Transcript:
In this video of collaboration with great artists I will work with the famous Canadian illustrator Burnt Toast creative, which is Scott Martin He is best at drawing these curious and cynical illustrations, which are both dark and funny. Scott sent me this perfect human garbage illustration as an Illustrator file I want the limbs of the character to fly first and then fall down in a very smooth way Because this perfect fluid curve and bend is the illustration style of burnt toast I think the best way to capture the characteristics of this sport is Make a quick rough version frame by frame so I can get a natural sense of movement Then use shape layers to clean it up to maintain a clean vector look I made the sketch frame by frame in Photoshop And use the free plug-in Anim Dessin2 to more easily apply the toolbar here You can use any frame-by-frame software, such as adobe animate, which is Flash Or tv paint and Rough Animator, the latter I often use these software on the ipad. I’m just the most used to using Photoshop First, I only made two poses, one with limbs up and the other with limbs down, just to feel the control of time Then I tried to make the upward movement of the limbs more straight Although it feels very explosive, it cannot capture the roundness and curves that need to be presented when the limbs are falling. So I found a suitable middle point That is, the limbs are still bent, but when raised, they are higher than the top of the trash can In the next level of improvement, I added some keyframes to these two actions It’s this flying in the air, and the falling after a few frames In this way, you can have a more comprehensive experience of the timing and animation effects This is also the most important Once these are confirmed, everything else is just about putting them in place and strengthening the actions just now. Then I added some more frames, and started to seriously consider how the limbs will rise and fall I imagined them as heavy tubes without any bones So they just fall straight down For the arc-shaped tip, there is very little movement of the limbs in the air. Instead of redrawing each frame, I copied the frame and used the transform warp tool to make subtle adjustments Therefore, the lasso tool selected here Select the limbs you want to distort, and then select “Edit”-“Transform”-“Distort” Because I use it often, I also set up a shortcut Then you can move these points to make slight adjustments For the improvement of the sketch, it is fine, but it does not look natural, and it feels like a shortcut The fact is, there are shortcuts, but it’s best to hide as much as possible. So this can be used when making sketches Then I added a few more frames, and the effect I am still very satisfied with In fact, it’s best to make a rough sketch first, because it’s seldom possible The important thing is that you can quickly change the shape and adjust the time settings without worrying about the details. The more options you can try, the easier it is to adjust, and the quicker you find the right feeling For frame-by-frame animation, I’m not too familiar with it So my process requires a lot of trial and error From here, I learned that half of the animation will happen when the limbs are raised So I need to create those materials I redrawn these parts in Illustrator and separated all the elements that need to be animated into their corresponding layers I also used other works of Burnt Toast as a reference to ensure that the style of the entire animation is consistent I imported the AI file into AE and converted the Illustrator layer to shape layer Right-click and select “Create”-“Create Shape from Vector Layer” Recolor the layer here to make it easier to distinguish in the timeline I also imported animation sketches from ps as a reference Then move the up and down posture in the timeline to make it correspond This is the initial stage of animation In the first part of the timeline, we let the limbs face down In the second part, all limbs stay in the air At the same time, I also set a different composition in the project panel for each layer improvement in the animation In the second level of improvement, I focused my energy on the limbs because they accounted for 95% of the animation So if you want the whole animation to see the effect, I have to make this part of it Switch down to the shape path and add keyframes to its properties Use the pen tool to adjust the shape of each frame to match the sketch in ps I basically do this every frame The movement in these three frames is the most, and then you can add relaxation to the top position Although it seems that it’s very laborious to do each frame separately But this animation is only 20 frames long in total And with the sketch in ps as a reference, I don’t need to think too much I just overlap the lines And I only need to animate one leg, because I will copy it after a while. So this is only a one-time animation In the next level of improvement, I made the animation of the hands and feet, that is, the position and rotation, so that they can be aligned with each limb I also added some movement to the lid of the trash can and added relaxation to its rising position The purpose is to create some expectations for the action of the lid falling down I also buckled the lid of the bucket extra strongly against the normal form (so that the upper edge of the bucket disappeared) Exaggerate the movement to bring a stronger effect to the animation In the next level of improvement, I cleaned up some of the exposed parts For example, the upper edge of the trash can is visible during the exaggerated fall To remove it, I added a mask and set it as subtract, and then only used one frame to express its animation Then I added shadows to the animation of the limbs. This step may be the most time-consuming in the entire production process. Therefore, each shape layer needs to contain 3 shapes These are the stroke at the top, the shadow in the middle and the fill at the bottom. The method is to copy the existing limb path and delete the fill of the top layer And add the new shape layer between the shape layers named “shading” Then I made the path animation of the shadow layer on each frame to match the rest of the arm The characteristics of such stroked shadows in animation are Although it looks better, it takes more time to make Therefore, you must take this into consideration when designing shadows with strokes. In the next level of improvement, I added some details They are the flies flying by the trash can, the movement of the hair and the subtle movement of the little finger. These are all shape path animations made with two keyframes The shaking of the trash can and the second leg are also added, the latter is by duplicating the other leg The next step is to add smears (Smears) Here is where the limbs move the fastest, I drew some smears Smudge refers to an animation technique that simulates motion blur in style Here I extend my hands and feet for a frame length, because the movement is so fast, it looks like a trail is left This is more natural in the smearing, but it can also be felt It can enrich the content of each frame Not only strengthen the speed of the movement, but also the path of the movement It’s still fun to make smears Finally, we get this synthesis full of key frames At first glance, it might feel scary But it’s all the result of a step by step process of gradually adding upwards. The basics are also simple at the beginning, with two frames of replacement animation This is a list of similar collaboration videos I created on Youtube If you see it now, I think you will like these videos of mine See you next week If you like it, please consider subscribing Subtitles: Zoe J Marriott