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Hello, everyone.

Havtza here.

So now that we're done, with the pre-production stages

and the preparations for understanding

how much work we're going to do

in the rest of the course,

it's finally time

to start learning animation,

which is what most of you came here for.

In this section,

I'm going to teach you

everything about animation

from the most basic concept

to more and more complicated ideas.

We're going to start with the most basic

rules and techniques of animations in this lesson,

and gradually cover

more and more advanced topics

such as complex

movement effects,

animating objects, animating in 3D space,

and even some camera movements and tricks.

This lesson is going to cover

the most basic parts of animation

and might not be very informative

for experienced animators.

But I'm going to teach you how I view

and think about my animations

and what the techniques I'm going to use

for the rest of this video.

And since we're going to use

somewhat unusual software

for the entirety of the course,

you might want to see how

I animate things

and which feature I'm going to use

in order to make the entire process easier to you.

If you're using the same software.

Also, since I'm a self-taught animator,

I might be using some unique

ideas and concepts

that you might not have seen

in any other course or formal training.

I'm not sure

since I didn't actually do

any formal training,

but it can be a good exercise

to compare how you're doing animation

to the way I do it.

And again, if you're a beginner,

then there is absolutely no problem.

You can just follow along

and apply the concepts to the way

that you're drawing your own things.

Also, in this section, you don't have to draw any characters

because we are only going to focus on the movement itself

and how we're going to space

things to create that movement.

So if you are a new artist in general,

this action is going to be very

easy for you to follow.

With that out of the way let us begin.

First, let's talk about animation

and what is it exactly?

So as you've probably already know

and might have guessed,

animation is basically just drawing

a whole bunch of pictures.

We follow movement one after the other,

that creates the illusion of action

with drawings.

It works similarly

to the way that the camera

is capturing pictures and then projecting the

quickly in order to create a movie.

And in the same manner,

we are going to draw our frames

to create the illusion of movement.

And even use certain techniques

that replicates the way that the camera capture the movement

instead of the way that our eyes

capture the movement in real life.

In today's industry, the standard for animation

is to draw 24 frames per second.

This is called animation on 1s

and it's what you're going to see

in most movies in high value productions.

But since most productions

or teams or projects

don't actually have the time or budget

to draw 24 frames per second

and because we want to be efficient

with our project

as well as create certain effects

that are only doable with lower frame rate,

we can duplicate the frames

that we're going to use once or twice

and basically create lower frame rates.

Usually this is going to be animation on 2s,

which is 12 frames per second

or animation on 3s,

which is eight frames per second.

I don't recommend on

going higher than 3s

because at that point

the animation is going to be very stiff and static.

That being said though,

I myself usually use animation on 3s

with a combination of certain movements

in 2s and effects on 1s.

This is both to create

more efficient animation

as well as to help

keep consistency in action,

which are slow and more impact

in fast actions.

You're going to see how I'm duplicating

and changing the frame rate

between individual movements

in the entirety of the course.

In animation, we want to be as efficient as possible

when creating our drawings and movement

because we are going to draw

a large amount of drawings

and we want to make sure

that we're making them quickly

and on time to keep up

without project schedules.

To do that,

there are two main animation techniques

which are widely used between animators,

which are called the straightahead

and pose-to-pose.

We've talked about them a little bit

when we explored the animation principles

and each one of them

has their own unique strengths

and weaknesses.

The straight-ahead method means

that you're going to draw each

new frame immediately

after the one before it,

from the start to the finish of the movement.

You will need to understand

the movement in advance

and have a clear idea

of what you want to draw,

as well as a good understanding on where

and how to space and shift poses.

You basically need

to have a good understanding

and some experience in animation

before you try and tackle

a straight-ahead animation technique.

This is actually a pretty common mistake,

which I see a lot of beginner animators do

because they just intuitively

want to draw each frame

individually, one after the other,

and then they don't know

how to space their animation correctly.

They get stuck, they get frustrated.

They don't know

how to actually create the movement

without the guideline,

but they also don't know how to create that guideline.

For that we're actually going to move

to the other animation technique,

which is the pose-to-pose.

This technique basically divides

the frames that you're going to use

for your movement

in accordance to importance

to the overall movement.

Basically, you will start to from the key frames,

which are the most important

and essential for your movement.

