If you want to learn how to animate characters, stick around,
and I'll show you how.
I'm using a pixel art character made in Aseprite, but these tips should apply to all mediums
and animation software.
So, this is Lumbah, a wood gathering dwarf, he needs to chop this wood and take it back
to his village, but currently he’s just standing still.
So, let's animate him.
Step one: reference.
You can usually find reference of the action you're trying to animate online, but you can
get bonus points if you film yourself acting it out.
This will help you understand vital information like key poses and timing.
Timing is one of the 12 principles of Animation; some very simple guidelines I try and follow
with everything I animate.
If you don't know what the 12 principles of animation are, make sure you let me know in
the comments and subscribe.
I'll make a video about it in the future.
Step 2: break down the character into parts.
Yes, tear the character limb from limb.
Oh made me feel sick that, actually.
separating the character into parts can help you focus on one thing at a time and get more
accurate animation.
Step 3: the key poses.
I learned from taking a reference video that the key poses are in the anticipation and
follow through.
So I'm going to draw.
Dwaw da dwarf.
I'm gonna dwaw da dwarf.
That’s hard to say.
So I'm going to draw the dwarf in these poses, making sure to exaggerate them to match the
style that I'm going for.
Quick tip: smear frames.
I want to show the axe flying through the air in between these two keyframes.
But instead of placing the axe in every single frame between, I like to use a single arced
smear frame.
This is where the axe is stretched from the start to the end position and occurs as one
big image like this.
Smear frames are common in cartoons and often look really silly on their own, but they're
great for getting across quick motions.
Step Four: timing.
With only three frames we have a basic chopping animation.
But it still kind of looks off currently each frame is on screen for the same amount of
time, and timing is really important.
I’ve just spat all over the mic there.
Very nice.
A slower buildup and follow through will give the impression that there is some weight to
the axe.
Simply changing the duration of each frame can help us make more believable motion.
I drew in a couple more frames to the anticipation and follow through to give it that slow in
and out and that really gets the timing across well.
Remember that timing also depends on the character.
A large strong character might not have a problem picking up an axe, but swinging it
through the air might be a bit slower and sluggish.
Thinking about the context of your animation will help make it more believable.
Step 5: overlap or secondary animation.
I've already done a little bit of this.
If you look at the animation we can see the hair and the beard moving somewhat independently
from the rest of the body, but I like the idea that the dwarfs facial features will
squash and stretch as he’s flying about chopping the axe, adding that in we now have
a dynamic chopping animation.
To recap this process, we filmed some reference for action, acting it out to make sure we
understood the key parts.
We broke down the character into parts for easier animation.
We drew the character into the key poses, exaggerating with the squash and stretch and
using a smear frame for a quick chopping motion.
We adjusted the timing of the action to make it more believable.
Changing the duration of the frames and adding in extra frames for that slow in and out.
Finally, we added some overlapping and secondary actions.
I applied that same process and made this little idle animation too.
Now he is no longer standing like a robot, but he can't walk so he's never going to be
able to take that wood back to his village.
I the pixel necromancer, have the true power.
5000 likes it and I'll make him walk.
It's now up to you to save Lumbah.
[Creepy Laugh]
B..B..B bonus round bonus round bonus round bonus round.
What's up, in the last pixel art video we designed this frog character.
If you don't know what I'm talking about, then go and check out that video that will
show you how I design characters in pixel art.
In that video I took you through the whole process of designing the character, so I thought
it would be nice now to take you through the process of animating the character.
Since this is an animation video so...
We’re doing it live.
Kind of, it's edited.
It's going to be edited by me.
Now Step one, I did say was the reference, but [QUACK] that I know what I want it to
do and it's is this.
[Strange Noises]
Which is exactly why acting it out is mega important.
So if you can act it out yourself, you'll know exactly what you want the frog to do.
Right so Step 2.
I can’t remember what the steps were, gosh I wrote the steps: breakdown the character
into parts.
This character is really good for practicing animation because he’s really just a circle.
You know, super basic, no complex parts.
We don't have to break it up into different limbs.
Things like that.
We can just imagine is a big blob of goo.
Which he is big froggy, froggy goo boy.
So let's animate him.
I was going to do an Idle, but I think we'll just do a simple hop, so if we're not taking
any reference 'cause that's the reference and I'm not breaking it down into body parts
because he's so simple.
Now it's time to put it into the key poses, so let's do it.
We're going to start off in this pose, but the first key pose that I'm going to put him
into is the anticipation frame.
Swinging a bat is a good example.
You're going to swing it, but you don't just swing it from your, from the starting position,
you would wind up and then swing the bat so it's essentially the windup frame.
So what I'm doing here when I'm trying to put him in this anticipation frame, I'm going
to squash him out.
So imagine he's being pushed down and his entire body is squashing and elongating outwards,
down like that.
And then he'll pop up and spring into the air.
They do say, try and keep the volume the same.
If I was to make him that big, then it's kind of unbelievable because he was only that big
to start off with.
Nice little trick you can do is just focus on one side and then mirror it so you don't
have to do more work.
So we're getting the basics of the squash in here, but the volume isn't looking quite
right.
It looks like it's actually expanding a bit, so I'm just going to keep working on this
until I get the squash right.
This does take time, you know you won't get a perfect first time.
Animation is long, lengthy process, but it's fun, so let's keep going.
So that's a nice start for the anticipation frame.
That's just one frame.
Could probably be improved, but we'll just keep going.
OK, I'll use that for the anticipation frame, next frame that I need to do is he needs to
be in the air.
So ;ets add a new frame.
I'm gonna take basic frog again.
