Master Procreate ANIMATION workflow 10 time saving tips

when the animation update came to procreate I started making my own animation loops this was the first time that I started making animation loops and I made some really bad mistakes that took a long time so I wanted to create this list of how to create your workflow so that you can finish your animations much faster if I had known these 10 tips when I started creating animations it would have saved me literally days of not only time but there are a few projects that completely ended up in the trash because I wasn't careful enough and I just didn't have the experience to know what I know now so I want to make sure that you all have this information at the end of this video the first tip is the most fundamental of all these when you begin your project break down what type of animations are going to happen in your piece different types of animated elements need different approaches by the end of this video you'll be able to identify exactly what category each piece belongs to and therefore you'll have a clear roadmap on how you actually accomplish those movements planning for animation is really important if you don't plan well enough these mistakes can spiral off into days of wasted work so that's the kind of focus of this entire video when creating base for the animation create elements that are moving on separate layers this will make it much easier to edit them individually remember to also name these layers you'll absolutely but to give the past you a hug later when you're using these names to navigate the massive file later trust me on these guys it will be so much easier if you just name the layers and if you name the layers in your main group of your main element that you're animating you can just copy that group into different frames and there you will have slots with empty layers that are properly named every time in each layer group with the same names so that you have a proper setup of different layers also as an extra tip in this face is if you want to use some transparency in the main animation elements you can create a half transparency layer let's say like 50% layer that is an empty layer if you plan on for example animating fog or dust particle on 50% transparency then when you copy the layer for the layer that has 50% opacity on will be the exact same opacity in every single frame so you don't have to go in and manually try to adjust to 50% because that can be really time-consuming and it's just a waste of time when you can have that layer already in your layer group you don't have to trust me on this pretty quickly you will see this in action a quick recap on how layers work after you open the animation assist you'll notice that Procrit automatically reads every layer as a single frame now this is the important part for the rest of this video if your layers are in a group then procreate will read every group as one frame of the animation this is how the main elements can remain a separate layers in every frame of the animation every element of the animation is on their own layer but those elements which are named layers now are part of one layer group layer groups are easy to create you just swipe right on all the layers you want and then hit Cru pattern that appears on the top of the layer menu and if you want to move those layers out of the crop later you just select all of the layers and move them out of the group and you will say that they shift in X position and then you will know that there are no longer part of this layer group let's discuss mostly static elements most aesthetic elements are a type of animation where an illustration that is mostly the same is repeated on all frames that is the bear in this case the bulk of the body is mostly static element since this is also by far the most detailed element on screen it's also one that I'm not going to bother redrawing for every single frame it's not relevant to this specific animation but remember that you can also use transform warp tool to create simple stretch and squash movements I don't have to use that for this whole body because it would alter the proportions of the bear I have opted for just moving these arms and that would be in the category of character animation this category includes limbs and all elements that require almost full redraw for each frame here I think I have proper bad examples to warn about what not to do because I missed this up in so many ways first of all don't think adding more frames will make the animation look smoother this is the mistake that has wasted hours and hours from my process think of the most distinct silhouettes in that movement and let's call them keyframes if those keyframes look okay it's not that likely that you will mess up filling in the transitions between those poses but if you try to just move forward and add more frames creating the animation that way it's really hard to control how the whole movement is going to look if you don't know the extremes already before you start secondly when sketching the keyframes just throw the silhouette and focus on looking at the animation the highlights are pretty easy to add with clipping masks later but Rowing them for each frame in sketching phase is an easy way to waste days into what could just take an hour otherwise so add the highlights or shadows later because if you try to work on everything at once it's really hard to keep track of the movement and how fluid the movement is going to look that way background if you go into your animation assist and tap on the first frame you can set it as a background now if you go to the lowest layer in your layer stack this is that background layer remember that this can also be a layer group if you have background animation elements it's better to just draw the base for those elements for example there's going to be small flickers and ripples on the small body of water in the lower half of the screen however I'm not adding any of those details in the background here on this layer as a general rule any animation that requires you to cover up background elements by redrawing the environment on animation layer tastes exponentially longer than using the logic of padding elements on top so let's say that you have a bug that is flying across the screen if you have a background layer that already has that bug in one static position you will have to fill in every single frame to erase that back from screen in addition to animating the bug flying across the screen as well so you can just skip all of that work in the planning phase and have all the moving elements on a separate layer and not as part of the background layer then we have the foreground layer you can set the foreground the same way that you can set a background you can use the foreground layer to have static images on top of the animation but I highly recommend