They are the ones that decide your timing

and the overall pose

and the range of the entire action.

And then you will slowly fill in the gaps

using break down frames

which are slightly less important,

but still giving nuance to your movement

and the in-betweens which just move the entire movement over.

I will be using both techniques to create

different animations in this lesson

and in the next lesson

and basically you don't have to stick

to one of them all the time

there certain objects

or certain movements which will look better

with straight-ahead

and some action or movements

that will look better with pose-to-pose.

You need to figure out

which way works best for you,

and the ultimate goal

is to make both consistent

and easy to understand animations.

So

let's see how we're actually going to

time space and draw our animation objects.

The way that we show movement in animation

is by actually changing the position

of your object of animation

between frames.

In real life, we understand that the speed of an object

by seeing and measuring

how much time it takes

for it to change locations.

But in animation,

because we actually have constant frame rate,

you can't make the frame move faster

unless you are working at the

high frame rate and duplicating

your frame for 1s, 2s and 3s,

but even in that case,

you cannot make your frames move

faster than your frame rate at once.

So the way that we actually show

how fast an object moves in animation

is by controlling and changing the spacing

and the distance

it moves between each frame.

To put it simply,

the faster an object moves,

the larger the spacing between each

frame is going to be

and the smaller the spacing,

the slower the movement is going to be.

We can see in this example

that even though

we have the same frame rate

and the same ball,

because the spacing is different,

one ball is seemed to be moving

faster than the other,

just because it covers

more distance.

In addition to showing speed by changing the distance

your object travels between each frames.

We also want to take advantage

of the artistic medium that is animation.

In real life, our eyes can pick up

movement in what we can call

a “high frame rate” of around 60 frame per second.

But even then, if an object moves

too fast for us to perceive it well,

we still see it is a blur

In live action cinema or when taking a photo

you will see the same effect

in the form of a motion blur.

This is because most camera have a lower frame

rate and lower shutter

speed when taking pictures, making it so

multiple movements are blending together in the action.

We can actually take advantage

of this phenomenon

when animating to create better

looking animation,

which are replicated

in two different techniques.

The first is squash and stretch principle,

which we covered a little bit

in a previous lesson.

This is the idea that we slightly change

the shape of the object

in the direction of the movement,

to give it an impression

of additional speed.

This is basically

how we're going to combine

multiple movement into the same frame,

which help us control the speed,

energy and direction of the movement

more easily than by drawing

additional unnecessary frames,

which can also mess with the timing.

This squashing stretch is also effective

when you want to show

other attributes of the object,

such as the force

and impact behind the movement

and object elasticity

or any other additional characteristics,

which are easy to convey with deformation.

We will expand upon this

in our next lessons,

but the important thing

to remember for now

is that by using squash and stretch,

you don't actually change

the overall size

and volume of the object,

only its proportions.

When you are adding

the squash and stretch,

you need to make sure that you're

not accidentally shrinking

or enlarging your object.

The second way

that we take advantage

of the blur effect in animation

is by using smear frames.

These are frames that actually meant

to replicate the motion blur

exactly as seen on camera

and they are done

by intentionally deforming

the object of your animation

when it's moving quickly.

This, unike the squash and stretch,

does not have to keep

the same proportion for your object

and will often result in details

and line out, which looks really weird.

A lot of the funny frames that you see

on the internet of weird animations

and actually just smear frames which are done

in the middle of the movement

and make the overall thing

look much better than

it would have looked otherwise.

The way that we're actually going to edit

this smear frames is dependent on your art style

and the type of movement

that you want to create,

as well as the actual action

that we're going to perform.

Each one of them needs to be tailored to the movement

that you're actually drawing.

Still, there are some pretty common types

of smear frames

that you will see a lot in animation.

In classical cartoons, which

usually have a higher frame rate,

you will see a lot of duplication

of certain parts of the character

that create long curve according to the actual movement

trajectory of your character.

This works in classical cartoons

because the details themselves

are pretty simple

and the frames move very quickly.

In anime, you will see

and two different versions of smear frames.

One is physically smudging

and having ridges in the actual coloring

and line out of your character.

And the other

is completely sketching the line out

in the trajectory of the movement

to make it seem more like

a technical blur instead of a drawn one.

When making either one of these approaches,

you need to make sure

that deformation of the character is following

the trajectory of the movement.

