Lets start practicing some animation techniques with a Wacom tablet and Photoshop!
Wacom Settings
Add ‘Pen Pressure’ to Shape Dynamics – as you press harder on wacom the line will be thicker
Add ‘Pen Pressure’ to Transfer – as you press harder on wacom the line will be darker
Control+Option+Click&Drag Left or Right= Adjust Diameter of Brush
Control+Option+Click&Drag Up or Down= Adjust Hardness of Brush
Flip you pen to use the eraser! The settings for the eraser can be adjusted by clicking on the eraser tool and adjusting the settings for its mode and opacity in the tool options bar on the top of your screen
Opacity vs Flow
Press 5 to change Opacity to 50%. When you paint and RELEASE and then paint AGAIN you will stack your paint.
Press SHIFT+5 to change Flow to 50%. When you paint and paint over a section the paint is stacked. No need to RELEASE.
Photoshop Video Layers
Using Photoshop Video Layers to animates gives you the ability to work frame by frame, there are other many other methods to animate but we will start here.
1. Open Photoshop
2. File New and create a document that is 1000 x 1000 pixels and is 72 ppiand UNCHECK artboards
3. Layer > Video Layers > New Blank Video Layer
4. This will create two layers, a background layer and a video layer
We will use the video layer to draw frame by frame
5. Go to the Timeline and click the option menu in the top right corner
6. Click on ‘Set Timeline Frame Rate’ and change the frames to 24
*24 is the traditional animation rate made famous by most vintage cartoons
7. Now go to the end of the rectangular bar that represents the layer and drag it so it is only 1 second long.
8. Now use the mountain/zoom slider on the bottom of the timeline and increase it
9. You will see that your 1 second has 24 frames in it
10. Make sure the blue PLAYHEAD is at the beginning of the timeline
11. Now we start drawing!
12. After you draw your first frame, drag the blue PLAYHEAD one frame forward
13. Go back to the options for timeline and choose Enable Onion Skins
14. This will allow you to see a transparent version of you previous image
*to adjust the look of the transparent go to timeline menu and choose Onion Skin settings
15. Now draw your next frame
16. Continue this until you have drawn all 24 frames
17. Press the Play button to test your work!
Try recreating something from your flip book and keep practicing!
We will get deeper into this in our next lesson 🙂