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katy-133 · 1 year ago

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Animation Workshop with Katy133: Solo Booklet Edition

I have copied the instructions I wrote for the animation workshop I held back in May-August 2021. It includes 5 different exercises on animation. While I won't be able to host another workshop myself for the foreseeable future, I hope this text document can help people practice animation as a beginner, or as a veteran who wishes to do a refresher on the basics.

Week 0 of the Animation Workshop Summary:

Hi there! Going through the form submissions, this workshop is going to be teaching beginner level animation. Teaching the basics and learning the principles.

I wanted to give a quick talk about the syllabus I've planned out: I was thinking of, each week, giving some material to take a look at (videos, tutorials, and reference), and giving an assignment to try out that week. At the end of the week, we can look at everyone's work and give feedback on them. It would be five weeks/assignments in total, from a bouncing ball, to a simple character movement.

I want to make this convenient for everyone's schedules, so I will try to have everything done entirely in text instead of calls.

I will set up info on the first assignment asap (Hopefully tomorrow).

Assignment 1: Bouncing Ball

Intro: Hi animators! This week, I'd like to teach the fundamentals and share the 12 Principles of Animation. Learning these 12 principles will help you understand how animation is created, how to create animation, and how you can improve your animation. Don't worry if learning about all 12 at once feels a bit overwhelming--I felt the same when I started, but learning by doing will help you understand these principles more and more over time. It's a process.

Viewing material: Video 1) The Illusion of Life: A summary of the 12 Principles of Animation. https://vimeo.com/93206523 Video 2) 12 Principles of Animation Compilation: Another visual on the 12 Principles. Doesn't include verbal descriptions, but I'm including it in case you want to see another example of the 12 Principles. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pDVfNf5GvPg Article 3) The Wikipedia page for the 12 Principles: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twelve_basic_principles_of_animation Video 3) Clip Studio Paint Animation 101 | Zedrin: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3y8euAjlcXI&ab_channel=CLIPSTUDIOPAINT

Instructions:

Please watch Video 1 of the Viewing Material, above. If you are new to the 12 Principles of Animation and would like to learn more about a specific principle, take a look at Video 2 and Article 3, which goes into more detail on each principle. Also, if you're using Clip Studio Paint for this assignment, watch Video 4 for a tutorial.

For this assignment, I would like you to animate 3 different ball bounces: A rubber ball, a bowlingball, and a beach ball.

Focus on including arcs, squash/stretch, timing, and slow in/slow out. The reason why practicing a ball bounce is so useful in animation is because you are using simple shapes to learn the 12 Principles of Animation.

Recommended length: 1 to 4 seconds max for EACH video.

Frame rate: 12 frames per second or 24 frames per second

Recommended dimensions: 1280x720 or 1920x1080

Use the art program of your choice (Note: in your form submissions, everyone has access to Clip Studio Paint, and I'm familiar enough with it that I can help if you come across a technical issue. Feel free to use any program that allows you to export animation however--if we come across a technical issue, I'll do my best to look up solutions and find work-arounds).

If you have any questions or need help, please let me know.

Due date: 10th of May, end of day (your timezone). Feel free to contact me if you would like a due date extension.

Additional tips:

A bowling ball, being the most heavy, will not bounce across the floor or move much of a distance compared to the other balls.

A rubber ball will have the most squash and stretch, and move across the floor.

A beach ball is light and filled with air, so it will move more slowly and stay up in the air longer.

If you feel stuck, definitely look up reference of (liveaction) ball bounces. Animators often look at real life video footage on YouTube or film their own videos for reference.

Edit: Testing out the limitations of CSP, I've edited the recommended length to 1 to 4 seconds max. CSP Pro has a 24 frame limit per animation, so I recommend making the ball bounces 1 second long, at a framerate of 12.

Assignment 2

Hullo animators! This week, I'd like us to learn more about animating something that may be very useful for visual novels--Eye blinks!

I’d like you to animate 3 different eye blinks: Blink 1: Vanilla (a standard eye blink) Blink 2: Bouncy (a blink from a character who is excited or scared. The eyelid closes and then opens very wide, then quickly relaxes to a slightly less-open eye) Blink 3: Slow (a blink from a character who is sleepy or bored.) Please include both eyes (left and right) in the animations.

