#animatic tips

[sm-baby]

STORYBOARD/ANIMATIC TIPS

ko-fi✏️

I made these for my friends, but I thought that might be helpful for yall as well! hehe! Now whenever someone asks for storyboard tips I can throw this at them!

Examples of storyboards I made for fun:

[banana-pancake5]

Do y’all know of any good FREE animation apps for mobile?

I rlly rlly wanna try animating but I can’t find any good apps (except flip a clip but hate drawing on that ;-;)

Also anyone have any tips for animating? Like how do ppl make things looks so smooth??

[oaklies-side]

I’m bored and procrastinating on an animation, so instead of actually doing it, I decided to rant about animation! Here are tons of my tips and tricks for animating. Feel free to use any of them to improve your own works fellow animators! This post will be divided into four sections; Motivation and burnout, Art/drawing tips, Transitions, and Programs. Please keep in mind I am in no way an expert or claiming to be one, however I do art for a living, and I’ve been animating for nearly six years now, so I feel like I probably know a thing or two. Motivation and Burnout: -Take constant breaks however often you need. This can be every 30 minutes, every time you finish a scene, hell, even every time you finish a frame. Stretch, watch a short YouTube video, get something to eat, ex. I personally don’t have a break schedule, just whenever I’m bored, tired, or have finished an amount I feel satisfied with for the day. Find what works best for you! -Listen to something as background noise. This can be songs you really like, a podcast, a musical soundtrack, youtube videos, streams, audio books, or whatever else your heart desires. You can listen to white noise or rain sounds or something like that, but I personally prefer something that engages my brain. (You can also use this to encourage breaks. If you’re at a bit of a podcast that you just can’t focus on whilst drawing, take a five minute break to focus on it alone! Your favorite song to bop out to comes on? Stand up and dance around in your workspace, sing along, just have fun!  -Have a food or drink next to you! I always like having something to munch or slurp on when drawing or animating. Make sure these snacks are smaller though, I’d recommend dedicating actual meal time to break time.  -This is a bad habit of mine and I’m sure many other artists, but if you’re demotivated, don’t try and trudge through unless there’s some form of deadline. If you’re simply animating for YouTube or something, just take a break! There’s no shame in doing so, and you’ll find that you actually work much faster when you are motivated, so the break helps with efficiency rather than hinders it. -Set goals for yourself! Make them reasonable and not too out of reach. Say something like, “I’d like to draw 20 frames today.”, “I’d like to finish this storyboard by the end of the week.”, “I’d like to finish this scene today.”, “I’d like the animation to be done within a month and a half.” Make some bigger ones as well as smaller ones to give yourself short bursts of motivation, but also to keep that motivation going in the long run. Art/Drawing Tips: -Choose a simple style. This one kind of goes with motivation, but choosing a super complex art style often leads to the product just never being finished, especially if you’re a beginner. -Practice drawing. Bring a sketchbook with you everywhere and just draw. The better you get at drawing, the better you get at animation -Study other artists work. You can even trace! (Don’t post/claim it as your own EVER), but tracing for personal study is absolutely fine. It helps you figure out the shapes the artist used to make their character look how it does.  -Never be ashamed to use references, they help a ton. -Color matters and can make an animation really pop. Choose a simple palate, what I normally do is assign one color per character, have a color for background objects, and maybe some others if I really want a certain scene or object to stand out against the rest. -Shape language is a really cool tool. Learn it.  -Don’t worry about developing a style. Just draw. The style will come along the way.  Transitions: -(First off, please note that in this section, I say the word ‘character’ a lot. However, these methods apply on objects too! Just wanted to clear that up, you can use them on more than just people.) -Yes, frame by frame looks pretty, and you can use it in that sick action sequence, but also, try making things easier for yourself when you can. The following points will be describing some of my favorite easy transitions.  -Bounce back effects, the one I use the most. Basically, think of a ball bouncing. This ball will smoosh down against the ground, then spring back up, looking elongated as it does so. Or think of a car jerking forwards, before coming back a bit and to a complete stop. These are both bounce back effects. If your character is just changing poses, I’d recommend doing the ball method. smoosh your drawing down, then spring it back up. If your character is moving across the screen, move them just a bit further than their final destination, then bring them back. This makes animation look smoother and saves a ton of time.  -Smear or smudge frames! These are usually used when a character or object is going really fast. Smear the drawing and add a bit of motion blur in the direction a character is going.  -Partial movement frames! Not sure what the technical definition of this is, but this is when a character isn’t fully moving, just a small bit of them is, say they’re waving, or their hair is blowing in the breeze. Copy paste the rest without this bit, and only worry about redrawing that part! -Tweening, okay.. I know what you’re going to say, because the animation community these days is so against tweening. I’ll admit, it doesn’t look the greatest when using excessively, but in small amounts? It can look good. Don’t overuse it, but don’t completely avoid it either. (Tweening is when different body parts are drawn on different layers so that movement can be done without redrawing. However, this only really works for simple movements, so use it sparingly.)  -Even when you are drawing frame by frame, these methods can be important. More so smear and smudge and bounce back, but tweening in some cases as well. You can incorporate these tricks into your frame by frame animation to make it look better as well. They aren’t just used to trick the minds eye into thinking there are in-betweens when there’s not. Programs: -Study your program. This’ll make things go much faster and allow for shortcuts. Animation is all about shortcuts. -Start out with something cheap or free. You don’t want to spend hundreds of dollars on a drawing tablet and expensive programs when you first start. Draw on your ipad or phone if you have one, use flipaclip, imovie, ibis paint, kinemaster, or other free programs. Animation takes a ton of time and if you find in a month that you hate it and want to quit, you don’t want to have waisted hundreds or thousands of dollars.  -That being said, the creative cloud is pretty sweet. If you’re invested and have the money, I’d recommend it.  -Procreate is also amazing. I love it and actually use it to this day, even with having the creative cloud. You can’t do any complex editing but you can make some neat stuff on there.  -Decide what kind of animation you want to do. Do you want it more frame by frame? Get a program like procreate, flipaclip, or adobe animate. More drawn and edited? Try using a drawing and editing program combo. One of my friends uses ibispaint and imovie on her phone. I used to use ibispaint and kinemaster. I now use photoshop and premiere pro.  -Watch tons of YouTube tutorials. Google stuff. Chances are, you may find an easier way to do that thing that’s taken you five hours in the past. And that’s it! Thank you for reading all the way through, I hope these helped! Feel free to ask questions, I’ll try to answer any I may get. Cya! Happy animating

