Photoshop Animation Tutorial: Frame by Frame Character Walk

hi everyone Ethan's right here with another Photoshop tutorial in today's tutorial we'll be reviewing basic frame by frame animation within Photoshop as you can see I've set up a simple example here of a classic character walk we're gonna be using the brush tool different layers in different groups to create this animation in Photoshop in today's tutorial let's get started creating our new document by going up to file new or command N or ctrl n on the PC I'm gonna name this character walk I'm gonna set my preset to film and video HDTV 1080p 29.97 frames per second hit OK I'm gonna clear the guides off my screen by going to view clear guides and I want to make sure that I'm in my motion workspace let's go to window workspace and make sure motion is checked and let's reset motion just in case any panels are missing as you can see we have our timeline at the bottom of our application we have create frame animation we can also create video timeline for right now let's stick to create frame animation and click on that button and you'll notice that frame 1 is created on our timeline let's go to the top right of our timeline and click on this drop down here to check some settings make sure that you have create a new layer for each new frame unchecked as well as new layers visible in all frames unchecked if you want to increase the size of your frame thumbnail you can go to panel options and make sure that you have that maximum size selected for thumbnail size hit OK and let's get started creating our imagery so the first thing I want to do is create a new layer and I'm gonna place each of these body parts on a separate layer the first layer I'm going to be creating is tor so let's go ahead and grab our paint brush tool I'm just using a more painterly brush here and I have an opacity of 60 a flow of 65 and my foreground color is set to black make sure that you have the torso layer selected as well and let's start painting our character once you have the torso and the head finished up let's add another layer and I'm going to name this layer front arm by placing each body part on a separate layer it makes it a lot easier to meet the character that way we can customize each of these limbs individually and we don't have to erase an entire layer and redraw the character every single frame let's continue this process for back arm front leg and back leg okay now that we have all of our imagery completed let's go ahead and select all of these layers by clicking on front arm holding in shift and clicking on back arm then we're gonna click and drag these to our create new group icon and notice that it places all of our layers within that group we're gonna name this group contact the reason I'm naming it contact is because this is when both of our characters feet are in contact with our floor which I'm going to go ahead and create a new layer and I'm gonna use that brush tool to create a floor I'm just going to click once hold in shift move across the screen and click again this is when you ensure that we have a straight horizontal line okay we can always repeat that process by clicking once holding in shift moving across the screen and clicking again that way we have a completely straight horizontal line created with our brush tool this will be a perfect floor for our character to walk on so obviously for motion or animation to take place there has to be a change in imagery we're gonna go ahead and click and drag our contact group to create new layer icon that way our contact group is duplicated and I'm going to rename this group recoil the reason I'm naming it recoil is because our character is getting ready to recoil to take their next step the next thing I want to do is I want to create a new frame considering that recoil is going to be the second step in our animation I want it to be visible on the second frame in our animation I'm gonna create a new frame by clicking on this create new frame icon at the bottom of our timeline and I'm going to go ahead and hide contact for right now that way our recoil group is the only imagery visible on frame two for our recoil let's go ahead and click on our torso and I'm just gonna drop that down a little bit in our document and that way whenever I change between these frames we can kind of see the difference that's going to take place and the next thing I want to edit is our front leg so let's go ahead and select our front leg using our move tool making sure we have Auto Select checked and make sure that that is set to lair it's going to make workflow a lot easier and faster and I'm gonna begin erasing this leg because I'm going to read your role it for its next position once we have the front leg erased let's go ahead and reveal our contact group that way we can see the original leg in its position and we can alter it accordingly so we can proceed with our walking animation now with this recoil I'm gonna start having that leg Bend upward to take its second step okay we have our front leg and it is slightly altered so it's proceeding to take that step and we also have hidden contact on frame two if I return to frame one notice that both groups are visible I want to hide recoil on frame one and I want it to be visible on frame two that way whenever we start to go in between our frame one and frame two we can see the progression of our walk starting to take place so notice I have frame two selected and the only imagery that's visible is the recoil group not contact this is all a matter of toggling the visibility of your imagery for the frame that you want it to be visible on let's continue to alter our imagery and our recoil group so we continue to take our second step in our animation altering imagery doesn't always include erasing and repainting we can always rotate and scale as well so what I'm gonna do with our front arm is I'm gonna go ahead and hit command T or ctrl T on a PC and I'm gonna move my anchor point to where the shoulder joint would be that way whenever I rotate this layer it's rotating as if it would rotate around an actual shoulder joint let's accept those changes and notice we have a little bit of an empty gap here between the torso and the front arm so I'm going to go ahead and click on my torso layer and I'm going to fill that gap in we can use the same process for the back arm as well okay as you can see our animation is starting to come together and if we wanted to preview this in real time we could always just check this setting down here and let's make sure that we have it set to forever that way it's a constant loop I'm gonna extend this frame delay so I'm going to select my first frame and hold and shift and select my second frame and instead of a zero seconds because that's going to be incredibly fast I'm just going to click on point two seconds considering we only have two frames at the moment let's go ahead and hit play and you can see that change starting to take place our character is starting that process to walk let's go ahead and continue this process that way our character gets a whole step before we end this animation now remember since this is the third step in our animation and it's our third group that's going to be visible I have to create a new frame here because I want our third group to be visible on our third frame now we're on our fourth and final group which I'm going to name High Point and remember because it is our fourth group and I want it to be visible on our fourth frame I have to create a new frame frame for but I don't want it to be visible on all of these other frames only frame four see on frame three here we have High Point visible I want to make high Singh visible and on frame four we need High Point visible so we're good to go there let's go ahead and begin altering this imagery okay now that we have our four groups created let's go ahead and hit play making sure that we have our loop two forever and our walk is really really starting to come together so as you can see within Photoshop you can achieve a lot of motion over a short amount of frames it's all a matter of toggling your visibility for your frames we have contact being the first image that we're using so we have it visible on frame 1 if we have High Point being the last image we're using then we have it visible on frame 4 and invisible on the rest of the frames this is a very simple process but you have to make sure to pay attention to your layer panel as well as your timeline that concludes our frame by frame animation tutorial for today just a quick recap we went over adding new layers and using the paintbrush tool to create imagery we went over using layers and groups and alternating their visibility to create animation in motion within Photoshop I hope everybody enjoyed today's tutorial on frame by frame animation in Photoshop this is Ethan dray and as always thank you very much for watching and please check back for more tutorials

Channel: Ethan Dray

Views: 271,629

Keywords: Photoshop Tutorial, Photoshop, Photoshop Animation Tutorial, Photoshop Frame By Frame, Photoshop Frame by Frame Tutorial, Character Walk Tutorial, Frame by Frame Character Walk, Frame by Frame Tutorial, Character Walk, Frame by Frame Animation, Animation Tutorial, Frame by Frame Animation Tutorial, Photoshop Animation, Photoshop Character Walk Tutorial

Id: Llr_KTNtdlk

Length: 9min 7sec (547 seconds)

Published: Sun Mar 12 2017