- Hi, YouTube, my name is Toniko Pantoja.
I am an artist within the animation industry.
My animation classes with Skillshare just launched
and today, I'm sharing an exclusive sneak peek with you.
In this lesson,
I'm going to show you some simple animation basics.
Ready to get started?
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In this lesson, we're going to talk about frame-by-frame
or hand-drawn animation, the basics of it,
how I do it with Adobe Animate and what it is essentially.
Think about hand-drawn animation done in paper.
Every drawing is a completely new drawing
or a new key frame.
I want to show you an example that I did,
to give you an idea of what I want to talk about
for this lesson.
We're going to do something as basic
or even more basic than this.
It might seem a bit confusing, it's intimidating,
what's happening, the background, all these effects
and these camera moves.
Don't worry, we'll go through this step by step,
because that's what it is, it's all just building blocks,
one at a time.
It starts with something very simple
and we're just putting layers on top of layers.
So, I'm going to create a new file, again, 1920 by 1080.
And now, we're going to talk
about classic frame-by-frame animation.
But before we do that, I'm going to do what I did
with the bouncing ball, which is to plan it a bit.
So for a bouncing ball, it was just a flat ground.
But for this one,
I want to give just a bit of perspective, you know?
So, I'm just going to draw out some perspective lines
for a one-point perspective.
If you're wondering why I'm making the perspective line,
it's because I use it as a guide to show depth.
So for this rabbit, for example,
the little rabbit is coming towards us
from all the way in the back.
I'm going to create a new layer.
I'm just going to call this a perspective or persp.
So, I'm just going to draw various poses
or guides of where our little rabbit guy's going to be.
So, that's one.
Maybe he'll come towards us.
And again, I'm not super consistent with this rabbit design.
We're having fun, really.
That's drawing number one.
Drawing number two.
And then, maybe we'll have it end closer to us,
maybe facing us.
Three and I'm going to do the same thing like I did
with the bouncing ball, which is I'm going to draw sort of arcs
to illustrate how I want the rabbit to bounce.
And maybe I'll have it bounce back to number one.
I feel like maybe
there's just too much visual information here.
It's a bit too messy.
So, what I usually like to do is I go to properties
for each layer and turn down the opacity
to let's say, maybe something really, really low.
So, let's say the perspective is maybe 8%.
I can still see it, but it's not as distracting.
Maybe the same thing for this rabbit.
And maybe I'll turn that down to, let's say,
20% and hit okay.
Now, it's not as distracting for me.
I can still see it
and now, I can just use this as a reference.
All right, now let's kind of draw our key poses
for the rabbit.
Let's choose a nice color for the rabbit.
I'm going to choose something gray.
And the example that I showed,
I drew the line art of the rabbit and filled it.
But for this case, we're going to do something
that's a lot more experimental and fun.
What if we just animate shapes?
So, I'm just going to draw a shape of a rabbit
with a brush tool and then fill it with a paint bucket tool.
What you can also do is,
let's say if you're drawing over your guide,
you can move your animation right below the guide,
so the guide is on top of your animation.
So now, I can still see the eyes and the ears of the rabbit.
Let's give this rabbit pinkish ears.
And then, let's give it beady eyes.
I like to use the eyedropper tool to select the same color
of the ears and maybe use it for the legs.
Now, I'm going to hit, insert black key frame.
So now, I'm going to draw my next key pose
and I've already drawn the reference for rabbit number two.
And again, I'm just drawing through brushstrokes and fills.
Nothing too complicated.
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Now I have three keys of our rabbit.
It's first position, second position and final position.
Now, we're going to make connective tissue
or connective drawings for these key poses.
In animation, we call these breakdowns.
For this case, I need to draw a key of rabbit one going
to rabbit two by jumping.
So, what I'm going to do is go to my first drawing
and hit, insert frame.
And I'm going to select that and now turn it blank.
Okay, now we have an empty drawing between these drawings.
So, I'm going to turn on my onion skin tool,
adjust the sliders of my onion skin,
so I can only see rabbit one and rabbit two.
The sliders here allow me to adjust the onion skin range.
