Animation for Beginners Course

Assignment 6: Timing

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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

So we are going to finish the head turn animation. I'm gonna move kind of quickly so that we can get this done. So if you need to just watch now  and then follow later, pause, rewind. You can do that later. Um, it might be easier  to just follow, just watch right now  instead of following along. So let's do a quick overview.

We have our beginning, our anticipation,  our in-between our overshoot and our final pose. Now I'm going to increase the anticipation a little bit just  so we exaggerate it and we can see it a little bit better. So I'm just gonna, before I start, I'm going  to move this over just a little bit more. I'm gonna do the same thing with the ear. And again, don't worry about how rough this is. We can clean this up later and I'll show you how to do that.

So when we're talking about timing in the last lesson,  we can demonstrate what the timing charts mean  and kind of give an indication of what the kind  of timing we want to have. We can, we could do a mock version of that  by using the hold frames here to get an idea of just  how long we want each frame to be  and how many frames we need in between. But I'm just gonna work kind of quickly  and show you, I know how I want this to look. I don't want this to be an even transition. And we're, we're just gonna start at the beginning. I'll go through and do timing charts, then we can go back  through and do the animation.

So I know I don't want this to be an even middle in between. I want it to kind of be a bit snappier. So I want to favor the start pose  and I wanna favor the anticipation pose. So if this pose was pose a, I know  that I want to favor it. So I'm gonna put a mark here and I wanna fav favor the end  pose, which would be pose B  or the anticipation pose right here. I'm just gonna move this one over  so we don't have it in the onion skin.

So in B, we are now going to the green pose,  which is gonna be the in between  and it's going to be a pretty fast movement,  but I, I know I want to slow out. Now remember that principle from earlier lesson,  that means a gradual increase of spacing. So I know we should probably have a middle pose here  and then I can just keep having that to make it be a gradual  increase of spacing. So I know when I do these drawings, I'm going to need  to get this middle drawing first bef  and then I can do another middle drawing here. So I'm gonna have to kind of anim draw the animation  frames backwards from here to be able to get these ease outs  or the slow outs. Now this is moving kind of quickly  and we can call this C here.

And we want this to slow into the overshoot  so we can kind of do the opposite of what we just did. So we know we want a middle pose there. We can middle, have it again, middle it again  and then have it again there into D,  which is going to be the overshoot. So now we're on D  and we can kind of do the same thing we did on the antic  and have it be kind of snappy. So we kind of favor the antic  and uh, sorry, favor the overshoot and favor the end pose. So I know I want two frames there.

So now we have our timing charts  and we can kind of go through  and know, have a game plan of what we wanna do. So I'm gonna duplicate this  because in the rough stages I like  to just duplicate the frame  and move stuff around as opposed  to creating brand new drawings so  that I know at least the proportions are correct  and they're not gonna be changing much  if we're not moving that much. And I'm just gonna add this in  and we're gonna move this ever so slightly  Because remember we're favoring the pose  that's coming from the pose. We just duplicated, we're favoring it, which means we want  to stay close to it. So I'm just slightly moving that  and do the same thing for the ear very quickly, not  with the brush but with the selection tool. And then move that just slightly not scale it.

I wanna make sure I'm selecting on the center part of that  so it doesn't try to start scaling it. And then do the same thing for the anticipation pose  so we can duplicate the anticipation pose  and make sure we're working on the one before it,  'cause we're coming into it, select it  and then just we will move this backward. I wanna make sure I grab the mouth  because we wanna favor this one. That's why we duplicated it  and just barely moving it  back toward the previous frame. We just did same thing with the ear. Grab the center of this so it just can move just slightly.

And now we can kind of scrub the playback. It'll be easier if we turn off the onion skin. We can see that the anticipation is working pretty good. It's a bit rough but that's okay. The one big jump I'm seeing is in the mouth. So we can just go ahead and fix that real quick.

Turn on onion skin, just delete this mouth  and give it a better in-between here. And because we're doing something a little bit different  with the mouth, it's doing its own thing. I wanna make sure I'm, I'm following each part  of the animation well. So the mouth is kind  of going away from the other parts of the face. And I think this pose is going down  too far on the face. So lemme just bring that back up.

I think in the move it went down, which is not what we want  and maybe slightly rotate it. And it's good to check your drawings by scrubbing like this  to make sure it's doing what you want. And then the other thing that we can add in on this is a bit  of an ease in on the eyelids. So on this extra pose we just made, we can,  I have the eyelids just starting to come up  and now scrub it and we have the eyelids kind of closing  the mouth doing its own thing  and the anticipation kind of working. And now we can go into the timing chart for this move. So if we look over here, we know we wanna slow out  so let's duplicate uh, actually, so what we want to do  is we want to get this middle frame first.

