Beginner's guide to 2D animation with OpenToonz

Hello friends let me show you how I animated this shot from Steamboat Willie for free using open Tunes an open Tunes is a pre animation program that you can download and use now if you've never used it before stick around to see how so first you want to create a new project to S all of your shots which are called scenes in open tunes and creating a project creates a folder on dis to store details of each scene along with all the drawings in the scene their place on the timeline any effects you use and all of the files that contain the details for your animation and then with the project created you create the scene and these are used for each shot of your animation but also so as I'm doing here they can be used to create the assets that you'll use in your animations so I'll create two scenes first and draw the two backgrounds in them and you can of course use any software to draw a static background and save it as a PNG or a JPEG and then import that image into your animation but I really like using the drawing Tools in open tunes and it's a good way for me to show you how to use them so I'm building my backgrounds directly in open Tunes so I started with drawing the boat as the stage for Mickey and for this I used the built-in assistant tool to help with a onepoint perspective of the boat first I sketched the boat in one layer and then I added multiple other layers to draw different parts of the boat like the main cabin the floorboards the shadows and highlights and the old school style shading of the wood and by separating them into their own layers or columns as they're called in open Tunes it meant I could focus on drawing or erasing just the parts I needed and I used a number of different brushes and coloring styles to try to emulate the original cartoon and I'm really happy with the final result and then I rended out this single frame from the scene as a PNG image to be used later in the animation scene and then I created another scene draw the extra wide infinite scrolling background of the hills and I created the scene to be twice as wide as the main animation so that you wouldn't notice it repeating as it looped past and this simulated exactly what was in the original cartoon and I plan to use one of the effects that are built into open Tunes to create the infinite scrolling in the main animation scene and although you obviously want to get to animating your characters it's good to create your backgrounds first even if it's just a sketch so you can see where your characters need to be and what size they need to be so again for this drawing I used mainly the pencil style brush to give this natural looking effect to the drawing to match the original and there's lots of different brushes in open Tunes so do check them all out and I added some manual coloring and used the airbrush to add the different shades into the scene and if you want to see the full narrated version of me drawing the backgrounds and the animation and sharing dozens of tips along the way you can check out the full 10 video series just for the price of a cup of coffee over on my gum Road or on my patreon site where you can see the other benefits of joining my patreon and you can find details with both of those down below and again at the end I rented out the drawing to a PNG image then once these background images were finished I created another scene for the actual animation so in this new scene I first imported the two background images by just dragging them into the viewer area from the rendered output folder on disk and then I also dragged in the MP3 audio track and this gave me the length for the animation so I extended both background images to this length of time and then I animated the hills rolling past by positioning the heels layer using the animate tool for its start and end positions and I'll cycle those later to have this movement continuing then to see the background joined with itself I applied the tile effect which is a really quick way to create an endless scrolling background and don't forget that to view the effect you have to click the preview button and previewing highlighted the difference in shading between the joining left and right sides of the drawing and there are options to help with that but when you zoom out you can't really notice it so I left the drawing as it was and then I changed the timing of the background movement to slow it down and used the repeating option on the timeline to repeat the background Hills up to the end of the animation and in total this extra wide background was repeated twice so you don't really notice the repetition and finally for setting up the backgrounds for this animation I drew the boat's wheel using the selection tool to help me copy and paste the ellipses to create the wheel at an angle and after drawing the initial wheel I then went on to draw the two in between frames of Animation to show it spinning which was plenty with a small movement needed and to help with that I used a guide layer and the onion skinning extensively to be sure that the wheel spokes were spaced equally before I drew them in ink and filled them and although I really wanted to get to the animation of Mickey it was important to add in the wheel before I got him so I knew where to draw him and after drawing them all I moved the animated wheel frames on the timeline to where the spinning audio was and repeated them a couple of times to be spinning while the audio played and this was really easy to match up using the waveform shown on the timeline and now at last we're ready to start with Mickey I used a few two different techniques to draw and animate Mickey here to show some of what open Tunes can do and first I added a reference image to be sure his proportions were right then I drew his head and use the selection tool to copy this head and make the adjustments to animate him taking his first big breath and using edited copies of his head meant that it didn't change size throughout the animation although it does make the head feel a little bit stiff but more on that later and and then I sketched him whistling and turning around to faces which he does when he spins the wheel and it wasn't important to keep the sketches neat as I plan to Ink over them anyway so be as messy as you need to so long as you can see where to Ink later and again I Ed the pencil brush because it just feels so natural to draw with then I moved on to drawing his shorts and the little dance that he does and I did this by sketching out the main shape using a simple Circle and then I traced over the circle and resized it as I moved it upwards then I duplicated the circle and moved it in the bouncing pattern that the original animation had when I examined this pattern in the original animation it really showed how they didn't use any kind of easing to their inbetween almost all of them were evenly spaced they just seemed more concerned about the timing to match the music that's something that I tried to stick with in in this animation to keep that same feeling of even movement and it made it so much easier to animate that movement with such a simple shape and focusing on just one area of his body at a time and it's something that I recommend doing and definitely something that I'll keep doing I really felt the benefit