So if you're making

a movement in a curve,

the actual deformation

is going to follow that curve,

and you need to deform

the object or add additional lines

in the same direction of the curve

and add more lines at the places

where the character moves quickly

and smaller lines

where the characters move slowly.

So for example,

if you're making a curve, as we're seeing here,

you will have longer lines

at the edge of the hand or object

that you animating, because at that point

the hand is going to move quicker,

than closer to the center of the body.

With these types of animation,

you can also add additional small details

at the other edges of your movement range,

to basically create the illusion

of having multiple poses

in the same frame,

which make it seems like

the movement itself is quicker,

the less type of smear frames

that you're going to see

are more artistic

and actually depend on the software that you're using.

If your software has an actual motion blur feature,

or special brushes

with interesting textures,

you might want to try and experiment

with your software and create

interesting visuals

within your animation art style.

This, of course, does not apply

if your animation art style itself

will look weird when using this type of motion

blur or special brushes.

This is usually seen in more artistic project

where you have unconventional art style

and overall animation

and background techniques.

Now that we understand

how we're going to use

certain artistic techniques in certain spacing

in order to create the illusion of speed in movement,

we want to understand

how to actually space our movement

and create variation in animation.

So in real life,

almost nothing moves in a

constant and changing speed.

Every movement has to start

from a stop

and reach to a stop at the end,

as well as every time

that your object changes

or switches directions.

In real life, this change in the amount of speed

an object has, it's called acceleration,

when the object speeds up

and deacceleration

when the object decreases its speed.

In animation, we visualize this change in speed

by changing the size

of the spacing of your object between frames.

In the previous example,

even though each ball

moved in a different speed,

the actual speed that the ball had

does not change throughout the movement

because the spacing between each frame is even.

So in order to create acceleration and deacceleration

we actually want to have a variation in the spacing

to create different acceleration

and deacceleration effects

which make the movement more natural

and easy to understand.

For each movement, and animation that we're going to make,

we're going to have a unique trajectory

and unique acceleration and deacceleration,

that being said, there are common patterns that we're going to use

and modify

when creating and planning

our moving trajectories.

These patterns also have pretty clear names and labels,

so when you're working with a team

or with directors,

they will often refers to these labels

and tell you which parts you need to change,

which is very useful.

The first pattern we have

and the most basic pattern

is having even spacing

between each frames.

This is actually pretty unnatural movement

and is mostly used with UI animation,

or when you want to have

some comedic effects within your scene.

This is pretty technical and not very common,

with hand-drawn animation

because it is quite difficult

to keep even spacing,

especially when your movement

has to be in a straight line

and you don't have any automatic

features to do that.

The second pattern that you're going

to encounter is called the ease in

and which is part of

the ease in and ease out

principle that we've talked about before.

The ease in is a movement

that shows acceleration of an object

from a rest to its final speed.

This is done by making the

initial spacing between each frame small

and then slowly increasing the spacing

to create acceleration in the final speed.

this increase can be both in even the amount by which

I mean you increase it to the same amount each time,

or it can be uneven

if you want to create

more varied movement

within your character or object action.

This is where we're actually going

to have multiple variations

and when we want to have

more artistic understanding

and adjust the movement

to the way that you want it

to look later on.

The next pattern is the ease out.

This is the opposite of the ease in

and this is where you deaccelerate

your character or object action.

In this case, you start with big spacing of your final speed

and then slowly decrease

the distances between each frame,

making your movements slower.

Again, you can either shorten the distance with constant intervals

to have smoothed deacceleration,

or you can have a variation in the deacceleration

to create more interesting movements

depending on the action

that you're trying to perform.

Next pattern is actually a combination of both ease in and ease out.

The most important pattern

that you need to understand and get right

because most action

that we're going to perform

is going to start from a stop accelerate

and then reach to a stop by the end of it.

Basically, every action can be broken

down into ease in and ease out.

We can basically create

any action that we want,

even very complex animations,

because when you understand,

when you slow in

and slow out to increase

and decrease the speed

or when you change directions,

you can basically break

every complex movement

that you're going to make into multiple

smaller movements,

each one, we've own ease in and ease out pattern.

As you can see in this example,

you can use this slow in

and slow out in one big movement

to achieve a smooth start and finish.

