Making your life easier when you animate~

[CommadorTheCyborgPony 53]

So here is just a guide for people who want to animate:

 

You could use a animation program but most of the free ones dont support easy shading or opacity, so drawing each fram in a program like Paint.Net looks better. You may be saying "Oh well drawing each fram is so time consuming" well you only have to draw your charecter ONCE then edit each and every movement by accessing its layers and rotateing them and redrawing the position of them when needed.

 

Now how do we make this all possible?

Step 1: Draw your backround on 1 layer, simple as that. Object that you plan on moving should not be in the backround layer but should be on a seperate layer, so keep in mind which object you want to move.

 

Step 2: in a sperate save draw your full charecter and decide where his joints are. this is important because you we draw out charecter we will draw him from join point to joint point.

 

Step 3: Now start a new layer and draw your charectors head and only its head. then create a new layer and on here draw its neck. Again add another layer and draw its torso. Now add another layer and draw from your chaterers shoulder down to its elbow, add another layer and draw from its elbow to its wrist. Now your hand is just your hand, fingers shouldn't have any joint layers because your hand has so many of them, what i do is i just go into my hand layer and redraw it in the position it needs to be in. now you may have to do with with other layers like your torso, and if you want a facial expresion then you can edit your head layer. Do this for its other arm and move to its lower body and do the same with with the joint points . Keep in mind that each boject that is going to move needs another layer.

 

Step 4: Now that you have every Limb and object on a layer and in position for your first frame save it, then you can ro tate limbs slightly, move objects, and edit layers to condinate with every other limbs movements, save that as your second frame and continue. Now when layers and object start to move out of the frame you dont erase them, you just select part of it thats going out and make it invisable usuing slect and changeing its opacity to 0%. As more and more of the object moves out of the picture, make it more of it invisable as it goes out. Its the same when a object or limb is coming into the frame, you make the whole object/ limb invisable and make to visable as it goes into the frame. And you should be taking more frames once everything is moved and placed.

 

Step 5: Once you have made a ton of frames and your animation is finished you will have a SHITTON of picures. Now as you save them save the as what number there frame is like Frame 42, Frame 49, so on and so forth. That way when you import them into and editing program like Sony Vegas, WMM, or PInical they will upload in order from frame 1- frame ???. After they are all imorted you can download and make sound files and import those and make them go along with your animation.

 

Step 6: Save and play to see if eveything is lined up and looking good. if not go and edit the frams you need to or push back the music and sound effects if needed, then save.

 

 

YOUR DONE!

 

Please note that i am lazy and dont feel like reveiwing this and changing all of my mistakes, hopefully if there is something worng you can make sense of it.

YAY FOR 3341 Characters!

Edited July 24, 2012 by JayFeather~