making the foreground layer a layer group tool and drawing animation guides for your animation animation guide is a handy tool for any fluid movement here I have an animation guide for the direction of the water the flying path of these butterflies and the liberating movement of the bear let's say that you're creating a walk cycle for example you might want to draw an arc to guide the hand of the character as it swings on the side of the character the little dots around the biggest path here are the markers for individual frames this ladder like steps are also markers for different frames so I counted how many frames I'm going to have for this entire animation and I just went around the circle and created that many dots so that when I'm doing frame by frame animation I know that I'm not going too fast or too slow that it's going to be about the same length as I have frames and because this is a looping animation that's even more important so that I am feeling the negative spaces between those dots not so that I am just trying to guess how many frames I need to go around the whole loop then this tip I wish I could have known much sooner and it is don't multitask when drawing frames try to pick one element at a time and animate the whole loop in one go this way you'll have a better touch point on what happened in the previous frame and it's much easier to keep the movement consistent this is why it's good to have only the mass in silhouette when planning those character animation movements you can add the other details later but also do those one at a time create a temporary palette if you have foreground elements in your animation even if it's just guides or if you're using transparency of the animation assist this means that you can see the previous or the next frame as ghosting when you're animating it's really difficult to use the color picker if you use this though because it will add in those variables and those will affect the colors that you are picking this can easily lead to flickering in the final product so having a custom palette for your animation lets you use the transparency of the animation assist while keeping the process of selecting colors super fast remember that you can drag the pallet out of the menu and now habbit visible as you're working this will really speed up the process because you don't have to isolate the layer to color picots separately it's a whole phase from the whole process and this will add up a lot of speed in the whole process work from hardest to easiest you probably know already what is your hardest part of the animation to solve so if you have done that first you know the other parts won't derail you or your project later by needing endless amounts of fixes usually anything that requires almost complete redrawing is the hardest part to complete then the nearly static ones because they require more focus on the source frame for me the frame by frame elements that only need an animation guide like this border effects are the easiest to add so therefore I added them last knowing I have something to look forward to and in the final phase I added a whole copy of the entire loop and then I added the bear plinking on that copy because then I already had all the other elements doing what they do but I didn't want the bear to be blinking on every single hope of levitation so I copied all the frames and then I hand animated the blink on only one of those loops and I would say that in this work order you already know that character animation is probably going to be the hardest part to do and I would start with a silhouette and do that first then add other elements like static movement and then the frame by frame animations which can be redrawn for every single frame that are really quick to do that type of workflow will keep your process moving and it's just more motivating when you know that you are going towards the more easier and fun parts not towards something that might even be like impossible for you at this stage also you don't have to cram in all of these different animation elements for every single animation when you're just starting out have a basic concept and just know what you can create and that's much more motivating to start animating something that you know that you can accomplish and then maybe add a little bit of complexity for your next animation and then go from there you will have finished products from this practice and it's just more fun to get stuff done honestly then last but not least the most important tip out of all of these things and if you only remember one thing remember this because this doesn't just apply for animation this applies to any like bigger projects that you might be taking on make backup States I cannot stress this highly enough now that you know how to identify and animate these parts be sure to duplicate your procreate file whenever moving on to the next phase this way you have a safety net to land on if the next element doesn't work out this can not only save days from the workflow but it has literally saved few of my animation loops from being thrown into trash completely because just undoing won't work if you need to close the app or take multiple days to make a piece when you have these backup States from different places you won't lose all of your work if one of these elements doesn't work out for example I tried to use warp transfer for this bear it's not part of this workflow but I tried it but it didn't work out however I had a backup state at that face before I started work transforming anything and I didn't lose the entire piece because of this experiment didn't work out because I had that duplicate that I made beforehand now hopefully you will never need it but if you have it and you need it then you will really thank yourself for having that option for yourself the last part of this animation was adding additive light effect on layers on the foreground layer and then I used a brighter value in overlay blend mode to push the lighter colors a bit more for contrast and that's how you make a bear fly now making a bear fly is a really good life skill for you to have and something that you definitely should add to your CV when you have this done amico and I'll see you in the next video bye [Music] you

Channel: angrymikko

Views: 63,543

Keywords: ipad pixel art, procreate, procreate pixelart, procreate pixel art, pixel art, ios pixel art, pixel art tutorial, pixel art procreate guide, procreate tutorial, pixel art on ios, ios pixel art app, procreate animation, animation tutorial, pixel art animation, how to create pixel art in procreate, how to draw pixel art, how to make pixel art on ios, ipad pixel art app, procreate tips, Procreate animation workflow, Animate faster, Master animation, Animation tutorial

Id: ZB9cUcpfZoA

Length: 14min 50sec (890 seconds)

Published: Sun Mar 01 2020