You can actually break your movement

into multiple stages

using slow in and slow out

to create pauses

and emphasize certain timings in your animation.

The last pattern is having

just really random spacing.

This is usually used

when doing comedic animation

or when trying to create

a jittering effect,

and it's not something

that needs a lot of explanation

and it's pretty intuitive.

You basically just stop and start

your character movement at random,

and use your own judgment

to create an aesthetically pleasing animation.

Again, this is not something that is very common

and we're not going to use it

in this course

because we want to focus more

on the realistic movement.

Still, I want to make sure that you know

that it is possible

to have random spacing,

but it's not something

that you want to focus on at the beginning.

Now that we understand how to recognize

and create the different spacing patterns

to create multiple types of movements and different timings

with simple objects and straight lines,

we want to understand

how to use this concept

and plan more complicated movement trajectories.

The first step for this is to actually sketch the movement trajectory

that we're going to use.

This gives you every possible position

for your object to be in

and make sure that your movement

will follow a clear path

so you don't get stray movement

and jittering effect.

Once you are more confident in your skill,

you can omit this step or modify

it as by making a smaller trajectory at the side

of your character action,

which is only going to

be used as reference,

but it is still completely valid

to actually draw the trajectory

that your character

or object are going to move in

when creating your animations.

If it makes you have better understanding

and greater efficiency in your project.

Once you have your overall trajectory,

you want to actually plan the spacing

and the movement

that you're going to make.

The first step to that is actually analyzing

the type of movement

that you want to make.

What causes your objects

to accelerate across the trajectory?

Where is it going to stop on the way?

Where will it be moving the fastest?

The slowest?

Where is it going to go back

or try a different direction?

There are many reasons for where

or when it's

going to accelerate and deaccelerate,

and they can either be

beacuse of the action itself

and the aesthetics that

you want to create, or it can be

because of actual physical related reasons,

such as having forces like gravity or spin

that act on the object

and make it accelerate

in a certain direction.

This is where actual

understanding of physics

is going to come in handy

because in real life

an object is going to accelerate in the direction

that a force is acting on it.

Now, this sounds kind of vague,

but basically if there is a force acting on an object,

it will move or change in that direction.

In real life, we see that with gravity,

when you flow something, it's going to start from a stop

and then move quicker and quicker

until it reaches the final speed

or when it hits the ground.

This is also true for deacceleration

because if your object already has a

speed to it

and the force is acting on it

in the opposite direction,

it is going to deacceleration.

So, by seeing which forces act on your object

and understanding where it's going to logically accelerate

and deaccelerate,

we can create a trajectory

which looks very natural and pleasing.

By combining our understanding of the physics behind the movement

and the aestethic look that we're aiming for

and deciding whether your object is going to accelerate

deaccelerate stop and start,

we can use the right techniques

and the right spacing

with the ease in and ease out pattern

to plan the overall trajectory.

And where we're going to add squash and stretch and smear frames.

The thing to keep in mind

when planning your movement

is that the shorter

the distance between each frame,

the slower

your object is going to move,

and the bigger the distance, the faster it will move.

So when you have a bigger spacing

on your trajectory

your object is going to be deformed with either

squash and stretch or smear frames.

In this example,

I'm going to make the ball

move at a certain trajectory.

The ball is going to move up

by its own force,

but it's going to move down

with deacceleration of gravity.

I'm also going to make the ball stop

at the highest point of each loop

before falling down

with a constant acceleration.

I want to complete each loop

in a different amount of time,

so the amount of spacing in frames

that I'm going to dedicate for each loop

is going to be different.

And since gravity is constantly

going to affect the ball,

even when it moves up.

It's going to deaccelerate on the way

up and accelerate on the way down.

With these conditions in mind, I add indicators of where

the ball is going to be at each frame

and change to size in accordance

to where I want it to stop and start.

You can either do that

by having keyframes

and then adding breakdowns

and in-betweens

or by going straight ahead

and just adding each spacing

one after the other

with the straight-ahead method.

Again, I use a combination of the two

because this usually gives you

the most natural looking movement

with the highest amount of control onset movement.

Now you just need to edit the ball

with the right size

and the right smear frames

and squash and stretch frames

to create the illusion

along the entire trajectory.