For the eye designs, I’d like them to include a pupil, the iris, eyelids, and the eye’s sclera (the white of the eye). This will allow you to think about the placement of these different parts of a real eye as your animating the blinks.

Viewing material: -Before starting the assignment, please watch this video, Animating Eyes: Character Blinks: A tutorial on animating a vanilla blink. While this is using a 3D character rig, the animator gives many useful tips on how the human eye works and how to apply that knowledge to an animated blink. Tip: If you want to look at his example animation’s frame by frame, you can pause the video on YouTube and use the hotkeys , and . to scrub through the frames. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c0DimVO18ps&ab_channel=SirWadeNeistadt -The Owl House clip: This clip includes an example of a bouncy blink, just before she says, “Those are my dumb kids!” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i3eAJKxmJrg -I also found a video version of the blinking guy meme. A liveaction example of close-up blinking: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ivlx3psBPKE

Submitting: You can submit all the eyes together as 1 gif/video file, or have 1 file for each blink type. Framerates: 12 or 24. Number of frames per animation: No limit. Dimensions: Any; 1280x720 recommended. Due date: Tues, 18th of May. End of the day, your time. Edit: Extending the due date to Thursday, 20th of May. End of the day, your time. Thursday Edit: Monday, 24th of May 2021.

Additional tips:

Avoid "zombie eyes" (term for when the character’s eye is open, but you can't see the pupil/iris for a frame). -Generally, the body uses more effort to move the eyelid down (over your eye) than to move it back up (opening your eye) in an eye blink. Because of that, you’ll likely want to use less frames bringing the eyelids down than bringing the eyelids back up. -Do not have only 1 frame of the eyes completely closed--it makes the blink hard to register to the viewer because it's so fast. I’d recommend 2-3 frames of the eye completely closed in a vanilla blink. -Remember that you can look at reference footage to study blinks more. -Eye darts will add more life to your character. -The pupils shrink when they are scared and grow when they see something they like.

ALSO On the subject of "zombie eyes." There's a so-bad-it's-good animated film called Homeward (it's a film by Asylum Pictures ripping off Pixar's Onward) that has an example of some VERY noticeable accidental zombie eyes. 35:24 of this video: https://youtu.be/U5j4WL9Hijo?t=2124

Assignment 3: Wind

Now that we’ve been learning about eye blinks, lets try out another type of animation that I imagine would be useful in a visual novel: Thing blowing in the wind!

Instructions: I’d like you to animate wind blowing through hair, a flag, or a cape (your choice) as a loop-able animation (meaning, if the animation is exported as a gif, the animation replays from the beginning in a seamless way).

Before you begin, I’d like you to take a look at these two guides of animating wind. Afterwards, try out this method yourself. Guide 1) https://twitter.com/DanRoot_VGAS/status/1385239469494767619 Guide 2) https://twitter.com/Kekeflipnote/status/1385364088759463936

Submissions: In a gif or video format. Framerate: 12 or 24 frames per second. Dimensions: Any. 1280x728 recommended. Due date: 3rd of June, end of day (your time).

Week 4 Assignment: Lip Sync

Instructions:

Look through the viewing material below.

I'd like you to pick a short piece of audio dialogue (3 seconds maximum) to lip sync a character to.

Grab a copy of the audio clip (if you'd like help with doing this, link me to the audio and which part of dialogue you'd like, and I can use the program Audacity to make a recording for the assignment).

To keep the animation manageable, the maximum length of the lip sync should be 3 seconds (though the animation can be longer if you wish to add frames of pause before/after the character begins to speak).

The character you use to animate the lip sync can be as simple as you want (a stick figure with an oval head), but the mouth should contain top and bottom teeth and a tongue.

Animate lip sync of a character speaking the dialogue in the clip. Export the animation (see Tips header below for details on that). If you do not have CSP (or another animation program that allows audio importing) for this assignment, please let me know and we'll find a workaround for you.

Tips:

Note that (from my experience) CSP sometimes has issues exporting animation if the CSP file contains audio. A work-around for this is to 1) save your work, 2) delete the audio file, and, 3) export the animation. You can then send the audio to me as a separate file and I can combine the audio and the animation using the video editing program Kdenlive (of you can edit the audio and animation together yourself for me if you'd prefer).

Because people need to move their lips to form words a moment before they push out air to speak them, professional animators are sometimes told to taking the frames of lip sync and shift/move them 2 frames earlier than the audio.