of it for this movement so now the main movement was sorted I added the actual short around the outside that's the waistband the legs and the two front buttons and something I was very keen to do was to show the twisting motion of them as you move from right to left and back again and I did this by focusing on the key positions and then adding the buttons and legs in between them and again while working this out in a sketch drawing it meant I was happy to make adjustments as I went and not worry about being neat so I can figure out the movement easier and I use the onion skin to help with these inbetween which really helped but looking back I could probably have made better use of the built-in shift and Trace feature for this so I'll definitely keep that in mind for my next project and then finally I drew the shoes again using the reference to be sure I had the scale correct and using the onion skin throughout to help me follow the movement and keep the size consistent so with Mickey's movement sketched out it was time for the fun part the inking so to start inking I created a new level I created the same number of drawings and then copied the same timing to that level and then I started by tracing over the shoes making small changes as I went but ideally this stage is just about creating neat drawings so you shouldn't have to make too many changes you should really be concentrating on just making neat lines but this is where the smoothing option really helps and I always call this the fun part of the process and is the one I enjoy the most because you've already worked out the timing for your animation and the position of where you want the drawings and now you can concentrate on drawing your character so after the shoes I moved on to his body and shorts and again I created this on a separate Drawing level and by keeping the drawings for different body parts separate it means you can repeat them with different timing so for most of the animation his feet do this little tapping motion that's just a four frame cycle so you can just repeat those four frames for the feet while showing different timing for the body and his head which for most of the animation only has two frames as he whistles so while drawing his shorts I was careful to try to focus on consistency keeping his shorts legs the same length and the buttons the same size and you've probably noticed that I'm drawing a top to his body behind the head and that's because I'm going to draw his head on a different level so I need to have an enclosed shape on this level for filling his body and then onto his head and you'll see that I'm redrawing it a few times so it doesn't look too stiff but looking back I should probably have redrawn all of them but instead for some of the head frames I just redrew his mouth and eyes and this just highlights that it's entirely up to you which workflow or which animation shortcuts you choose to make while animating in open Tunes in this project I've tried to show as many different ways to work with the tools so that you can choose the most efficient way for your animations so do take a look at the full process if you can to get the most out of this project then once the inking was done I filled in the color and this was a very quick process thanks to the different filling features in open Tunes including filling across all of the drawings at once and the shortcuts for changing between fill colors and by watching this part of the animation with just his head body and feet you can really get a feel for the character even without his arms or legs and I found that by drawing these body parts first you can get a good feel for your character and his movement so then I went on to draw his simple hands holding the wheel first and then being flung into the air as he spins the wheel and again if you take a close look at the original animation you'll see that his hands were drawn pretty Loosely there's no need to be too detailed here but if you are going to be drawing Mickey from the Steamboat Willie cartoon era be sure to not draw his gloves this public domain version of Mickey didn't wear gloves in the actual animation although they are shown in the title card and finally this version of Mickey is a rubber hose version of Mickey I figured I'd Tred to simplify the adding of the arms and legs so instead of drawing their outline and then filling them in I simply made the brush wider and Drew a single line for each leg and arm focusing on one arm at a time or one leg at a time sometimes drawing the key positions first and then inbetweening them and other times drawing them straight ahead to get a better feel for the movement and because the shoulder of his left arm is sometimes in front of his head those drawings need to be in front of the head layer and his right arm is behind the head so they need to be behind the head layer so each arm needed to be on its own layer and his legs had a similar issue that they had to be both in front and behind of his shoes and shorts legs so these two were on their own layers but a che a little bit and just erase the parts of the leg lines that were behind his shorts or inside the shoes so in the end I had four layers for his arms and legs and the last part of the animation was drawing his tail which again I drew with a single line and to help with this I made use of a feature to make the body and feet layers partially transparent while I was drawing and at the end I just thickened his tail by redrawing over the top to make it more visible and show a change in the thickness along it which I think made a nicer drawing then finally I just had to adjust the drawings to match the timing of the music that involved copying the drawings repeating sections of them and keeping each of the body parts in sync with the others and I also added a couple of open Tunes effects to change the overall look of the animation and to increase the thickness of the lines that I drew Mickey with so after all that work here is the final animation so that's how I created this shot from Steamboat Willie thanks for sticking around for me this far and I hope I didn't go too fast here but to keep this video short off for YouTube and give you a flavor for what you can do in open Tunes I to cut out a lot and speed over some parts but if you want to see exactly what I did to build this animation do check out the full 10p part series on gumroad just for the price of a cup of coffee or join me on my patreon as a t- mug or teapot to watch them all as part of your rewards with a video shown in normal time with no fast forwarding or editing I take you through the entire process explaining every step of the way for everyone to follow including Turtle beginners we I explain each feature and I give plenty of tips along the way and now shortly for my teapot supporters is a secret 11th video showing how I built the YouTube short for this animation that I release next week I think you'll find that very useful so check out both these sites links in the description and just here and check out my open Tunes beginner video series up here and I'll see you soon for another video and that's a guantee

Channel: Darren T

Views: 1,170

Keywords: animation, opentoonz, steamboat willie, animating steamboat willie

Id: PG8wiTtB3rA

Length: 16min 34sec (994 seconds)

Published: Fri Feb 23 2024