Are you intimidated by the entire process of illustrating, rigging and animating a character? Do you have a hard time creating lifelike movements and combining different animations? Look no further! In this class I will walk you through the entire process of animating a character and creating an animated loop.

This class is meant for everyone, as I will be explaining the concepts in depth while also touching on why you should be doing certain things. If you have any questions, feel free to ask them on the community tab or have a look at the project file located under "Your Project".

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Class Outline

Illustrating a Character: We will be creating the entire character in Illustrator from scratch. This includes making a rough version to get the proportions right, adding details and clothing as well as splitting up the layers to make it ready for rigging. I will show you how to create proper joints to get the smoothest animation later on.
Rigging using DUIK: In After Effects, we will start rigging the character's limbs using the industry standard tool - DUIK. The rigging process is rather quick, as everything was set up properly in Illustrator. On top of rigging the limbs, we are going to create a controller for the body and head as well as some smart controllers for the facial animation.
Animating an Idle Animation: Characters look boring while standing still - but not if you include an idle animation! Our character is a fighter, and therefore he needs a proper stance. We will go through how to create the idle animation using key poses - as well as the right way to loop it. On top of that we will create extra controllers to add a few punches. The character is a fighter after all!
Animating a Run Cycle: One of the most important things to know as a character animator is how to animate a run cycle. I will show you the quickest way to create one without compromising on quality. We will also combine it with the idle animation to create an entire loop consisting of 2 different animations.
Creating an Entire Scene: Our character looks fine by itself, but it's currently running in place. To fix this we will illustrate a punching bag that our character can punch. Other than that it will be used for some parallax camera motion to make it seem like our character is actually moving.
Exporting as a GIF: As a final touch we will export the entire loop as an mp4, which we will convert to a GIF using Photoshop. This GIF can be uploaded to the project page, so I can critique your work.

Tonio Shaby

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