In this assignment lesson, we're going to  do a 2D digital animation, or at least begin one. We're gonna continue to work on it  through the next two assignment lessons  after the next two principles as well. And we're gonna do it by, you can use either a iPad  and procreate, which is what I'm going to use,  or you can use Photoshop if you're more comfortable with  that or you have access to that. You can also use Brush Ninja, which is a free web app  that we've already used, um,  or any of the other free apps that we have in the PDF  that you can download and have access to. So this is basically just 2D digital animation  and any way that you wanna do that is fine. So before we begin in the iPad procreate app, I want  to give you an introduction to how  to follow along if you're using Photoshop.

So let's take a look at that. So here we are in Adobe Photoshop  and if I wanna create a new project,  I can just click create new  and choose the size of project I want and hit create. To get this timeline window, we just need to go to window  and turn on timeline. This is where we can use animation and Photoshop  and there's basically two methods you can use. One is using each new layer is a frame,  or we can choose what's called a video layer. So if I just say create video timeline,  it's gonna give us this layer.

And if I zoom in here by dragging this zoom option here up,  you can see I can move one frame forward  and I can use the cut method here,  or I can make a new layer  with a traditional add new layer button. And for each new layer it'll create a new frame. So that's one way to do it, which is also similar to  how we're gonna work and procreate. The other way is to go to layer and go down to video layers  and say New blank video layer. Now this is different from the others in, in the sense  that if I start painting on this  and I go one frame forward,  the drawing is not no longer there. So every frame exists on the same layer.

And the way to manage this  as well is from the same layer menu. So we can go back to video layers if we wanted  to duplicate a frame, insert a blink frame, this is  where you can manage adjusting things. It can get a little more complicated  because it's a bit hidden here  that each new frame is its own frame if you're trying to  edit, uh, and move frames around to know how to do that. So depending on how visually you want to organize this,  you could use the video layers  or you could use the traditional layer method over here  and you can see the distinction between the two. This has a little film strip icon here  to distinguish it from the normal layer organization. You can also manage the settings from this little button  here to change the frame rate settings  and also to enable onion skinning.

This is also where you can render out a video from here. Okay, now that you're ready to follow along,  let's open up the iPad. I'm going to hit record so you can follow along  with the recording of the iPad. So I'm going to open up procreate. It's an app that, uh, it's not free,  but it's, it's one that's worth the money. And I'm gonna start a new composition by hitting plus  or what they call a new canvas.

And I'm gonna choose the nine 20 by 10 80 option  because that's the HD dimensions. Now, to set up animation for this, you need  to click the little wrench up here. And on canvas you need to choose animation assist,  which will give us the timeline at the bottom. And I like the drawing guide for our example, we're gonna do  and go into edit and then just increase the grid size  because in this lesson  what we're gonna do is animate a head turn  and it's the head, the shape  of the head is gonna be a sphere. And so the grid I'm choosing is the four quadrants in the  center are gonna be the size of the head. So I'm gonna go, uh,  and just give it a little bit of room on the top  and bottom here and then hit done.

Now don't get too worried if you're not great at drawing. There's really good tools to kind  of automate making sure the the shapes are clean shapes. So in our case, I'm gonna go to the brush tool  and you can use whatever brush you want. I'm using the six B pencil, which you can add  to a favorites here. If you scroll up, you get a plus button here  and you can add your own favorites  or you can get to this by going to the sketching, uh,  category and choosing six B from there. So now that we have that, you'll be able to see  how not great I am at drawing,  but how much, uh, how useful this app is.

And let me preface this by saying as well that  me saying I'm not great at drawing  or you thinking you're not good at drawing simply comes down  to you just not having spent time doing it. Same thing with me. I've spent more time doing 3D animation,  so that's what I'm better at. Um, I talked to professional artists who draw every day  and are frustrated by the concept  that people think they're not naturally talented at drawing. It's that you just haven't spent time doing it  and you haven't gotten over the hump. So, uh, of, of not being good.

And so everyone's not good when they start. So, uh, just keep  that in mind when you're thinking about should  I continue to draw? Don't base it on whether  or not you're good right now, spend a lot of time with it  and then determine whether you want to continue or not. Anyway, off that soapbox. So now that we have the brush selected, I'm going  to draw with my pen. You can also use your finger with this.

