the frames. For practical purposes, I will hide the background color because like I told you in the first lessons, a sticker give has to have a transparent background. Let's see how is it. Like I told you before, you can always change the frame duration. In this case, I will set to five to see how it looks. It's quite fast. I will set to five. Let's see. I will set to four. Also, like I told you before on previous lessons, you can also hold the duration of each one of your frames, so it can last a large amount of time. I will hold the duration of the last one because I wanted to pay more attention to that. As I added more frames, I can now set the frames per second to six or maybe seven. Yeah, it looks quite good. Remember that the higher the number, the fastest it will go. For example, if I set it to 20, it will look like my laptop is going crazy. Or, for example, if it's in one, it's going to take some time to do it, and it's not the case. I think it was cool on seven. It looks good. Now you can read the word work in the end. If you see is not readable, for example, in my case, I will hold the duration to four, for example. Let's see how it looks. Yeah, it's better. Even though this was a large lesson, we learned step-by-step on how to create our first sticker based on an animation principle. Also, I gave you a lot of useful tips. I hope you like the result. In the next lesson, I will show you how to create another of the sticker so you can check the process again, but with another illustration. Are you ready?
10. Slow in & Slow Out Animation: In this lesson, we're going to create another sticker for you to see one more example. I chose to do a pencil that moves. This can be useful when you are creating a sketch and want to show the process and complement it with a sticker GIF. Choose another of your sketches from the original file, from the sketches file, select it and then with a three-finger action, you can copy it. I will create a new canvas. It's the canvas with the same characteristics as the one we did before. This is core size 2, 720 by 720 pixels. As we did previously, click on the, "Range, Cut, and Paste." You will see the illustration you copied is pasted on your new document. Like we did on previous exercise, is that we will refine it. We are ready to refine it, so I will delete the sketch. Now it's time to apply the color to pencil. Do not forget to do it in separate layers just in case you want to change anything after. Apply the border stroke to have more definition. We can hide this layer. Group all the layers. For this specific case, I will make the pencil to move in a certain direction, so for that matter, I will trace a reference line in another layer. This reference line will dictate movement that my pencil will do. You can establish this line, as a background or as a foreground so it won't appear as a part of the animation and will be your guide. You can also set the opacity to 30 percent, 20 percent. For this exercise, remember the principles, in this case, we are going to apply the slow in and the slow out. For that matter, we're going to duplicate more pencils in the beginning. I will trace here. One close to another, less, and not so close in middle and more close in the end. To save a little time, we're creating a frame from the layers panel. You can create and click on the, "Frame" and choose duplicate, for example. As in this case, we're going to check we're on the right frame and layer. We're going to choose duplicate and we are going to move the pencil to the indicated line. We're going to keep doing the same for the others. Now that I think we're done, we can check the frame speed. Let's see. I will set the frames per second to monitor how it looks. Or let's maybe, as you can see in the beginning, the movement of the pencil is slower than in the middle. I think we have too much in the middle, I will delete and change positions. Let's see how it goes. If you think that even though it is too slow, you can neglect some frames here on the middle or here in the beginning, increase the frame per second. See, you have to play with this until you see you're satisfied with the result. Let's see. I will group them or select all just to resize them. They're a little less big, better. Now it's better. You can hide your foreground. Now you will see the path that this pencils is following now. Also for a more realistic approach, we can made invisible the layer of the background. We can see how our pencil is going to do in a transparent background. We learned to create another type of movement using a different principle. It was really fun and easy to do. I hope your stickers look good.
11. Text Animation: I'm going to show you how you can animate the text with some easy steps. Now we're going to do the text animation. For that manner, we are going to trace or draw the first letter. I will teach you both, so let's begin with the tracing. We will add text like I showed you in previous lessons. I will type WIP, I will increase the size. Don't forget to select it, and increase the size. If you want to increase the size but you see that the word is cut in the middle, you can extend your box by adjusting this point here. I think it's best to keep it like that. I will try to separate one letter from another. Now, I can move it a little bit and I think I will change the font. Now for tracing, as you see that's my type of process. I always set the ocapacity of a previous layer and then I will trace in this layer. For that matter, I will choose one color for my W, for example. For the next letter, I will create another layer and maybe I can change the color if it's up to you. I'm from the last letter P, I will also change the color. I will make them visible this layer. I will paint these things that are not quite done. Now, we're going to click on the animation assist on a timeline and I will press "Play." I think it's really fast, so on the settings, we can establish the frame per second for example to four. Yes, it's better but I think it's also really fast. Maybe two or three. As you see, I maintain the play loop. For example, if I do a ping-pong, it's going to do it on reverse too. I will maintain it on loop. I will also delete the background. I think it's quite good. Also, I will group these layers. You can do this with your reading. Maybe I will resize them a little bit, and in also the settings is the same. Maybe I can set the frame for a second a little bit more. If the last form of representing words can be this way, I will group it, then create a new layer, disappear this layer. You can redraw the letters so it will be perceived movement. I will show you how it's better turn expressing with words. I will repeat it this WIP. We will have a single layer and single frame display with WIP. Then we add a new frame and we'll redraw all letters. As you see, I'm leaving behind some places and some spots. But this will create an interesting effect. I will do one more and it's a game for a second Luckily. As you see, is like the world is wiggling around, especially with this brush that I used. We made invisible the background. I will select this, put it in the middle. What do you think? We can also establish the frames per second to seven, so it's really fun. I think it depends on you on how wiggling you want this effect to be. It's like the word is playful and really fun. Keep on doing the rest of the sticker gifts. Let's meet in the next lesson to know how to export them.
