[Light music plays, screen reads 'Setting up the space'.]

Indy Boag

Next thing we're going to do is set up our space so we can start our project. We're going to be, like I said earlier, using Photoshop. So, first thing we're going to do is we're going to go to File on the left-hand screen, and we are going to go New. So, with Photoshop, there's lots of different presets it will offer. For us, we're going to go to Film and Video on the right-hand side, and we are going to start with a 4K video, which is this one here. Now, on the right-hand side, you can see it gives you a different details to set up. First thing we want to do is we want to name our file.

This will make it easier for us to figure out what we're looking for and so we don't lose it in our bunch of random documents. So, I'm going to name it dIGITAL_ILLustration_1. Below that, because we selected our preset, it has already added the width and height. By default, it tends to use pixels, but you can change this to inches, centimetres, and et cetera, if that's what you'd prefer to use. For resolution, it doesn't matter as much because we're doing digital works. However, you might want to up the quality if you tend to want to do printing in the future. The rest we are going to leave as default and we're going to hit Create on the bottom right-hand side. So, next, we are going to set up our workspace. By default, Photoshop should leave it as essentials default.

However, if you lose any of these features, like the sidebar on the left, you can always reset essentials, so it goes back to how it originally looks. On Windows as well, what I'm going to do is select down the bottom here, the Timeline, and this will be used later in the future when we're doing our animation. On the left-hand side, you have lots of different tools to use, such as brushes. As we go along, I'll tell you about a couple of shortcuts to make this a bit easier as well. If you're using a tablet, you might need to be aware that sometimes they all have different setups.

Tablets can come in a range of sizes and styles. Just be aware that some tablets you might be able to plug in and start working or other ones you might need something that's called a driver. Drivers help with things such as pen sensitivity, making sure you can have darker lines or little thin lines when you're drawing. Similar, if you're pressing hard with a pencil, sometimes you'll need that driver to get it working. Other times your tablet might not even start working unless you have this driver attached.

Usually you can find drivers by searching your model number or what it's called online. Sometimes these are also available in the actual box when you purchase your tablet. So, just be aware that if it doesn't start working from the get-go, make sure you've got your driver installed. As we're going to be using Photoshop, we're going to go through a couple of shortcuts just to make drawing and animating a little bit easier. So, while a lot of these tools are in the left-hand side, there's lots of keys you can use to quickly activate these tools as well. I'm using a Mac computer, which tends to have the Command key.

However, I'll be using the word Control because that tends to be the default with a lot of computers. So, we've got the brush. You can select that by either hitting the little paintbrush on the left or if you press the B tool, you can get that to start working. You can also hit eraser if you want to get rid of any of your works, so that is the little eraser on the left-hand side, or you can hit the E key and use that to erase your work as well. Tablets can be a little bit finicky, so sometimes erasing on your tablet can be a bit slower than what you would normally find if you're erasing it on your computer.

If you want to change your brush size, you can find it up the top-hand side where you initially hit the brush. You can see all these little tools up top. You can change size by moving the slider, or if you want to have a specific brush size you want to pick, you can put in a number, say I'm gonna put in a 150, and that will also make my brush size 150 for erasing. Otherwise, a little shortcut is on the right side. You've got the open brackets, and that will change as well to different sizes. Let's go bigger as well. You can see that's a little bit thicker. Or if you want to go all the way down, you can do a little small as well. Probably the key you'll be using the most is the undo key. So, you can find that by going up to the top and hitting Edit.

You can see up the top there, there's the undo brush, or if you hit Control Z, that will also just erase everything. You will see me using this a million times because it's just a quick and easy one to get rid of it instead of having to hand-erase everything. So, let's go back to our initial illustration. So, on the right-hand side, you can see layers. I recommend always naming these just to make your workflow a bit cleaner and easier to figure out what you want to do. It's also worth having your layers separated by colour or details. For example, if you want the foreground on one layer, the background on another, it'll make it a lot easier for you.

On the right-hand side, you can see down the bottom we've got Create a new layer. This is a little plus box and we're going to hit that and you'll see that it will name a layer right here. To rename it, you can double-click on the name. And for this, we're just going to name it Illustration_layer_1. And you can hit Return or Enter on the right-hand side and that will keep your name. Photoshop will allow you to name lots of layers the same, but some applications might ask you to rename your layers something different each time. So, you can always go up by number or by words. Do whatever workflow or naming convention is easier for you. And lift layers as well, we've got lots of different features. But to cover some simple ones, on the right-hand side, we've got opacity. And you can see that if I adjust that, it makes my illustration a lot more faint.

When we're looking at references in the future, I always keep the opacity a bit lighter so I can trace over the top of it. You can also lock layers, and this will just make sure that if you want to draw at all, you won't accidentally do anything you don't wanna do. This is particularly good if you're using reference footage and don't want to draw or erase any of that, it's worth locking it. If you don't want any of your layers to be visible, you can hide it with the little eyeball on the left side. This will make it disappear or reappear when you need it. I tend to toggle a bit. You can see that while I was doing my illustration, I've got a couple of different layers to work on.

You can see my referenced image here. You can see my little stylistic layer on top, but with them together, you can't really see both easily. So, if you want to see either, just hide one of them, it'll make it a lot easier for you. There's a lot of these keys, don't worry, we'll go over a couple of times. Another one we're going to use is we're going to duplicate layer. This is especially helpful for animation. You can do that by hitting Control J. You'll see that it makes the same layer again and just adds copy at the end. So, make sure if you want to change that, you can rename that. And another thing is, if you ever want to get closer to your canvas, you can hit Control and the plus and minus on the right-hand side, and that will let you get a little bit closer.

