Hey. Today I wanted to show you the wonderous
world of animation. So what is animation? Well it’s a good thing you asked. Animation
is the sequencing of imagery to produce the illusion of movement. Or, the less
pretentious way of putting it would be “drawing a bunch of pictures to
make something look like it moves”. Humans have got really good at this.
We use digital animation in our movies, tv shows and games to express creative
ideas and enhance our storytelling. So how do we go from a static drawing into a fully
animated video or gif? Well the first step is to add frames to the artwork using your program
of choice. After we’ve modified these duplicate frames, we can display them back-to-back, each
for a certain period of time. We call the number of frames shown in one second the frame rate,
which leads me into my first major point: Timing. Standard television is around 24 frames
a second. So one of the most common frame rates for animating pixel art is 12 frames
a second. Which, you’ll notice, is half the speed of 24. People like to refer to animating
on every second frame as ‘Animating on Twos’. For beginners, and even pros, I think 12 frames
a second is a fantastic choice, because the more frames you have means more work, but less frames
can be less smooth, and 12 frames a second walks that line perfectly. But how do we draw when
we want to make these adjustments to every frame across this 12 fps animation? Well here’s
the simple concept: the number of pixels moved between frames determines the speed. Cause, you
know? Speed equals distance divided by time. Also be mindful of how long a frame will be displayed.
It’s usually shorter than you think because you’ll spend longer looking at it while you draw. And
for us on 12 fps, it’ll be a twelfth of a second. I think it’s time for Part 2, which I’m gonna call “Planning” It’s one of those
things that no-one likes to do, but it really enables you to create much better
animations in half the time. Don’t get me wrong, I never liked to plan out the movement for my
animations, until I realised how useful it was. It’s so easy to get lost trying to create
animations from a static sprite by shifting pieces around and playing with individual
pixels. But this often results in an awkward animation. Animation isn’t about the lighting
or the character. Animation is about movement. We need to separate the aesthetic of
the static image from its movement and focus only on that movement. Once we have
the really nice foundation of good movement, we can begin to put the
‘skin’ back on the character. Instead of investing time and energy into
polishing every frame as we go, the best way is to simplify the subject into its most primitive
shapes, and make these shapes move fluidly. For a humanoid character, that would be a
different coloured shape for each limb. For fabric or cloth, create a chain of dots with delayed
reactions to the movement of the dots above. Each segment reacts like links in a chain, but once
you average out the movement with a curved line, it can be used for anything organic. So it’s kind
of like drawing the skeleton of your character. Sometimes, you want an object to jump or
fall. Probably one the most overused cliches of animation tutorials (besides the slime) is
the bouncing ball. They always show a curved parabola to demonstrate the path of the ball. I
never saw myself actually drawing this line for an animation, but it’s just one of those planning
things that really helps improve the final product and, more importantly, ease the process. I would
100% recommend drawing a quick line for the path of your animation. Because then you only have to
think about the object’s speed and not the path. I think I’ve said enough about planning. Yes, it
can be a pain but it’s a much better alternative to having to start a high-fidelity
animation all over again from scratch. Here are some quick tips to improve
your actual animation and movement. Because I haven’t really talked
about how to improve your motion yet. For a weapon attack, a common mistake is to depict
every single frame. You can see as this axe is swung, there are five unique frames as it’s held
at different angles. The point is, sometimes you want Impact. To make your movement nice and
crunchy, don’t worry about drawing so many frames. Just do a couple. If something is moving
that fast, it won’t be on-screen for very long. Of course, this can look choppy, so a remedy
for fewer frames is a technique called smearing. Smearing acts like motion blur does in real
footage by stretching the object into a blotch of colour that signifies direction. This shape tells
us both the speed and the direction the subject is moving. Like a lot of things, smearing is good
in moderation. Before a drastic movement, winding up or providing some anticipation frames can be a
super nice touch. You can hold these frames for as long as you want. Something else that also sells
impact is secondary animation. Secondary animation is where things in your world react to the primary
movement. Think of it like cause and effect. If a heavy thing is dropped here, these
lighter things might jump up because of it. Ooh, okay I want to talk to
you about easing in and out. If there’s one thing to take away from this video
it would be easing in and out. To ease in and out, exponentially decrease the distance your sprite
moves for the start and end of its movement. This will make it accelerate and decelerate,
and therefore feel more lifelike. Like we said before, the commonl rule is that the
distance between frames will determine the speed, so the way you arrange these distances
will influence your object's acceleration. Compress your distances so it moves 1 or 2
pixels at the start and 8 or 9 in the middle. But what if you want to move something
slower than one pixel per frame? An advanced technique we can use allows us to
move half a pixel without actually breaking the bounds of the pixel grid! It’s called sub-pixel
animation and it’s useful to smooth out subtle animations or movements, like idle animations. But
how can we do it? We need to add more frames to the animation, and go to the pixel level, smearing
and smoothing individual pixel transitions. We’re leaving traces of these small pixels to simulate
a blur effect, and the illusion of half-pixels. Consider it the anti-aliasing of animation. We
can also use the outline or shape of the subject to our advantage, editing its
form to improve smoothness. Here’s the original sprite moving up and down one
pixel. And here’s a zoomed in selection of just one of the sprite’s pixels moving up and down.
It’s like a switch, isn’t it? On, off, on, off. Expanding the number of frames used, value
can be used to transition between full colour and transparency for each pixel,
giving the effect of smoother motion. Overshooting is when your subject goes just
that little bit too far with their movement. It can help to make your subject more animated
or lively. Nonetheless, a nice technique to have in your toolbox. And remember it can
be used for animating inanimate objects. Another thing that I’ve seen beginners
do, and something that I’ve done myself, is to restrict a character’s movement and to
not go very big with the swings and walks. Always go for over-exaggerated, bigger
movements. It takes time and planning, but it’s much better than a walk cycle
with only a one-pixel shift in the legs. And when designing your character,
give them features that will allow your eye to track the right
details to help with clarity. Wow there’s so much to learn.
So much for me to learn too. Well hopefully you’ll join me on my journey as
we learn how to become pixel art pros, together.