So just to demonstrate, I'm gonna use my finger  and I'm gonna start at the top quadrant here in the center  and then just go and try to touch each quadrant of the,  uh, grid and then just keep my finger held down  and you can see that it turned it into an ellipse. Now if I click edit shape, it also gives me these  four little controller areas here. And um, you can space these out to the,  they'll touch the four quadrants there. So the circle itself goes all the way around. I'm going to undo that one just  because I didn't like the thickness of my brush there. I'm used to using the pin, which is pressure sensitive.

So make sure that you like  how thick the brush is if you're using your finger. I'm just gonna go over this one more time  with my pencil because I'm pushing down harder. It's picking up a bit of a thicker brush  and then I'm gonna edit shape  and make sure it's kind of in line with what we expect. Now also in this lesson we're, we're going  to be animating very roughly, it would be a terrible idea  in any animation workflow to add all the details  on every single frame that you're doing at the beginning,  planning almost stages, like what we are in. If you colored it in  and added all the, the details, texture, whatever you wanted  to do, that would be a terrible idea  because you're not sure if you're even  gonna keep that drawing yet. And animation, we're determining motion, not necessarily  the drawing itself.

If we're doing a single drawing maybe, sure,  but we're doing many drawings, so we wanna keep it as rough  as possible when we're at the early stages so  that if we make mistakes, change our mind, adjust things. It's fewer things we're adjusting. And we haven't started to polish the actual  actual drawings yet. So don't get too caught up in how this looks drawing wise. What we're concerned about is the motion. So, and we're gonna keep it simple so  that this is easy to do.

Um, what we now need to do is create construction lines. So I'm gonna draw, uh, oval in the center of this  and construction lines, I'm gonna click edit shape. Basically are gonna make this thing appear  to be in three dimensions and how far we space out the left  and right side is going to be the front  and back of this three dimensional sphere. We're now drawing and it's gonna determine how far  the beginning pose is and the end pose is. So I think this is kind of far enough. So the next thing we need to do is do the horizontal one,  which will dictate the tilt in the head.

So I'm gonna draw another oval here very  quickly, just hold it down. And now we have a roughly good shape and edit shape  and make sure this kind of connects with the outline  and isn't going too far. And I want them to be their head tilt  to be a bit more neutral. So I'm gonna bring this up, up closer  to the midpoint of the sphere. And that's a three dimensional sphere, basically that's,  those are construction lines are gonna help us determine  where to place the features of the face. Those features for us are only gonna be the ears,  eyes, nose and mouth.

We're not gonna do any other details at least just yet. At the end of of this assignment, I'm gonna show you  how you can go in and add details. You can use what we're doing now as just the outline and,  and you can trace over this  and be much more accurate later on. But what we want to do now is get the motion in. So now that we have that we can place the features on,  I'm gonna choose to put the eyes and nestle them right here. And I wanna make them a bit more circular than oval.

So I'm gonna just drag that out and do another one  and set it right next to it and do the same thing  and make sure it's a bit more circular. Now, when you're also drawing things in perspective,  meaning meaning in depth, things  that are further away from you  are gonna be slightly smaller. So this eye that we're drawing now should  and could be slightly bigger than the one  that's further away from us. So we're basically looking at, you know,  drawing something in, in, in perspective like this, right? Kind of at this, at this angle like that. It's going off into space.

Now we can put the nose, basically start it right here  and I'm gonna draw down and draw a triangle  and connect it up to the construction line. And then you can put the mouth however you want. I'm just gonna draw a simple line right here  and give us something to look at  and then draw half lids here  and put in the pupils. Then I'm gonna put the ear in  and it's going to be, the bottom  of the ear is basically gonna be at this construction line. And I'm gonna follow the top of the, the eye there to be  where the top of the ear should be so that we can kind  of stay consistent through our drawings  and know what we're trying to match to. Now because these drawn, these construction lines are behind  the head, I'm gonna erase them  and we can keep the other two.

We, I mean, we could delete those but or erase them. But just for, um, keeping track's sake,  I'm gonna leave those in for now  and get a really small brush. You can scale, of course, scale this up and get in here  and clean up these lines as much as you want. But again, don't get too precious  with this at this stage yet. 'cause you know, we could,  we could maybe delete this drawing all together. Who knows?

We if we  decide we don't like this beginning position  or, or whatever. So it's good to stay very loose at the early stage. So let's duplicate this head basically  and flip it over to the other side. So I'm gonna duplicate this  by selecting this key frame duplicate. And then I'm gonna choose the arrow up here  and I'm gonna say flip horizontal. So now we have a very simple way to get the end pose,  all right, without having to do a bunch of drawing.