12. Export Your Gifs: We're finished working on our sticker GIFs. Now is time to know how to export it so you can use it later on your Instagram stories. In order for your sticker GIFs to appear in Instagram stories or another platform, they must be uploaded as a sticker and not as a regular GIF. This means that you have to upload your GIF stickers with a transparent background. I will explain to you how with your file Open in Procreate, I will use in this case the laptop. I don't know if you remember. I will go to the menu on the wrench icon. On the Actions, I will press Share, on the bottom, I will look for animated GIF. Here, you will see there's open some panel. You can see three options here. You will enable the last one that is a transparent background. This will allow your GIF to be a sticker, not a GIF. Otherwise, your GIF sticker will have this white background. This is not the case and it's not what we want, so we want this transparent background. You can play with the Alpha threshold. In this case, I will maintain it in 30 percent because I think if I am going up to 100 percent, these little spots I leave unpainted, it will appear so I don't like it. I will live it in 30 percent. You're going to also here change the frames per second. For example, if I wanted more faster animation, I can change it here, and I will maintain it maybe seven or eight, it's okay. When exporting, you can press Export and you can decide what you are going to do. You can copy or you can save the image. For later, you can transfer this to your computer. If you would like to use your GIF as a post on Instagram, you will need to export it as animation MP4. We have our GIF exported and ready to share. Now, the next step is to create an account on Giphy, and ask for an artist channel. So you can upload and see your GIFs later on Instagram.
13. Bonus: Apply to Giphy: We're coming to the end of the class but before the conclusion, it's a bonus. Now that we have our GIF exported, we will follow a series of steps to upload their stickers to GIPHY so you can later use them on Instagram. Anyone can find and use your stickers, I think is the best way for your work to be discovered. Let's go. These are the steps to apply to an artist channel on GIPHY. First, go to giphy.com. If you don't have it already, create a GIPHY account. As a requirement before applying to an artist channel, you have to upload at least five or more sticker GIFs to be considered. That is why we also create a bag of five animated GIFs in the class. Don't forget to check the specs about transparency at a 20 percent and set your animation playback to loop before uploading. Then on your profile page, click on the button "Upload" and then drag your sticker GIFs to be uploaded. You will see that for each sticker GIF, you have to add tags. This step is really important for your sticker GIFs to be discovered. I suggest that you write your Instagram handle in each one of the sticker description tags because when you search for them on Instagram and other platforms, it will be easier to write your Instagram handle as a tag and then discover your stickers. Also, you can add tags relating to the actions of your stickers. In my case, as you see, I am including my Insta handle and other worlds like laptop, job, working, etc. Then go to the link that is on the description of the project. Click on the button, join us an artist or a brand, and then hit the button, select "Artist". I think that for the specific case of this class, we will apply as an artist. Complete the following information of your profile with your name, Avatar picture, and social links. Especially add your link to your Instagram account and also if you have a website that will be helpful too. After that, patience dear students. In a week or so, you should receive a confirmation e-mail like this one saying that your application was received and approved. On the next day these are the steps on how to find your stickers on Instagram. First, go to your account on Instagram, select "Create a story". Take a picture of yourself or anything else. In this case, I took a picture of my table. Then go to the smiley square face on the top, search for GIF, and then on the search bar, write the name of the tag you use when you uploaded your sticker GIF. Remember I said to choose your Instagram handle name. Yes. If you did it, now, it will be easier to find your stickers. As you see in my case, I wrote my Instagram handle and now I can see all the sticker GIFs I created. If you see your stickers too, select one and start creating. These are the alternative places where you can use your GIFs stickers besides Instagram. First as a complimentary image in your web or your portfolio. I use WordPress for this matter. I wrote a text and then inserted my GIF image. As you see, my GIF is moving and working real good. Also, you can add it at the signature to send more original emails. You just only have to drag your gift to the email and resize it. How cool is this? Our stickers are around the Internet world right now. How exciting is this? I hope this process has been useful and easy for you. However, if you ever have any trouble uploading or creating your profile, let me know on the discussion panel.
14. Final Tips: We arrive at the end of the class. Thank you so much for joining me today. We covered the entire process to show your creative identity by doing simple GIF stickers. From learning the principles of animation, the useful tools of Procreate, to make GIF stickers, export it and make them public to use and stories. In between each lesson, I gave you recommendations for the most common practices. If there is one thing I hope you take away from the class, is that you always work based on a concept. Develop your ideas through simple animations to bring your illustrations to life. From now on, you can explore further in the world of animation. It is a process that requires practice, but that doesn't mean you can have fun in the process. If you want to dive more into animation, you can complement your knowledge with further classes on Skillshare and other resources. I will leave some links for you to check. I encourage you to upload your project backup sticker GIFs here on the Project section. Here are some tips to upload. For the project itself, please upload your GIF format. When uploading, select "Image", it seems strange to abrupt your moving GIF as an image, but trust me, the GIF will display animated. As an option, to export your project as a video, you can also explore your gave us an MP4 and then upload it to the Project section as a video. For the cover image, export one of your GIF stickers as a still image like I did here on the Project section. I would love to take a look at what you've developed. Also I would love it if you tag me when you use them in your Instagram stories. If you have some doubts, please don't be shy to ask in the discussion panel. Also, if you want to learn more from me, please check my last character illustration class. Maybe you can compliment your knowledge and animate an illustrator character. Who knows? Follow me here on Skillshare and also on Instagram for updates on new classes, color for illustration resources and more. Thank you for being here dear students. It was so much fun creating our sticker GIFs together. Bye.
Cé Marina, Illustrator & Graphic designer