The more open a mouth is, the less wide the mouth gets because it is being stretched open (example: "A" sound mouth is more open and less wide than an "E" mouth shape).

A closed "M/P/B" mouth shape should stay closed for two frames minimum before changing into another mouth shape. Otherwise, it can be hard for the viewer's eye to see/register the closed mouth shape.

Submissions: In a video format. If the file is too big for chat, you can send the clip to the temporary Google Drive folder (or in the DevTalk server if you'd prefer). Framerate: 12 or 24 frames per second. Dimensions: Any. 1280x728 recommended. Due date: 23rd of June, Extended to the 1st 4th of July, end of day (your time).

Viewing material:

The 2 attached lip sync charts, below. https://res.cloudinary.com/practicaldev/image/fetch/s--v1_xz_Aj--/c_limit%2Cf_auto%2Cfl_progressive%2Cq_auto%2Cw_880/https://thepracticaldev.s3.amazonaws.com/i/iubpy8p58bkfg7vwvxoh.jpg https://andrewduffycca.files.wordpress.com/2010/02/lipsync.jpg

An Introduction to Lip Sync (and Mouth Shapes) - Animation Theory (video, 5 mins) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h7U2YvmIMOo&ab_channel=DevonKong

If you need to learn how to import audio into CSP: How to work with audio in ClipStudioPaint! (video, 12 mins)https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XCtTRfZd6s0&ab_channel=GugartsAnimations

Week 5 Assignment: Inbetween Poses

Congrats everyone on finishing the fourth assignment, lip sync! Now you know the fundamentals of making a character speak dialogue!

This week, we'll be looking at the last exercise of the workshop: Animating a character's body!

Instructions:

-Decide on the starting frame and the final frame of your animation first. -Animate the inbetween frames in an interesting and dynamic way, using you knowledge of the 12 principals of animation. Do not animation the transition in a linear way.

Ideas for the starting/ending frames can be: -One body pose to a different body pose. -A body transformation where a human turns into an animal.

Tips: -Keep in mind that the focus of the exercise to to transition between the staring frame and the final frame in a way that isn't linear and instead is expressive and interesting. -Feel free to use stick figures (with strong action lines for the spine, arms, etc. See: Viewing Material, "Line of Action" links, below) as the focus is what you do with the character between frames. -Also feel free to use live action video reference, but keep in mind that animation can be way more exaggerated than live action, and that this exercise is encouraging you to exaggerate things between frames. -You can animate an entire body of a character, or crop the top half of them (if the majority of the posing is in that particular area of the body). -A fast action (like a baseball swing) can include smear frames (a frame where there is a blur overtop/alongside the fastest moving body part). See Viewing Material links, below.

Submissions: In video or gif format. If the file is too big for chat, you can send the clip to the temporary Google Drive folder in Pinned Messages (or in the DevTalk server if you'd prefer). Animation Length: 1 second minimum (can use several frames at the start/end that are the same as resting animation). Framerate: 12 or 24 frames per second. Dimensions: Any. 1280x728 recommended. Due date: The 22nd 29th of July 5th of August. This will be the final assignment and is the most challenging imho, so please let me know if you'd like and extension.

Viewing material:

Weird Frame in Naruto Explained! [in 1 minute!]. This video really sums up this week's assignment: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XaVaSnDKhUM&ab_channel=Pegbarians

Once again refresh yourself on the 12 principles of animation as you work on this assignment. Principles you can use to make inbetween frames more interesting include (but aren't limited to) are Squash and Stretch, Arcs, Follow-Through (such as an overshoot), and Exaggeration.

An image post on making a strong Line of Action: https://twitter.com/MatthewLuhn/status/1396900506501484544

Example video of animation with a smear frame: https://twitter.com/phenecly/status/1399057040463564802

Duck animation. Example of a body morphing animation: https://twitter.com/kloysius/status/1403092875357851652

This image breakdown by Angry Animator shows the transition between 2 poses (a head turn) using an antic up, an arc, and overshoot. https://i.pinimg.com/736x/ae/d6/01/aed6013e27a3b2f69f976e9098560233.jpg

Examples of each exercise by Katy133: -Bouncing Balls: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SEQ91By7JNk -Blinks: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k21Y0d3l98A -Wind: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lj9wmzCF19I -Lip Sync: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=65pqTdkwWCA -Poses: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0iTEe0GjbXg

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