Instructor: Katherine Fultz

Bring your drawings to life with digital animation techniques! We will use the robust and user-friendly iPad app Procreate to make animations of increasing complexity. In this workshop, you’ll learn the fundamentals of animation, including how to use incremental variation and repetition to create the illusion of movement. We’ll begin with simple animated lettering, and progress to movement of more complex objects. Along the way we’ll explore how to use a variety of brushes in Procreate to achieve different lettering and artistic painting effects. We’ll finish up by going over best practices for exporting files, how to add music or other audio, and how to share them online.

Some familiarity with drawing programs on the iPad is useful, but not required. Students who have completed my Intro to Digital Art Workshop will be able to create more detailed and complex final animations.

Objectives:

— understand basic concepts of animation, including incremental variation and repetition

— practice increasingly complicated forms of variation through hand lettering, movement of a uniform object through space, and movement of a variable object through space

— explore the use of different digital brushes and clipping masks to produce hand-lettered phrases with different effects

— explore how illustrated embellishments can add dimension and dynamism to hand-lettering

— use multiple digital brushes to create a textured illustration of a vehicle

— practice creating dynamic animations by using layers in Procreate to create incremental movement of a uniform object (vehicle moving through space)

— use multiple digital brushes to create a stylized illustration of a person or animal in Procreate

— practice incremental variation using “onion skins” and tracing in Procreate to create the illusion of complex movement

— understand the difference between PNG, JPEG, GIF, and MP4 file formats, and what files are required for various digital platforms

Projects:

Students will create three animations in the Procreate app on the iPad, which they will learn how to export to post on social media or embed in other digital documents (emails, websites, etc). The first animation will be a hand-lettered word or saying, the second will be a vehicle moving across the screen, and the third will be a person or animal doing a simple action. Each of these files will be exported as an animated GIF, and students will learn how to convert it to MP4 in order to post on Instagram or YouTube.

Outline:

• 15-minute presentation on traditional animation techniques. Make a hand-drawn flipbook.
• Learn how to set up a canvas in Procreate and turn on animation assist tools. Go over what having multiple layers and/or “onion skins” are used for.
• Explore different brushes to use in lettering. Sketch letters using a pencil brush on the iPad. Create a new layer and trace sketch with a lettering brush. Polish lettering style with eraser and brush tools.
• Using a new layer, trace over initial lettering and polish as before. Link layers into a “wiggle letter” animation. Export as an animated GIF.
• On a new canvas, sketch a vehicle. Learn how to fill with color, add texture and embellishments.
• Using new, duplicate layers, gradually move the vehicle across the canvas. Link the layers together into an animation. Export as animated GIF. Convert to MP4, and open in iMovie. Search free audio libraries online for appropriate vehicle sound effects (or record original sound effects with the microphone). Add the audio track in iMovie.
• On a new canvas, sketch a person, animal, or other object that changes appearance as it moves (eg. steam coming out of a cup).
• Add color and texture as before.
• Turn on “onion skins” tool, learn how to adjust the opacity of the onion skin layers. Duplicate the parts of the object that remain static and re-draw the parts of the object that change appearance as they move, altering them incrementally on each onion skin layer.
• Link the layers together to create an animation, export as an animated GIF, and convert to MP4. Add an audio track in iMovie if desired. Learn how to upload files to Instagram, YouTube, and Facebook.