[dailyzzy]

First of all, hi, yes, I love your Redbone!AU so freaking much you have no idea(I’ve rewatched the whole series so many times over havasjvkaagag)! And two, what software do you use to make them? You and your art actually inspired me to go ahead and start planning/working on my first animatic and I was curious to know how you do them! Tysm! Have a wonderful day!~🦋

AWWWWWW YOU HAVE NO IDEA HOW HAPPY IT MAKES ME! <3 I really hoped that my animatics can give some spark of motivation for other artists or writers since I also have my own fav artists/animators I look up to a lot and who inspire me to do more and more!

I use Sony Vegas to edit! There are many different programs out there that you can use but this one actually has a lot of possibilities and I got used to working with it so yeah :3 (I also reccomend sapphire plugin if you have Vegas, it gives you an access to many MANY beautiful effects!)

I draw in Paint Tool Sai 2~

When it comes to the story in the animatics I just kinda... lay down on my bed, close my eyes and listen to music, my brain does the rest xD All scenes kinda appear in my mind and in most cases I know how I wanna draw them (guess it’s thanks to all those years of watching cartoons, it actually left a permament change in my braincells lol)

I guess it’s important to choose a song you’re not gonna hate after listening to it thousands of times (I’m not kidding, it’s sometimes driving me insane). Also you need to either bend your story to the song or look for a song suiting for your story, there’s no other way around it! Keep track of all the emotions and moods in the song so your story can nicely fit in!

ahhh there are actually a lot of things to say when it comes to editing (about transitions, effects, camera movement etc.) I think I’d just have to make a long separate tutorial haha - but I guess I could make that if people were interested!

Good luck with your animatic! Have a wonderful day as well!

[herbgerblin]

where do you listen to music/how do you pick songs for your fanvids? coz they're always great choices

Practicality tips first. Songs that I make animatics for are always:

Under 3 minutes (gotta keep it short or I will burn out)

Have a consistent beat throughout (easier to time the frames)

Makes me stim. Every song I’ve made an animatic for, I’ve grabbed my laptop, cranked the volume up, and paced around in circles about, envisioning every detail. If I Can’t Sit Still™, then I know something’s up.

