AlexPhotoshop Animation Techniques. A Character Animation Tutorial
This post is an exclusive Ozanimate release for the next 7 Days. Please share it amongst your friends, colleagues and Internet acquaintances who you think will find it useful.
Today I am excited to share with you a walk through for a powerful animation process that I think is commonly overlooked.
Adobe Photoshop is a tool that a great number of creative minds are familiar and comfortable with. While it isnt software package that has been built with animation specifically in mind there it has huge potential as an animation tool. The ability to control an aesthetic within the software gives a very hands on feel to the process and endless possibilities for your end result. I hope that this tutorial will help bridge the gap between designer and animator, beginner and professional.
Before you get started you’ll need a basic-intermediate understanding of Photoshop, as well as a copy of Photoshop CS Extended (Which you can download from the Adobe website here)
The layout of the tutorial-
Part 1 Getting Started-
All the key features that you’ll need to know in order to get animation out of Photoshop. These include an introduction to the animation timeline as well as the steps you can follow to export your animation.
Part 2 Clean-up, Colour and Creating Actions.
A step by step walk through for creating some the actions that will help you speed up your animation workflow – including creating colour layers, effective bucket filling and creating your next frame. It also touches on the use of adjustment layers.
Part 3 Extra Tips and Tricks-
A few extra tips and tricks to help you get started animating in Photoshop. These include using preexisting videos in your animation, better manipulating the timeline and how to export gifs from Photoshop.
If you have any questions comments or ideas on how to improve the process dont be a stranger. Please leave a comment.
To help you get inspired I’ve included a couple of pieces that were animated solely in Photoshop. The first is a film called The Cat Piano and was directed by Eddie White and Ari Gibson. I was fortunate enough to work with the crew on the production and it was where I learned many of the skills I demonstrate above. The second two examples are music videos, one directed by Benjamin Drake (an Ozaniamte contributor) and Eddie White for Gotye, and the third video was directed by Ari Gibson and Jason Pamment for The Audreys.
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Thanks Alex, look forward to going through it! It’s going to expire in 7 days?
Great Pete. No no, it will be available after that. but for the first 7 days Ozanimate will be the only place you can view it. After that I will make it public on Vimeo. I hope it helps!
Awesome dude.
Awesome tutorial! Alex, I think I’ve seen your work on Loop De Loop
Good insight into using photoshop for animation. I predominately use Maya and After Effects so nice to see some new ways to approach work.
Would love to see you elaborate on some of your work flows if you feel like making more videos. I take it Cintiq is the weapon of choice? Do you see people working on intuos’?
Also I think you need to check your smoke alarm battery
Wow Alex.
I think you just blew my mind a bit.
I’ve animated in a few different programs, but never directly in Photoshop – so I’ll give this a whirl.
Thanks for the tips.
–Phil
Nice one Alex!
Great tutorial, clear and well presented.. inspired me to do some research on different workflows and try incorporate some things you’ve shown here
Hi Alex, i see the cat piano short and i was shocked when i read it was made in photoshop, how can i see the tutorial, vimeo tell me i have to get the pus version, do you have it in other place? it seems very interesting
HI guys, thanks for taking the time to check it out
@pete Yes these days I use a 12 inch cintiq for my work but thats only a recent thing. Most of my 2d work on my reel was done with my trusty intuos3. and yes! I finally found the smoke alarm that was causing that noise but too late I’m afraid…
@juan, sorry to hear youre having troubles with playback. Its was meant to stream fine from ozanimate.com but maybe there is a hitch in the system. If you keep having problems check back in a couple of days when I make it public on vimeo.
Great tutorial Alex. I’m going to put some of this intro practice this week. I’ll upload my results.
Dan
i have always been a big fan of animation but I don’t belong to the art field. But with little effort and such tutorials i think ill be able to make something out of my passion. Thanks for sharing!
could you make a cs6 tutorial? Its really hard to follow this one with all the changes they made in the program.
Cheers Alex, great tutorial although the ‘ctrl ]’ had me puzzling for 5mins.:-)
I animated a 8 second character action (on ones) years ago drawing directly into Adobe Elements just using layers and I really enjoyed the ‘hands on’ feel of it. It offered the same freedom as drawing on paper and more besides. The layers took a bit of organising and using different colours for keys, breakdowns etc but it was still easier to manage than doing it on paper.
This method offers so much. Thanks for getting me started with CS4.
P.s.
In keeping with the Photoshop-For-Animation thread, a Youtube video was posted some days ago by ‘seamonkey888′ that I thought was pretty useful.
The title is:
“Storyboarding Workflow Demonstration in Photoshop/Bridge for live action/animation”.
Nice one.
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