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in this episode of the animating great
artists series I'm collaborating with
burnt toast creative aka Scott Martin a
Canadian based illustrator who craves
these wonderfully cynical illustrations
that are dark and fun and hilarious he
gave me this amazing illustration of
human trash as an illustrator file
I wanted the limbs to fly up and flop
down and a really smooth and fluid way
this burnt toast has these amazing fluid
curves and bends in his illustrations
and I wanted to capture that movement I
figured the best way for me to do this
was to do a quick rough version frame by
frame so I could get the movement
feeling natural and then clean it up
afterwards with shape layers to keep
that clean vector look I did these frame
by frame rafts in Photoshop using the
fruit plugin Adam desin - to help with
this handy tool bar here you can do this
in any frame by frame software Adobe
animate which used to be flash TV paint
ruff animator is what I use on the iPad
all of these are great
I'm just most comfortable in Photoshop
first I put down two positions one with
the limbs up and one with the limbs down
just to feel out the timing then I tried
an option with the limbs going up a lot
straighter which felt a little more
explosive but didn't quite capture the
round and curviness
that I knew would be needed for when
they flop down so I found a happy medium
where the limbs are still curved but
they raised quite a bit higher above the
top of the trashcan on this next pass I
added a few frames in between those two
poses so we've got the flopping up in
the air and then a few of them just sort
of flopping downwards here already you
can get the feel for the timing and
impact for the animation which is most
important once you have that down
everything else just kind of falls into
place and acts just to reinforce that
initial movement added a few more frames
and started to think about how the limbs
would really fall and flop and I'm kind
of imagining these as tubes without any
bones that do have a lot of weight so
they just sort of fall down straight for
the really small movements at the top of
this arc where the limbs are up in the
air instead of redrawing each frame i
duplicated the frame and then use the
transform warp tool to make slight
adjustments so I select my lasso tool
from up here select the limb I would
want to warp and then go to edit
transform
Warp I've got a shortcut made because I
use it all the time and then from here
just move these points to get that
slight slight adjustment that you need
now this is fine for a rough part but it
does look pretty artificial and like
you've cut some corners which of course
you have but it's best to hide that as
much as you can so save this tip for
your ruffs I added a few more frames and
when I got to here I was pretty happy
with it it's great to do this really
roughly first because you won't get it
right on your first go and being able to
change the shapes and adjust the timings
quickly and not worrying about the
details is important the more options
that you can try and the easier it is to
adjust the quicker you're gonna find
what feels right I'm relatively new to
frame by frame animation so my process
requires a lot of trial and error from
here I knew that half the animation was
going to happen when the limbs are up so
I needed to create those assets I redrew
those sections in Illustrator and
separated all the elements that needed
to be animated onto their own layers I
use references from burnt toasts other
work to make sure that I was using the
same design language throughout I
imported the AI file into After Effects
and converted the illustrator layers to
shape layers by right-clicking and
selecting create create shapes from
vector layers and then recolor our
layers over here so it was easier to
navigate in the timeline I also imported
the rough animation from Photoshop to
use as a reference and then move that up
and down poses in the timeline to match
so this is like a blocking phase so in
the first section of this timeline we've
got our limbs all facing down and then
in the second half all our limbs up in
the air and I've got a different comp
over here in the project panel but each
parts I did of the animation on the
second part I focused on the limbs they
aren't 95% of the movement in this
animation so I needed to get them right
for the whole piece to work I toggle
down into the shapes path and keyframes
at that property and then adjusted that
shape every frame with our pen tool to
match our photoshop roughs and I did
this on almost every frame there's the
most movement in these three frames and
then I can have some easing into this
top position here it might seem like a
lot of work to do this by animating so
many frames individually but this whole
animation is only 20 frames
and I'm really not having to think too
much at this point because the Photoshop
ruffs acting as a clothes guy I'm just
lining things up and I'm also only
animating one leg because I'm going to
duplicate that later when it's complete
so we only have to animate it once on
the next pass I animated the hands and
feet animating their position and
rotation so they line up with each limb
I also added a bit of movement on the
bin lid isn't in and out of this raised
position to give it a bit of
anticipation before slamming down I also
have it slowing down a lot further than
the physics of this bin would allow kind
of exaggerating that movement to add
some more impact to the animation on the
next pass I cleaned up some of the
elements that were sticking out like the
top of that bin being visible during
this exaggerated slam I removed that by
adding a mask setting it to subtract and
then animating it on for just that one
frame then I added the shading to the
animated arms and legs this was probably
the most time-consuming part of the
process to do that each shape layer
needed to have three shapes inside it
the stroke on top the shading in the
middle and then the fill on the bottom I
did that by duplicating the existing
path of the limb remove the fill from
the top layer and then added that new
shape layer in between that that I've
called a shading and then I animated the
path of that shading layer on each frame
to match the rest of the arm having
shading like this on an animation with
strokes it can look great but it also
adds to the production time so just know
where you're getting into when designing
with chokes and shading on the next pass
I added some details I've got some flies
for rotating around the bin a little bit
of bounce in the hair and some subtle
movement on the raised pinky finger both
of those animating the shape paths with
two keyframes and also a little shake to
the bit and of course our second leg is
now added here just by duplicating that
previous leg the next step was adding
smears here I've gone and drawn some
smears with the limbs moving add their
fastest smears are an animation
technique to stylistically simulate a
motion blur here I've elongated the
hands and feet for one frame so they
look like they're leaving a trail
because they're moving so fast these are
pretty subtle as far as to me as good
they should be able to feel the smear it
can add more information to a single
frame enhancing not only the speed of
the movement but also the movement of
paths
smears are just really fun to do we end
up with a composition here that is full
of keyframes and it can look
intimidating seeing it all like this but
it all follows a process building on
each element that came before it
gradually and all serves to sell that
simple alternating between two frames
that this whole thing started with
here's a show playlist to be animating
the works of some other great artists
and illustrators little thing you'll
enjoy if you've made it this far I'll
see you in the next video and please
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