We can adjust this later  or draw it differently later if we want. Um, but basically this is gonna be the start and end pose. Now where the arcs come in  and what we just learned about in the previous lesson is  determining where we put the features  and how the head moves in between the start and the end. Now if we weren't concerned about arcs,  it could be a straight line  and we could just go from,  like I said in the previous lesson, I usually like  to choose the tips of the nose to determine, you know,  where my arcs are. If we just did a straight in between,  we could just do a straight line here. And actually if you click and draw and procreate  and hold, it'll also choose a straight line there.

You know, we would put our nose right here. So I mean we could just do that very quickly. Draw the eyes, sorry, we're not on a new frame. Back up. Let's add a frame  and drag it to the middle. And we could put the nose right in the middle.

Put the eyes right in the middle. And if we scrub between this,  I'm just gonna put the lids down here,  like the eyes are closed. Let's turn off the onion skin so we can actually see, uh,  the drawings by themselves. I'm gonna quickly put in the, uh, outline of the head. Now if we do this, if we were to do this  and not be concerned about arcs, you can see  that this is pretty boring. The head just goes straight across.

There's no visual interest there. And because our eyes are attuned to see arcs in nature  and in our everyday life, this just doesn't seem right and,  and our brains tell us that  and that's why this does not look appealing. Um, as simple as these three drawings are, there's a way  to make it more appealing and these principles of animation  are meant to be checklists to to make sure, you know,  if you don't know why you're drawing or your,  or animation rather is not appealing,  you can use these principles as kind  of a checkbox to go through. Have I done these? Do I need to do these? So let's turn back on onion skin to determine  what makes an arc here, what constitutes an arc for us?

So I'm gonna choose the noses again and just draw an arc. If I click and hold, procreate will create a nice pretty arc  and we can see that where the tip  of our nose should be if we're doing an  arc should be down here. So that's where I'm gonna put the nose  and I'm gonna delete these kind of guides here for us. But instead of it just being straight in the middle,  what we can do is kind of lean into the principle  of overlapping action. We can actually using the selection tool  and just dragging that, we can actually rotate this a bit. So the nose is kind of being dragged behind  because of the, it's trying to stay behind where it was.

If an object in motion, uh, is at re, sorry,  if an object is at rest, tends to stay at rest  unless the force is acted on it. So the nose was at rest,  there's a lot more cartilage in the nose  and so it's a lot more flexible. So when the head is driving the motion,  the nose might actually stay behind for a little bit,  especially in a cartoony situation. So that's why I'm making that slight adjustment. Now for the eyes, you know,  I'm gonna use the ones we previously did trace them, so  to make sure we have the same proportions, click, edit,  shape, so then I can move them. Now I'm gonna also kind of drag them behind, so I'm gonna  maybe even squash  and stretch them so they'd be in a bit  of a stretch pose here  and do the same thing for the other side  and  bring it over as well.

And also favor. You also might hear the term favoring quite a bit  and that means you're favoring one drawing or the other. Right now we're favoring the first drawing, so we're kind  of leaning everything towards that way. So I want his eyes to be closed here. So I'm gonna draw a bit of an arc here  and the mouth I want to drag behind as well. So I'm just gonna draw a little line there.

So because we're looking at him straight on as well, we need  to be able to see both of his ears right here. So I'm gonna draw his ears in. I'm just gonna draw one here  to make sure it's the right size, edit its shape,  and then just move this whole thing over  and do the same thing for the other side. So in this middle pose, we'll be able to see both ears. And in these three drawings we've basically  established the arc of this, that we're gonna continue  through the next lessons, uh, of the, as of this assignment  and as we learn about more principles of animation. So as I scrub through, you can see  we've kind of established this.

Now the struggle that we're gonna come into  and that happens in 2D animation is if you handed this over  to someone and said, okay, in between this  and what can happen in, in a computer, if you say pose one,  pose two, it's just gonna go in a straight line. So we need to massage this  and force it to be in the arc that we want it  to throughout the animation. So as we go through this process,  we're gonna wanna make sure that the  in-between isn't like this. And right here we wanna make sure that the in-between  is is also going in an arc that's following the arc. So the tip of the nose is, is down further. So we don't want to go in a straight line  between these poses.

'cause again, we want to continue to apply this principle  of, of arcs not just once, not just twice,  but through the whole animation. So let's continue learning about principles of animation. In the next lesson we're gonna learn about the difference  between pose to pose  and straight ahead animation, how  that affects your choice and workflow. So thanks for watching  and I will see you in the next lesson. And after that one we will continue, come back  to this assignment and finish this out  and continue to make it look much more pretty than it's now. Thanks for watching.