How To Create and Animate Basic Characters in Photoshop and After Effects

in this video I'm going to show you how to create a basic 2d character right inside of Adobe Photoshop and then we're going to take that 2d character and we're going to animate it right inside of Adobe After Effects so let's get right into today's video so we're going to start inside of Adobe Photoshop and to begin we just want to start by unlocking the background so we just press the padlock icon and then we're just gonna create a background so I'm gonna go to the gradient tool and then we'll just change the color of the left and right of this line here so the left I'm going to change this to a nice yellow and then we'll go over to the right and we'll change this to yellow as well but we'll make this a slightly darker yellow now I'm just going to draw a line across the center of the canvas and as you can see we've got a really awesome gradient background applied now from here we're just got a padlock the background so we're just gonna press that padlock icon and we'll go up into layer new layer and inside of new layer we can rename this to body now we're gonna go over to the left side of Photoshop and you want to go ahead and select the pencil now you can change the fill and the stroke I'm gonna change the fill to blue and we'll change the stroke to and no stroke now you can go ahead and draw the body of your character but I want to create a circle for the body so we'll go over to the ellipse tool we'll select the ellipse tool and we'll draw a circle holding shift on your keyboard and we'll just draw out that circle now we'll change the fill color of this to a nicer blue and then we'll just Center that up now from here we can carry on with the other body parts so we'll go up into layer new layer and we'll rename this layer to left arm well press ok on that we'll go down to the line tool and there making sure that the color is the same as the body we'll just go ahead and we'll draw a line on the left of the body now from here we'll go ahead and create another brand new layer so layer new layer rename this to right arm and we'll do the same thing again we'll press the line tool and we'll draw an arm on the right of the body now we'll back up in to a layer new layer we'll rename this to a left leg press ok we'll go to the line tool once more and we'll draw a left leg and then we're gonna do that one more time so layer new layer we'll rename this to right leg and then we'll draw the right leg just below the body now from here I want to go ahead and create a face on this character so I'm gonna create an alien and I'm gonna give this alien one eyeball so again layer new layer rename is to I change the color of the eye to white so that's the fill color and then just draw an ellipse in the middle of the character now I want to go ahead and create the inner eyeball so go ahead and select layer new layer rename this to in that I change the fill color to black and we're just gonna draw out a circle inside of the white circle and they go this is really starting to come together now there's one more thing that we need to do to finish this carrots are off and that is to create a mouth so we'll go layer new layer rename this to mouth and then we'll go ahead and find the curvature pencil now we're going to slightly change the color of this blue we want this to be very similar to the blue that we have but want this to be a slightly different shade of blue so that we'll see it against the blue body [Music] now we'll just zoom in and we'll just create three points and that's going to create a really awesome smile but we just got to get rid of the fill color and we're gonna change the stroke color to that blue that we just selected and there you go we've got this really cute looking alien it's really important that when you're creating a character inside of Adobe Photoshop that each individual part of the character has its own layer so the left arm the right arm both legs the eyeball the inner eyeball and the mouth and the body they're all assigned to their own separate layer and this is really important when we come to drop this into Adobe After Effects now from here we need to go ahead and export this character and drop him into Adobe After Effects so we're going to go up into file save as we'll change the format to Photoshop and we can rename this to alien but feel free to rename it to whatever you like now from here we're gonna go into Adobe After Effects and we're gonna drop that alien PSD file into After Effects and then when you drop that file into After Effects you will get this menu come up and you want to make sure that you select editable layer styles in the import kind composition this is really important because this means all of the layers will import as a separate layer rather than a merged layer this is really important now if you double-click on that alien composition you can see all of those layers are now there so to begin with the animating process I'm just going to start by locking off the background I don't want to adjust the background so we'll press the padlock icon on After Effects now from here we're going to select one of the arms so we're gonna select the right arm and we're gonna go up to the puppet tool that's this pin on the top of After Effects and we want to go ahead and we want to create three points on the arm and these points are basically acting as joints so you've got your shoulder your elbow and your wrist there now we'll go ahead and we'll do the same on the left arm we'll create those three points we've got shoulder elbow and wrist and now if I press the drop down arrow on the left and right arm go into FX [Music] go into puppets mesh one deform we've got puppet one puppet two puppet three and that's on both of those layers so we're just going to open up all of those and as you can see a new keyframe has been created at the very beginning now in order to animate the character we basically want to move forward in time so we'll move forward two seconds to the right and because we've created a keyframe at the very beginning if we change the positioning of one of those points the character