So I'm gonna add a frame here. I'm gonna draw the outline of the head very quickly,  edit the shape and get it in the neighborhood. And before I go too far, I also want  to dip the head down in translation. So I'm gonna go to the in-between here  and I'm going to actually drop this whole thing down so that  our in-betweens also can go in between that. So we're just gonna dip the head down a little bit. So it's gonna be part of, of favoring that arc.

So it just increases the arc. If we're like following the nose,  this arc can be a bit more exaggerated. So let me get a better arc here. If you press and hold, it'll also make an arc. So if we want to, if we know we want  to go halfway on this new frame, it's gonna,  the nose should be about here. It can keep dragging behind.

And then we can erase this kind  of guide here from our drawing. And then we can put the eyes relative to the nose  very quickly and we can favor these eyes. I'm just gonna do this  and we want them already closed  so I'm gonna ha just basically copy those  and then bring them back where they need  to be relative to the nose here. Maybe rotate them slightly  and then we can do the in-between on the mouth  And the mouth can start to drag  'cause we see it's left of the nose on the green. We can start to move it left here so  that next pose makes sense for that. And then if we look at the left, we can see,  we can see the ear fully here.

So we want to start  to indicate the ear coming out there. And then we can do an in between for this other ear  going in the other direction  and just move it over about halfway  and now we can scrub through  so we have like a good arc happening there  and then we can now work on the ease out. So let's add another frame here. So now we're working on this one. We can do halfway between this again. So this will be the ease out.

So what I can do is you know, follow this arc here,  it's gonna, that means the nose is there so  I'm gonna create this nose  to make sure the proportions are the same. Make sure I'm grabbing the selection so I can move that  around and not wanting  to scale it, which is very fun with procreate,  if you're thing is too small it'll will  Make you scale it. So you gotta zoom in a little bit from time to time  and then we can  roughly get the eyes in  here and they'll go ahead and be closed here as well. And then we'll we can move these into place. I don't rotate that much. We can move them there.

So now they're about halfway and then same on the mouth. We can go halfway here  and we can just barely start to indicate the ear here  and then go halfway on this ear. So it's a lot of back and forth. You can see why it's good  to keep the features pretty basic when you're starting out  so that you're not giving yourself too much to deal with. And now we just need to do half again, need  to make the outline of the head  before we get too ahead of ourselves here. Now we can do half again.

Um, you know we're kind of like I said earlier,  animating backwards based on the timing charts. We need to get the halfway point  before we start doing the other  breakdowns other in-betweens. So I'm gonna turn off the onion skin  for a second and just play through. We may not even need that extra,  we may not even need this  breakdown here so I may leave that off for now  and we can if we need to later come back and do it. But this is kind of playing back pretty good. I wanna make sure I'm in the right frames per second.

We're on 12 so that's right. I want every frame to be held for two frames. And now we can work on the other timing charts. So we can do the in-between here. It's kind of like we are um, doing a mirror version  of what we've just done. So I'm gonna turn on the onion skin for one frame.

And the one thing that we did do here on this frame was  make sure that the circle itself  was an in-between. So we can just get that halfway here  and then we can move the internal features back up  slightly so we don't wanna overarch them  and the same, same thing as  with the ears here  so we get a little ahead of ourselves there. So then on this in between  we can make sure that the head is coming back up. We can maybe favor the down position here  because the head is so huge  and so heavy It wouldn't come back up  with the same speed that it's going down. So we can favor the down position  so it stays down a little longer. And then we can do these uh, straight in-betweens here.

So we're going from seeing both ears to only seeing one. So we can start to hide this ear over here. And then we can do the in-between of this here. And then for the arc we can figure out this arc here. We want to kind of in the middle there  so I'm kind of visually remembering where we put it here. It's gonna be around in here.

I'm gonna keep dragging the nose this way  and then can flip back the other direction on the overshoot  and you can go halfway here  really dragging the mouth. And then I will kind of copy these eyes again  and put them in place where they should be with the  relative to the nose over here. Now we can, based on our timing chart, know that we,  we need to go half again. So we're looking at this timing chart,  we just did this pose, so now we need to do half again  between our overshoot and what we just did. So let's add an empty frame here. Let's keep favoring the bottom  'cause the head is so heavy I don't want  to come up super quick.