For this exercise actually try and limit

the amount of frames

that you're going to dedicate to it

and play around with the timing and spacing

along the trajectory

to create the right effect that you want.

It's important to understand

how to space and time your movement correctly

and not just add random

frames to your animation.

This is a common mistake

that a lot of beginner animators do

when instead of respacing

and adjusting the moving trajectory,

just adding additional frames

to try and make the overall movement look better,

and then later on play around with the frame rate.

Basically, as an animator,

your goal is to draw

the smallest amount of frames possible

to create your movement.

You will have a small amount of frames

for quick movements

and a larger amount of frames

for slower movement.

So instead of just adding

additional frames to your planned trajectory

in this exercise,

move your spacing around

to create the right amount of frames

for each part of your movement.

At first try and make a very simple trajectory,

even simpler than the one that I used for this example,

and later on try and increase the number of frames

and the complexity of the trajectory

that you're working with.

Again, decide on the number of frames

that you're going to make in advance

before adding additional frames.

If you are a more experienced animators,

you can just play around

with very complex

trajectories at this point.

Up until now we've seen examples

and talked about movements

where your object is starting

and ending with a stop

with gradual acceleration and deacceleration.

But in animation and in real life,

not every change of speed

is going to be gradual.

Sometimes your object

is going to just stop

or change direction suddenly.

You can see this type of movement

in very simple and common situation,

such as when things fall, hit walls,

get some impact or collisions,

or even when you reach

the range of movement of your object,

suddenly at high speeds,

this is very common in the action

or acting scenes as well.

And object will not change direction or speed

unless an another force is acting on it

in the opposite direction,

which causes it to deacceleration.

In the case of an impact,

a large amount of opposing force

hit the object all at once,

making it change the trajectory abruptly.

With character action and acting,

this comes from the character

actively trying to stop the movement,

or by the character

reaching the end of their limbs' range of movement.

As you can see with these examples,

I've been using some unusual frames

to support the movement and impacts

and make them look better.

These specialized frames are meant

to show the energy in the movement

and they're called impact frames and overshoot frames.

This is a technique where we will either

have an extra frame which goes over

the initially planned trajectory

and gives us the illusion of extra force

in the trajectory.

This is also known as overshoot

or we can have a frame,

with extreme deformation of the animation object

which gives more personality

to the change in direction,

which is also called an impact frame.

This is actually more common

when you have inherent

characteristics to your object,

as such as elasticity

and when you're having an impact

within the trajectory

which gives it the name of impact frames.

Overshoot and impact frames are actually very useful

in almost any type of movement.

You don't actually need to have

too much deformation or go

well over the movement trajectory

to have an impact frame or overshoot effect.

Just by having small adjustments

to the end of your trajectory,

you can give your the movement

a more natural and energetic look.

While overshoot and impact frames

are used to bring more energy

and force to your movement,

we also want to give more weight and different

characteristics to your movement and objects.

Even when trying to animate movements

which are less energetic,

or show certain characteristics

which are unrelated to elasticity in a situation

where you do not have impact.

For this, we want take advantage of the actual timing

feature in animation

and have a delay to help us understand

slow changes in force and acceleration.

These instances are not as obvious as a clear impact,

but they are still very important

when trying to animate

natural looking movements.

Delay is usually used to express balance, friction

or weight in the certain object.

As you can see here with this brick example,

I can show the amount of force

behind the initial push

and the weight of the brick

just by changing the timing

and giving us delay

in the movement of the brick before it falls.

You can also see how a brick experienced

the impact when it falls,

even though it is not elastic,

just by the time it takes the brick

to get over the force of the impact

before it falls down

and settles completely.

This alternation of delay for slow actions,

overshoot and impact frames for energetic actions

and using ease in and ease out to connect

these types of actions

is what is going to make the animation

more natural looking

and more interesting to look at.

We're going to create

every type of animation in this course

by combining these three concepts

and supporting them

with using squash and stretch and smear frames.

Now that we know the rules and techniques

that we're going to use

to create the animations,

it's time to understand how to apply them.

To demonstrate how we're going to apply these concepts

to an actual animation,

I'm going to give you the example

of the classic bouncing ball.

Starting from a rest position,

the ball will first

accelerate due to gravity

and it will speed down

as it goes

meaning that we're going to have uneven spacing,

which slowly increase between each frame

and we're going to slightly deform

the shape of the ball

to create a squash and stretch effect,

which help us

show the speed of the ball as it accelerates downward.