will animate up to that point so if you're familiar with adjusting keyframes to adjust position scale or rotation this is a very similar process we're just adjusting the position of a specific point on the character now two seconds into the video I'm just going to adjust the positioning of those points on the left arm and as you can see if we play this back we've got this really slow moving really basic arm movement the alien is putting art the alien character is putting his arms above his head but this is a little bit too slow so we're just gonna shorten the gap between those keyframes so we're going to move on and add some extra movement to the right arm so moving roughly half a second to the right we're gonna adjust the wrist position so that is puppet pin three we'll move that over to the right we'll move over a second or half a second move the position move over another half second move the position again and we'll keep doing this process over and over again and keep creating some different animation points for this character now we're just going to match the movement from the right arm to the left arm so every time there is a keyframe on the right arm we're gonna move the position of the wrist that's puppet pin three on the left arm and as you can see if we play this back we've got this really basic arm movement so the alien is putting his arms above his head and wiggling them from left to right now if we select all of those keyframes right click on one of those keyframes go into keyframe assistant and select easy ease it's going to change the animation style of that movement so it's a little bit more natural rather than just hard keyframes so we'll do the same on the left as well as the right and as you can see we've got this really smooth movement from the character now the movement that we just created on the arms was a very basic and very simple animation of course you're welcome to do whatever you like with this and of course you can add the same points to the legs and do similar leg movements all you have to do is select the puppet tool create those points and animate those points over time but now we're going to go ahead and we're going to animate the eyeball so we want to make sure that the eye and the inner eye are connected we want to make sure that they move at the same time so in order to do this we need to create a brand new null object so we'll go aleja new null objects we can rename the null object to eye null if you want if you want to make things easier for yourself and we'll drag that on top of the eye now we'll select inner eye and eye and would use the PIP whip tool and drag that on to the eye null and this basically means when we adjust the position the scale the rotation move something on the null object it will affect both the inner eye and the eye itself now I'm going to move roughly one second into our video so the arms have gone up they've wiggled around a little bit and I'm going to press p on the keyboard to load position now we'll create brand new keyframe by pressing the stopwatch icon move roughly half a second to the rights and we'll change the position of the null objects to move to the rights another half second to the right and we'll create brand new keyframe and move another half second to the right and we'll adjust the position of the null objects back over to the left and as you can see we've got this really basic eye movement I'm going to take this one step further though by adding a little bit of extra movement to the inner eyeball so select the inner eye and create a brand new keyframe on position at the same point of the first keyframe on the null object so press the stopwatch icon to create the keyframe move to the second keyframe on the null object and we're going to move the position of the inner eye over to the right just a little bit move to that third keyframe create brand new keyframe move to the last keyframe and we're just going to pull the position back over to the left so as you can see the whole eye is moving but the inner eye is also moving on its own as well and this is really helping to exaggerate that movement from the eyeball now one last thing we're just going to add some movement to the mouth we're just going to make the aliens smile so select the mouth go up to the puppet tool and create your points on the mouth so we've got one two three I've got three points on the mouth now we're getting out into effects puppets mesh one and we've got puppet pin three two and one move roughly half a second to the right and we're gonna change the position of this mouth and then we'll increase the height of the left and the right side of the mouth so we're just gonna move these up a little bit just to create a little bit of a smile [Music] and there you go once you've added in all your key frames you have animated your character to how you want it to look you want to go ahead and add one more finishing touch and that is to add some motion blur so hold command a that will select everything press the motion blur box on one of the layers and they make sure motion blur is activated in your composition by selecting the motion blur button on the right in After Effects 2019 that will automatically turn on but if you've got older software then you may have to turn this on so make sure this motion blur box is blue and there you go once you've turned that motion blur on you've added in all of your keyframes you've added all of your puppet pins and everything that is how you create and animate a character right inside of Adobe Photoshop and Adobe After Effects and there you go thank you for watching this video don't forget to subscribe and I will see you tomorrow for another brand new video see you there

Channel: Brooker Films

Views: 13,940

Keywords: brooker films, brookerfilms, chris brooker, chris brooker films, after effects, how to animate in photoshop, photoshop animation, after effects character animation, after effects tutorials, after effects animation, after effects tutorial, adobe after effects, how to, how to animate, after effects transitions

Id: AF8kfjRjddc

Length: 12min 25sec (745 seconds)

Published: Thu Aug 01 2019