Character Animation Fundamentals: Creating an Animated Loop

Class Outline

• Illustrating a Character: We will be creating the entire character in Illustrator from scratch. This includes making a rough version to get the proportions right, adding details and clothing as well as splitting up the layers to make it ready for rigging. I will show you how to create proper joints to get the smoothest animation later on.
  Rigging using DUIK: In After Effects, we will start rigging the character’s limbs using the industry standard tool – DUIK. The rigging process is rather quick, as everything was set up properly in Illustrator. On top of rigging the limbs, we are going to create a controller for the body and head as well as some smart controllers for the facial animation.
• Animating an Idle Animation: Characters look boring while standing still – but not if you include an idle animation! Our character is a fighter, and therefore he needs a proper stance. We will go through how to create the idle animation using key poses – as well as the right way to loop it. On top of that we will create extra controllers to add a few punches. The character is a fighter after all!
• Animating a Run Cycle: One of the most important things to know as a character animator is how to animate a run cycle. I will show you the quickest way to create one without compromising on quality. We will also combine it with the idle animation to create an entire loop consisting of 2 different animations.
• Creating an Entire Scene: Our character looks fine by itself, but it’s currently running in place. To fix this we will illustrate a punching bag that our character can punch. Other than that it will be used for some parallax camera motion to make it seem like our character is actually moving.
• Exporting as a GIF: As a final touch we will export the entire loop as an mp4, which we will convert to a GIF using Photoshop. This GIF can be uploaded to the project page, so I can critique your work.