Animation for Beginners Course

Assignment 1: Persistence of Vision

This lesson is exclusive to members

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Course info

23 lessons / 4 hours

Overview

The foundation of learning animation is understanding the universal "12 Principles of Animation". In this course you will learn to apply these principles to a range of mediums, including drawing, stop motion, claymation and puppeteering in Adobe After Effects.

You do not need to be able to draw to complete this course! Each lesson is followed by a demonstration and assignment that you can follow Lucas along with by using free online tools and apps, as well as items you'll be able to find laying around your house.

In this course you will learn:
 • The History of the Animation Principles
 • The Science of Animation
 • Squash & Stretch
 • Slow In/Out
 • Anticipation
 • Overlapping Action
 • Secondary Action
 • Arcs
 • Pose to Pose/Straight Ahead
 • Timing
 • Staging
 • Exaggeration
 • Solid Drawing
 • Appeal

During the course our assignments will cover*:
 • Flipbooks
 • Thaumatropes
 • 2D digital animation
 • Animating in Procreate on the iPad
 • Animating in After Effects (project file provided)
 • Stop Motion Animation
 • Claymation
* Each assignment could be completed in any of these mediums so there's no need to have a fancy computer, expensive software, or an iPad.

Lucas will also share his insights working as a professional animator on big movies like Avengers, Ready Player One and how he uses the principles taught in this course every day in his work.

The concepts covered here are not only for beginners but for every animator to apply in their daily work and be a resource for any time you're stuck on how to add more appeal to your animations.

Join Lucas on an epic animation Journey!

Daniel Scott

Daniel Scott

Founder of Bring Your Own Laptop & Chief Instructor

instructor

I discovered the world of design as an art student when I stumbled upon a lab full of green & blue iMac G3’s. My initial curiosity around using the computer to create ‘art’ developed into a full-blown passion, eventually leading me to become a digital designer and founder of Bring Your Own Laptop.

Sharing and teaching are a huge part of who I am. As a certified Adobe instructor, I've had the honor of winning multiple Adobe teaching awards at their annual MAX conference. I see Bring Your Own Laptop as the supportive community I wished for when I was first starting out and intimidated by design. Through teaching, I hope to bring others along for the ride and empower my students to bring their stories, labors of love, and art into the world.
True to my Kiwi roots, I've lived in many places, and currently, I reside in Ireland with my wife and kids.

Downloads & Exercise files

Transcript

Welcome to your assignment for persistence of vision. We're going to push this optical illusion concept  to its breaking point by creating an animation  with only two drawings. So we're gonna achieve this with something called  a thermo trope. And this was invented in 1825 by an English physician,  and it was a popular children's toy,  if you can believe it, back in the day. So the tools we'll need, I'm going  to use my trusty post-it notes again, and  because they have a sticky back to them  and we need a pin, I'm gonna use a permanent marker. Be careful if you use one of these.

Um, and because it's a thicker pin, it's, it'll be easier  to see the illusion once we start spinning it  and we need something to attach it to,  to spin the Thelma trope. You can use string as well,  but, um, this is just easier for me  and I think it's less complicated than trying  to tie knots and string. So let's get started. So for this animation,  we're gonna draw a bunny rabbit popping out of a top hat. So let's get started. And I'm gonna start with the sticky part at the top here.

And I'm gonna draw the, the hat at the bottom. So I'm gonna draw one curve here,  and then I'm going to draw two curves for the side. And then I'm gonna draw the brim of the hat as an oval here. And then draw the inside of the hat where the hole is,  and then draw a little band here for the,  to signify the top hat. So you know, I'm a professional 3D animator. I'm not that good at drawing.

So, um, I, I trust  that you can follow along and do this as well. So the next drawing we're gonna do is the  bunny rabbit popping out. So we have this one. We're gonna gently remove this  and put it sticky side up over here so  that it can stay sticky. And what I'm gonna do is actually grab my iPhone here  and use a free flashlight app  that's actually has a white screen. So what you can do is actually use that as a kind  of light table so you can see through the drawing.

So I'm gonna take a new paper and our drawing  and the sticky side is up right now. So I'm just gonna rotate this so  that there's a sticky side here and a sticky side here. So they are basically going to enclose each other,  um, so that we have a sticky side on both ends. And it doesn't have to be perfect,  but somewhere, somewhere in the neighborhood. And so I'm gonna flip this over so that we can see  through this and trace it,  but I'm not gonna trace it entirely  because we need to leave room for the bunny rabbit. So I'm going to start with the top rim  and just leave the very top part of it open so  that we can draw the bunny rabbit and then draw  and trace the rest of it.

So now that we have that done, we can get rid of the phone  and draw the bunny rabbit, which is the fun part. So I'm gonna draw a rounded bunny rabbit. So I'm gonna draw a little belly here,  and then I'm gonna have the arms kind of coming out,  kinda rubber hose style, meaning, uh, very  uh, bendy  and signify a little thumb there. And then I'm gonna draw a very round face  and then leave some room for the ears,  which is very important for a bunny rabbit. So we'll have one ear there  and I'm gonna do another ear maybe bent,  and then just give him some eyes, a nose  and a mouth and maybe that kind of,  uh, typical cartoon rabbit belly there. So there's our magic rabbit.

Now the magic comes when we put this to the pencil. So grab your pencil first. We need to separate these pieces of paper,  so very gently remove them from one another. 'cause you need to sandwich the pencil between them now. So I can start here. You can, you could either start at the top edge  or we could go all the way up so  that the sticky side has ha will only be touching paper now  and it'll give our hands a little more room  to spin on the pencil as well.

So then now we have this sticky side, which is gonna go here  and I just need to line up the corners. There we go. And then  gently kind of mash these down  so it'll keep the, keep the pencil in the center  and then just kinda gently mash those down. So we will have a,  Our little thermo tr. So there we go. So now all it's left  to do is spin this bad boy.

So depending on how slow you do, it will affect  how much popping is going on or, or not. You can kind of make it look like he's  there the entire time. If you spin it fast enough  or if you slow it down,  it'll look like he's popping in and out of the hat. So give that a try yourself  because, um, the effect works much better in person  than it probably does on film. But that is a thomo trope  and how much you can get away with persistence of vision  with only two drawings. In the next lesson, we're going  to start learning the 12 principles of animation  so you can become a better animator.

Thanks for watching.
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