#animation tips

[ialwayscomeback-somerabitsaid]

Deciding to post this little example of the main way of how I animate in case it'll be helpful to someone, it isn't perfect but I kinda wanted to show how much you could do with only three frames!

[theorizingarthuman]

Hi guys! Working on this one mini fight animation with Hornet and the Knight. Shading and rendering are not done yet, and neither is the background (if I decide to do one).

I need some tips for when she dashes forward. It looks weird when she crouches down and choppy when she dashes forward.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

[9spoons9]

They don’t tell you this when you’re learning how but there are actually 3 secret rules when it comes to animating.

1. Do you understand it?

You, the animator, the freak making that thing move, do you know what’s an arm and what’s a leg? Can you tell which finger is which? Is that fur or an ear? Skin or a sleeve?

If yes, move on to

2. Does it feel right?

Is the action being displayed moving the way you want it? Is it too smooth? Too rigid? No? Good! Move on to

3. Is it (at least somewhat) presentable?

Would you be able to show the movement to someone and they would understand what’s what? You might know that hand is a hand, but would Peepaw? Is the action you are creating comprehensible to someone who hasn’t been staring at it for 10+ hours? If no, you have more work to do.

But if yes, congregations! You’ve animated!

Now do it again.

[pudgeybear]

Yo.

Do you know of any good animation programs that can be done on a phone? Or just on a computer?

Uhhhhhh

For phone honestly there aren’t any good free options. Flipaclip is technically free but the free version is very limited and i’d rather not use it. The free version of IbisPaint offers a very limited resolution for animations; I only use it for practice when I’m bored.

For pc though I have good recommendations. The one I typically use is OpenToonz, which is free and open source! It has like a ton of features (that i don’t even use cause i don’t understand them yet) including vector capabilities and tweening. Krita is also a free and open source program that is good for both regular digital art and animation. I haven’t used it in a good bit but it’s pretty good.

For online animation websites, I’d say wick.editor is really good (i use it on my school chromebook lol). It’s a bit finicky but for what it is it’s pretty epic. It’s kinda unusable on mobile devices though. Another one I know about is Flip Anim, which is simple and limited but can be used one mobile devices and pc 👍

[finn-the-opalinian]

does anyone have any good animation tips?

me, @thingonthenet, and @drawingthenet are making an animated show together and I'm the main one doing the animation, but as this is my first time, I would love some tips! thank you!

the software I'm currently using is flipaclip if that gives you anything

[assassiowl]

On animation consistency

For frame to frame hand drawn animation, you will experience a loss of quality over time if not handled.

For raster based drawing, use a canvas twice as large as the final output for better quality.

Character consistency. This is going to need draftsmanship practice. A lot of it. This comes from drawing the same character repeatedly from many angles. You must keep everything consistent. Things changing size and proportion as they move will look strange.

I think the same applies to comics. We will need to fill pages of the same drawing to drill consistency of design. This matters. Step 1: learn to draw.

The alternative for animation is rigging models, usually 3d, but there's ways to get 2d pictures to move.

[perryrata]

hii!! your hermitcraft animations (+ others in the community) have inspired me to start making animatics of my own ... but like, i dont know how to start lol

i know this is probably an annoying question because artists ALWAYS get asked this, but which animation software/app do you recommend? i currently use ibis paint for illustrating but it doesnt allow u to put audio in animations... so that sucks 😭

speaking of that,, how do you get the audio from hermit's episodes/videos, and sync it up to your animation? is it a screen recording, or like, do u download the video orr?? idk

anyway yeah SORRY 4 THE QUESTIONS i'm just really new to this so any advice would be greatly appreciated!!! ^_^ your art is super fabulicious and awesome HAVE A GREAT DAYY

You are ABSOLUTELY not annoying buddy! I love sharing my knowledge!!! :D 💖

1. Any clip that is particularly funny to you that sticks out for some reason is always a great choice! Especially if it would be even better in animated rather than the raw gameplay!

2. I use Procreate Dreams! It’s really nice to use with the biggest downsides are not having a lasso tool, fuzzy lines the more zoomed out you are, and audio skips.

3. Audio itself: I screen record what I want and I put the recording into CapCut where I then cut it down to what I will need and add whatever I may need. Then I export it (at 24 fps) and crop the video itself to make the file smaller so it keeps the Procreate file smaller when it’s being exported(otherwise it takes years to export my animations)