Animation Tips

In this blog post I'm going to write about some tips for animation. Please note however, that I am still a novice myself but these things seem to work for me. Well lets get started!


Note: I think I should note before I go anywhere with this that I am talking about small one object animations done in a graphic program like GIMP or Photoshop (among others) that might end up as a .gif or a sprite; Though you could apply this on a bigger scale with individual elements in a scene I am not referring to scenes as if you were going to make a movie. I have never made a scene (yet!) so I will not talk on things I do not know enough or anything about.

Sketching Out Your Idea:

The first thing I'd say before you animate anything is, you need an idea of what you want and what it will look like (generally). This comes from sketching out your idea frame by frame, preferably ( at least how I do it) side by side on one piece of paper, sorta like a story board...I do this and make notes about what I want in sketch book for reference. This helps me know what I'm aiming towards, will you use all the frames? Maybe not. Will you need more frames? Maybe so, but at least you could point yourself in the right direction.

 

Animate Separately (When Possible):

If at all possible, animate your animated bits separately from the full object (picture). For example, for all my sprites I used to make the player object in Tilly's Rose Garden Spring I drew the eyes separate from the face and made a layer from visible for the frame. I did this because animating the eyes prevented small little errors in her face (twitching animation from trying to draw on top of a finished drawing, wiggling animation, inconsistent image). In the game itself I put Tilly as a background image and just made a sprite for her eyes and it made her look alive within the main menu. This is just one example there are other things as well you can animate separate like the mouth or tears just to name two. A lot of the time this might not be possible but if you have only on area moving the the basic object never does, try only animating the part that moves after your base image is complete, for me this works better since I don't draw every frame, I draw one frame then edit it to what I want after.

Observe/ Find Out What You Are Animating Looks Like For Real:

Copyright To Disney

Some things are easy to know what they look like out of memory (like an eye blink) others are harder like a walk cycle or a ball bounce. Granted the latter two you can find tutorials on but some things you just need to find out on your own. A personal example would be my caterpillar/worm animation, I was given advice by my mother who studies bugs and insects and all that stuff on what that “cycle” would look like, she even drew it for me. Now true most people don't have a bug lover around but the point is that you get the information wherever you can. You want to animate a bird flying? Watch them see what they do, make sure you don't mix species (unless it's on purpose to make a mutant for a character design) look at stills, find tutorials whatever helps you get a better comprehension of your subject.

Some things you just have to draw and figure out on your own, a good example of this is Lumiere the candle stick from beauty and the beast, they made a candle stick dance like Gene Kelly, that's not a simple feat to do! But the point is they have to figure it out, they couldn't watch a candle stick dance.

Make A Draft Before Doing Final Animation:

Before you start thinking I just said that in the first tip, what I'm saying here is not the same thing as sketching out your animation on paper as a reference. What I'm talking about here is before you finalize your animation as either a “line-art” animation or a full color animation sketch out each frame first and test it out to see if it's smooth or jumps if the size is consistent of your object(s) you are animating. In my own animations I use the preview feature in GIMP it's fast going (though you can adjust the speed slightly) but you can see enough to know whether this animation will be good or not. It doesn't matter how pretty the colors are, if it's not smooth it's not going to look as good, so make sure it's smooth before you color it and in my opinion do not draw one frame at a time in full then go to the next.

Don't Be Afraid To Reuse Frames:

In some cases drawing another frame is pointless since a cycle can be done using only couple drawn frames. The best example I know of at this point and time is an eye blink, you only need to draw 3 frames for it to be believable, you could do more if you want it super smooth but for things like sprites the less frames the better so you don't make your game so big...Anyway back on topic here. For an eye you have frame one which is the opened eye, frame two the eye half closed and frame three it's closed. Not get the second frame, duplicate it and put it after the 3^rd now your eye closes and opens.






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I hope this was useful for somebody.


God Bless,


~ Firefly