Thematic tips under the cut because Minor Spoilers:

Sometimes I’ll experience the media first, and then be reminded of a song. When I was listening to Amnesty EP 28, the solemnness I felt correlated to the solemnness I felt when I first heard “Youth” by Daughter. I played it on a whim, and the chorus really stood out to me:

And if you’re still breathing, you’re the lucky ones ‘Cause most of us are heaving through corrupted lungsSetting fire to our insides for funCollecting names of the lovers that went wrongThe lovers that went wrong

Thematic elements of love, struggle, and heartbreak. Mistakes already made. Hope for people who still have chances. It’s a story about Aubrey, but told by Ned. The song worked so well that I couldn’t not make it for Amnesty.

Sometimes I’ll listen to a song and be reminded of a media. 

I saw Solider, Poet, King, and was like—”lmao what if it relates to Tres Horny Boys”—and it did, but not conventionally. The folksy acoustics and lyrics really sold the fantasy vibe. 

And one thing that a lot of the songs by the Oh Hellos do is be heavy on the lyrics in the front half, and heavy on the instrumentation in the back half. So by the midway point, you’re sucked into the world they’ve generated, and are left to experience the moment to your own discretion. 

Yeah, the song is about three fairytale figures tearing a city down. But what if it was about those same figures building something up? I never thought about it that concretely, (putting my emotions to words isn’t easy). But hearing the hands claps and chorus helped me realize it’s not just them, it’s all the people getting involved. It’s everyone in Balance.

Sometimes I’ll be listening to different media and my brain will do a thing and somehow it works.

The Lup animatic with the Ancient Magus Bride Theme, I can’t explain that one. It’s the only song I’ve used with no lyrics. Everything I drew was based on what I envisioned when I heard the song. It was one of those situations where the only way I could explain it was by making it. 

[dailyzzy]

HI Daily! Could you maybe explain step by step how you do your animatics? I’m sorry, I know it’s a big thing to request in a Tumblr ask, but I was really curious to how you do them. Thank you!

Truly, there’s a lot of it to say when it comes to animatics but it’s actually a good opportunity to make a tutorial on some basic things!

This is how it looks like from the inside! (also here’s a proof, that the next part is in progress xP)

But let’s start from the beginning! (it’s probaby gonna be a long post so beware)

1. MUSIC

When I start a new project, I upload a music file first! To do that you go into File then Open and you choose the one you want from your computer. When you do that, it should look like this:

This is your track with music! I don’t make any special changes to music except splitting it to delete the parts I don’t need. To do that you need to choose a moment you want to cut it, right click and choose option split. It’s gonna split the song in two parts and you can delete the one you don’t need!

2. IMAGES

Okay, now that you want the part of the song you need or a whole song, you can upload your drawings. I usually draw 2,3 frames and I edit them right after I finish drawing them ^^ You need to remember that if you want to an animatic for YouTube you need to draw on the canvas with a proper size ‘cause otherwise it’s gonna look like this (black background, image doesn’t take the whole screen):

Click File then Open and choose image/s you want! After you do that, it’ll create a new track with images only:

Useful tip! If you want an image to appear in a specific moment, just play the music and press M in the moment you want your image to appear. Vegas will put an orange flag in that place so you can adjust the image length or placement:

3. MOVEMENT

You have a song, image in a right place, lasting the right amount of time but it looks kinda boring when it’s so still... So we’re gonna do some MAGIC >:3

Choose the little marked icon on your image! It’s gonna open a new window for you:

At the bottom you can see a timeline of your drawing. You need to pay attention to where your pointer is (in this case, it’s at the start) because that’s the place the image will change. So for example, you want your image to go from left to right. You click at the start of the timeline, drag the frame to your left, then click at the end of the timeline and drag it in the opposite way - that’s it! Close the window, congrats, now your image moves!

BUT if you wanna do smth super extra, I’ll tell you a secret how I make it more dynamic >:3

Between the two points (right at the beginning, left at the end) pick a place almost right after the first setting you made. Drag the image to the left, placing it almost in the same position as the last one. The program will go super fast from the start to your second point but will slow down from the point 2 to end (as we have a lot time from point 2 to 3), hope it makes sense haha xD Now, it’s gonna look like this:

4. EFFECTS

Effects are hiding in the icon marked green! You can click and choose one from variety of options and there’s so many of them I know/used maybe 20% of them xD I don’t always use those effects but they make a big difference with lighting etc.

Ah that’s it for now! If you have some questions, don’t be afraid to ask! I am not an expert but I can help beginners for sure!