So I'm just doing this to get the,  the head in line  with how big it should be. We don't, again, we don't wanna be changing the head shape  as we're working  and now I can move this whole thing down so that we're kind  of favoring the bottom still. And then on this overshoot, let's just go ahead  and bring this overshoot down. I'm just gonna grab this whole thing  and know that I want to,  we're only overshooting kind of in the direction  that he is turning, not vertically. 'cause his head is so heavy I want it to, I want his head  to feel a lot heavier. So I want that to just be easing into this position.

And now we can finish this in between. It's in between the mouth, in between the ears here. And then we can get rid  of this ear all together. Just maybe give a little indication there. And then I'm gonna keep dragging this nose. I'm gonna make sure that's happening on our arc still.

So I wanna make sure I'm coming down far enough  and then to draw these eyes again  And then move that into place. So I'm going to kind of get these rotated a bit more even. 'cause when we see the top of the eyes here,  we don't want them to be too crooked. So let's start to get them a bit more straight here as well. And then we can play this back. And again, we might be able to get away without having  to do another frame here.

So even though I wrote that on the timing chart,  we could just get a get rid of it  and I think that's gonna be good. And then we can just kind of finish this overshoot,  settle the way we did the anticipation. So we're gonna come into this kind of settle pose  except for remember the mouth is  gonna continue to be catching up. So I'm gonna duplicate this frame  and I'm gonna favor the frame. We just did the frame,  we duplicated except  The mouth is gonna be still catching up. So I'm gonna favor this frame.

And then for the mouth,  I'm just gonna do a straight in between. And for the ear we're gonna favor  Because It's rotating like the rest of the head  gonna favor where we're coming from. So we're just gonna barely move it. And then we can duplicate this frame,  go back to the one where we're coming into this final pose  and we can favor this one. So we're gonna favor the one we just duplicated. So it's gonna be in easing, in motion from here.

So we can just go back towards the red  indication just slightly. And then for the, uh,  make sure this isn't getting off centered here, just undo  that, make sure it's not going vertically there. Erase the mouth and then ease in on the mouth. So we're gonna favor that, that one. And then we are going to move this  slightly away towards the red. Now we've basically done the entire animation,  although we probably need to work on the blink opening.

We could do a squash and stretch on the eyes  closing and opening. But I mean this is basically the animation. The mouth is a bit floaty. Um, so we could, you know, fix that  and have it not drag. It's from this, it's from this drawing. I don't know what that was.

Yeah, the, the mouth is way wrong. So we need to get a little bit better on that. And um, I think I got a little confused on  the, in-betweens here. So just fixing the mouth real quick. So there we go. Delete This.

So we're just kind of trying  to find the best way to get into that rest pose. It was a bit, it was a bit too floaty there. So we've basically done the head turn. It feels pretty good. I wanna show you how you can now take this even further  and make it a little bit better by filling it in,  giving it shading, texturing. What we can do in procreate is to  Add layers to each frame.

And how to do that is by using groups. So if we go down here, we can see that every frame  that we've made is its own layer. If we add a new layer in,  it's gonna think we want a new frame,  but we don't, we want to add this as  the a completely new drawing for that frame. So if we click and hold this, we can make a group. Now we can move this above. I encourage you to move it above.

'cause if you try to move this one below,  you'll pull it out of the group. So always use the, the one on the bottom  and bring it to the top, not the, not the top to the bottom. So we can click in, bring the opacity way down,  we can turn off the onion  skinning 'cause we no longer need that. Are animation's kind of done. And what we can do is use whatever tools that we want now  to make this look nice. We could use a different, uh, pin.

We could use this one, which has a nice clean edge to it. And we can get rid of the construction lines. So now if we try to draw, it'll ask us, Hey,  which layer in this group are you trying  to animate on or draw on? And so we need to choose it from the group. Now we can have maybe cleaner lines if  that's the aesthetic we're going to. And then we could do fills to this if we wanted.

So I will leave that up to you. I'm going to go through and do that for my animation  and I'm gonna let you do that for yours. And hopefully this has been pretty instructive on how to do  timing charts, how to do breakdowns, how to create extremes,  how to use arcs, how to use procreate,  and how to use construction lines to make sure that  the sphere kind of looks 3D when we're  going through a motion. So I'm gonna clean this up now  and I encourage you to do the same. And I look forward to seeing what you make. Hopefully you can share that with me in the class.

And in the next lesson, we are now going  to move into a different kind of group of principles  of animation that's gonna help kind of finish out the,  the concepts of appeal that you can apply to your animation. So I'll see you in the next lesson. Thanks for watching.
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