Next, the ball is going to hit the ground

and change direction.

For this, we're going to use an impact frame

again, with the squash and stretch principle

before the ball is going to shoot back up.

The amount of deformation

that we're going to add to the impact frame is dependent

both on the amount of force behind the ball.

In this case, we’re going to have quite a big jump,

so I'm going to add a lot of deformation,

but it also depends on the actual

properties of the ball.

If this ball was not elastic at all,

we would not add the deformation

and instead we’re just going

to have the ball's effects on the environment,

as well as use the timing to show the impact

the same way that we did with the brick.

Because the ball had quite a lot of

falls behind it

when it impacted the ground,

the ball is going to bounce

straight up because of the impact.

This means that it's going to first

accelerate up really quickly

because the initial speed is quite high,

but because gravity is going to act on it,

it's going to deaccelerate on its way up.

So we will be using the ease out

pattern and slowly decrease

the spacing between each frame until

the ball reaches to a stop

slightly below

the initial starting

point of the movement.

This is because the ball is going to lose

some of the energy it had

when it impacts the ground

making it so it can't

bounce quite as high

when the ball reaches the top,

it actually changes directions.

So it has to come to a complete stop.

At this point,

we can actually have

the additional benefits of animation

which don't completely adhere

to the rules of reality.

So we can emphasize this point

by creating a slight delay

at the highest point of the movement.

This helps the audience understand

what is going on

slightly better, and it is very useful

when creating movement

with more complex animation,

where you want to make sure

that the entire movement is readable,

or when you want to have emphasis

on certain part of the movement.

Because the force that accelerates

the ball is gravity, which is constant,

it's going to have the same

amount of acceleration

on its way down

as its first part of the movement,

because the distance

it travels is slightly smaller

this time

we're going to slightly

adjust the spacing

and actually remove certain frames

because the overall time it takes the

ball to get down is smaller.

This time, when the ball

reaches the ground,

it has slightly less force behind it.

So we will be creating

a smaller deformation in the impact frame

and we're going to decrease

the speed of the ball when it goes up.

Because gravity is constant

we're going to try and make it

so that deacceleration of the ball

is the same as the one that we had before.

With the following impacts,

the ball is going to lose more

and more force

behind it, making it

so it jumps less high

and the impact frames are less deformed.

all the way until it reaches its final stop

before settling down.

Take time to understand this exercise

and try and apply this type

of breakdown of forces and acceleration,

too many types of movement

that you see in real life

or that you're trying

to recreate for yourself.

Always try and visualize when and where

something is going to accelerate, deaccelerate

and the amount of force behind

a certain movement

before you plan your trajectory.

Next lesson, we're going to focus on more complex

objects and movements.

So it's important that you understand

the concepts in this video

and know how to recognize

when and where your character is going to slow in and slow out,

where you're going to add

your smear and squashes stretch frame

and how to create your overall

timing for each part of the movement.

The exercise in this lesson

is to take the examples

that I've made for this video

and make your own versions of them.

Try to make versions

that are different to mine

while still keeping in mind

the concepts behind each example.

You want to make sure

that you understand

the process and the correct

spacing between frames

and not just follow it

to create something aesthetically pleasing

without knowing how you did it.

I especially encourage you

to actually experiment

around and try different

timings with the same trajectory or movement

that you're trying to make.

Again, make sure

that whichever movement

you're making is readable

and that you avoid making jittering

when creating slow movements.

You need to make sure

that whichever movement you're making

is following a clear path

and that no frames is going backward

in the middle of an action.

Also, make sure to keep the volume

of your object consistent,

even if you're using a squash and stretch effect.

Also, keep your exercise fairly short,

making it three seconds or less,

because we're all going to be adding additional details onto it

in later lessons.

To recap

in today's lesson, we've learned the principles

and reasons behind the way

object moves in animation,

and which techniques

we're going to use to support said movements.

We also learned how to express

certain types of movement

using the deformation, spacing and timing,

as well as how to analyze movement

in order to understand and predict

how it's going to look

before we plan a final trajectory

that we're going to reference

when creating more complex actions later on.

Thank you for watching and see your next time.

Bye.