So as you're seeing, if I extend my last onion skin
to let's say the fourth drawing
that includes the third rabbit, it'll show.
But I don't want that.
So now, I'm only focusing on those two rabbits.
Now, I'm just going to draw our connective tissue
or our breakdown drawing from rabbit one to rabbit two.
So now that I have my onion skin turned on,
blue being the previous one in the green being the next,
I'm going to just use that as a guide
to sort of figure out what my next drawing could look like.
So, it's leaping.
And again, I'm not super precious
about maintaining solid drawing or consistency.
Right now, I'm just trying to get what feels right
or what feels good.
So, I think it extending its little arms like that
is pretty funny.
So now, we have a connective tissue.
I'm going to do the same thing with two to three.
You don't always have to have the onion skin on.
Sometimes, I like to roll between my drawings,
turn off the onion skin, so I can actually feel the movement
and sort of figure out what feels appropriate.
'Cause sometimes, seeing multiple drawings at once
might not be that helpful.
Maybe I'll do that for the next one.
I'll just flip between these two drawings or hold my cursor
and keep going back and forth, so I can kind of get an idea
of what the next drawing might look like.
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Maybe I'll do one more.
So, maybe I can make it go back to number one.
I can select my first drawing, hit copy frames
and then paste it right over here.
And I'm just going to select my other layers
and hit insert frame to extend those drawings,
just so everything matches up.
And then, I'm going to extend this drawing over here,
so I can create a blank one right in between.
And maybe for this end pose, I'm thinking,
what if it does a back flip?
We're going to see it's under legs.
And again, this is just me having fun.
So, that's its legs, we're looking underneath it.
We probably won't see its ears
'cause it's going to be behind the body.
So now when I roll between these drawings,
we kind of have an idea of the movement.
So, I hit control and hit loop playback
to allow me to loop the animation,
but it's going by really, really fast.
So, what if I just space out
or extend these drawings a bit longer?
So, let's say I'm going to hold this drawing for four frames,
so I'm going to select my drawing or move the cursor
to my first drawing and hit one, two, three, four,
so it can hold longer.
I'm using the third button over here, insert frames,
to extend each of those drawings.
One, two, three, four.
I usually go for fours
because it feels like it's very safe number.
You can still get a sense of motion and movement
and the timing still feels watchable.
So, I need connective tissues connecting these drawings.
So, right in between these frames or these drawings,
I'm just going to select a random spot in the middle
for each of these drawings and hit, insert blank key frame.
And I'm going to keep doing that for every other drawing.
Insert blank and this will be our in-betweens
or our connective tissue.
And that's what animation is.
It's really connecting drawings together
to form that illusion of movement.
Okay, so when I play it, we have blank drawings.
Now, we just need to fill it in.
And I'm going to do this fairly quickly.
I can turn on my onion skin again,
adjust the range of the onion skin,
so I can actually see my previous next drawings.
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Let's see what that feels like.
We have animation and that's animation right there.
You know, I'm going to do something a bit extra
because I feel like I want this rabbit to end pretty extra
or dramatically and I want to really sell that weight.
And what I can do is maybe between these two drawings,
I can add an overshoot drawing.
So, I'm going to do the same thing, hit insert blank key frame
and I am going to turn onto my onion skin
to sort of see the guide for it.
And I'm going to have it squish,
just for that very brief moment.
Maybe the ears are going to be still up,
just to really saw that overlap.
And then I'm just going to make both of these drawings,
instead of lasting for one frame for each,
I'm going to just make them last for two
and make sure every other frame is synchronized.
And let's play that.
So now we have a bit of weight when the rabbit lands.
Let's turn off the guide.
We'll keep the perspective line, it's a nice touch.
So, there's our rabbit.
So, I want you guys to experiment with your own rabbit.
It could be a rabbit, it could be a dog,
it could be anything you want.
The idea is just to explore how to make those key poses
and how to connect them.
And in the next lesson, we're going to explore the library.
Thank you for checking that out.
And if you're interested in checking out more
about animation and learning about animation basics,
I have a few classes on Skillshare
that I'd love for you to check out.
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