'cause he's not going to be squashed while he's in the air and let's just move him there.
Let's say there.
That's a basic hopping animation.
It's not great.
You know there is no real follow through there, but it's the basics.
We're getting there.
So we got our first frame and squash down into that.
Which I want to be more stretched out, I think, so I'm going to stretch this out if his volume
is stretching long ways.
It needs to also shrink inwards, otherwise the volume of the character is going to be
wrong.
So let's just move him in.
We could probably just move him in a couple of times.
Try and keep it exaggerated, his legs obviously if he's hopping through the air, they're not
going to be curled up anymore either, so keep that in mind.
We have a basic hop there, nothing too special.
Let's slow that down so we can really see.
What I notice here immediately when I'm looking at this, it doesn't have a peak of the jump,
so you'd imagine when he reaches the peak of the jump that he'd actually slowed down
as well, so he probably squashed up again to normal size, and then come back down and
then a little bit of a follow through.
So let's keep working.
Let's try just adding another frame here.
Copy the basic proportion of the frog, but move him up.
So, so you see how he reaches the top of his
jump, then he squashes back into normal proportions.
Let's play that at 1x speed.
Is getting that that's looking a bit better there where he slows down at the top of the
peak goes back into normal proportions and now we need him to come back down again.
I think it would be nice to do a smear there.
Let's try that.
This frame needs to go in between these two frames, but just putting it there probably
won't look that good.
Let's have a look.
I mean it's alright.
It's not bad, but I think it would be nicer to have it smear as if there's some downwards
motion in there.
This is pretty easy, I can just move him up.
Move him down.
Spread him out.
When you're doing a smear frame.
I sort of imagine like spreading jam on bread or something or toast.
It goes from one end to the other.
You spread it and it leaves that trail behind it.
And that's what you're trying to do with the frog.
So I want his entire eyes to sort of come down.
Just stretch it out and this might not work.
This smear might not work for this motion.
It might be too fast.
It might look too quick, but a lot of animation is just trying it out.
And if nothing else comes of it, at least we got to see this guy.
I think that's the greatest frog I've ever drawn.
That's it.
Friends.
Pack it up.
Let's have a look at this smear so far.
There so you see how his eyes sort of stretched down.
I don't really like the smile of it.
I think we could probably get away with hiding this smile.
OK, that's kind of good.
Anticipation, flies into the air, reaches his max, comes back down.
And there he is.
I can just see here.
There are some parts which need fleshing out a bit more with time and the top of his jump
it goes back into his normal proportions, but I actually want to squash him up again
just to extend this even further to really make it come across as if he's like floating
into the air and we could just try starting off with the squash down here.
And let's put it in that place, but also move it upwards.
You see what I mean?
Where he just sort of hangs in the air a little bit more there.
The timing is still a bit off.
We still got some things to work on, so let's keep going.
OK, so what I want to do is actually change this landing because it really feels off now
that he just stops stiff and lands.
So again, another squash frame might be nice here.
Could just replace this landing one with the squash.
That’s him sort of going right through the bottom pose and then popping back into the
standard pose.
So let's see what that looks like.
Pretty good, I kind of wanted to land first, so let's just try adding.
Let's try adding this frame in and add in the proper proportion frog in before the squash.
Timing is definitely very off, so I'm just going to mess around with the timing of each
frame here and see if I can make something really nice.
Make the timing work a little bit better without adding anymore frames.
So let's add frame properties.
So every frame here is in 100 milliseconds or 0.1 seconds.
We can change the duration of things, so let's give it a shot just to see what it would feel
nicer as.
So the squashing down I want that to be on for let's say 200, so that's gonna elongate
the squashing down.
And that's already looking a bit better, but this bit here at the top I want to do the
same here, so let's make this 200.
‘Cause then it's really slowing down the motion.
That's very nice, much better.
That's pretty good.
I think we're getting there a nice little hop animation I think it would be nice to
add another frame in here where it goes back to normal proportions.
Before it squashes down, and that's gonna elongate that top section bit as well.
That's it, yeah, that's looking a lot better.
Let's play that here so you guys can see.
That's looking a lot better.
He really hangs about at the top there, which is why I prefer and that's looking pretty
good.
I'm going to just add in another frame here in the anticipation, so we've got one squash
down.
Let's add even more of a squash down.
You looking thick.
That's pretty good.
I kind of like it though.
It's like Blem Blem Blem Blem.
Feel free to do your own sound effects.
For a basic animation of the frog.
I think that's pretty good.
Our little hopping frog.
So just to break down what I did for this so we have the squash down and then the flying
pose and then he would just return straight back to his normal pose.
But then what we did is we wanted the
top of the jump to be even longer, so we added in some more frames at the top, which is this
bit here and then this bit here way really reaches the top of his jump and his backhand
catches up with him and then he falls back down again with the smear animation loop into
his normal pose, squashes down for some follow through.
When he hits the ground he will follow through and then will come back up into the normal
position.
Which is that.
So there you go.
Boing, boing, boing.
It's not perfect, it could use a lot more work with the timing and playing around with
the volumes of the pixels, but it's good enough for this demonstration.
Hope you enjoyed it.
And there it is.
My process for animating characters.
I hope you like it.
Let me know what you think in the comments.
Make sure you come and join
the Discord channel.
More and more people are joining, which is super cool.
Everyone can share the projects that they're working on, give some feedback and help each
other improve.
As always, chopthat subscribe button.
Chop.
Get it because the wood and the dwarf and the the animation is the....
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Thanks for watching and I'll see you in the next video.
Right now I gotta edit this...