If you're using a mouse as well, you can also use the middle key, the middle scroll wheel to zoom in, or if you're like me and use a touch pad occasionally, can usually pinch both fingers to get a bit of a zoom in. If you ever feel like you need to adjust this as well, need to go back to a particular size, on the left-hand side here, you can see that I am 62% zoomed into my canvas at the moment, but I can always change that to something smaller, like 25, to get all the way zoomed out. Or opposite, let me go to 80, 80% zoomed in. You can see I'm a whole lot closer. That is in proportion to your whole Photoshop window.

[NSW government logo.]

[End of transcript]

[Light music plays, screen reads 'Creating a digital illustration'.]

Indy Boag

For this next portion we're going to start working on our digital illustration. First thing we're going to do is we're going to open up a new file again. So, if we go back to the left, go to File, New. We're going to hover all the way to the right to Film & Video and we are going to be working with this 4K one. So, you'll see changes our width and height. We're going to call this digital_illustration_1.

Again, feel free to name it whatever suits you, as long as it's a format that makes sense to you, name it that. Going to leave all the rest the same and we're going to hit Create. Now you'll notice first thing that sort of pops up is that we've got these blue guides on the side of our screen. There are two different methods to get rid of them. You can go down to View, head all the way down to Guides. You can hit Clear Guides. Alternatively, you can hit Control or Command and the little semicolon with its tail and that will get rid of it as well. So, next thing we're going to do is we're going to import our reference images.

So, for importing new photos, we're going to go File and we're going to go Place Embedded. You can see I've got two images here. So, I'm going to place the first one by hitting the place button. It will give you these little lines on top. That's so we can adjust the size. So, if you want to fit your image better to your canvas, you can do that. And then when you're done, hit the Enter or Return key on the right side. The other method, which I'll show you of my second image, is you can pull up your documents, whatever photo you're going to use, click and just drag it on.

And we can adjust it as well to what we want to do. I'm going to make this a bit smaller since this is essentially gonna be our mood inspirational colour palette I want to use for the drawing. And then once again, you can hit Return or Enter. Now these will pop up on the side. What we're going to do, so we're going to name it, so double click and I'm going to call the bottom photo reference_1. And I'm going to double click up top and hit reference_2. Now if one of these are in the way, you can click the eyeball to get rid of visibility or on the right side here you can change opacity as well.

If you decide that one of your images needs to be a bit smaller, however, you can hit Control or Command + t while on the layer you want to select. And we can make that a little bit smaller or bigger to scale it too. Just be aware that if you started with a small image and trial, scale it up. Sometimes you'll lose the quality. So, it's better to keep it big and scale it to a smaller size rather than go smaller, to bigger.

Again, we can hit Enter. So, next thing I'm going to do is I'm going to do a little sketch layout. I'm just changing the opacity on the bottom image because that's particularly what I want to reference, but I need more the pose rather the colours that it's using. So, it's okay, it fits a little bit more faint. So, next thing I'm going to do is I'm going to get rid of the timeline. So, you can either select it in the windows to get rid of it, just click it again. Or alternatively, like I said, you can reset essentials and that will go back to how that essentials initially looks, which is this. Next thing I'm going to do is I've got my little tablet and I'm just going to start out with a sketch layer.

So, I'm going to go to the bottom right and create a new layer. I'm going to hit my Brush tool or I can hit B. And I'm just going to pick a brush. You can see these ones are a bit more faint and blurry at the edges. And so if we actually use them to draw a little bit, just going to pull the size of this. You can see this one compared to if I go back and hit this one, which isn't as blurry but it looks quite different. And this one, depending on how hard we press, can be a bit blurry on the edges. If that's the look you want to go with, go for it. I just particularly prefer to have what of hard lines, especially while sketching.

So, if I want to get rid of those I can hit the Control + Z button or I can erase it just by hitting the E. You can also, if you haven't done anything vital on your layer, you can go to the right side and you can hit the delete button to get rid of that layer. So, add it once again. So, I'm going to start off with my little sketch. If you want to hit the eyedropper tool, you can hit the button I and that will let you bring up a colour pick so you can use the colours in your image to see which ones you like. Next I'm going to hit brush again and I'm going to hit Control plus to zoom in a little bit.

So, here we're just going to sketch out a little bit of lines. I'm going to be using my harsher ones I quite like going with a thin brush. You can do some guidelines going down halfway through the face just so you kind of get a measure of where that middle of the face is. For this one, while I'm using it as this first sketch as a guide, I'm doing sort of the main features but it's not that important that it's completely accurate. I like adding little swirly hair details, it just makes me a little happy drawing it. And this particular one is just so we kind of get a base of how things are going to look. You can see as well that because of the image I've picked, my glasses are a bit reflective so I'm just going to sketch out what I can see of the eyes as an approximation.

Same with the nose. I don't have to do a full detail. I tend to do like a pointy arrow, kind of like you're drawing a stylistic bird flying through the sky just 'cause it gives me a bit of a gauge. And then I do a little sketch of the bottom nostrils, do the bottom sides of the lips, do a bit of the hair. Again, feel free to make it as realistic or as stylized. This is sort of my sketch layer so it doesn't, this is just getting gauge. Can do a general circle for the eyes. Bridge and then we work out some of the smaller details like the neck, the hand. I don't particularly like the hoodie I'm wearing in this drawing. And the best thing about illustration is that we don't have to use what we don't want. So, while I'm sketching out the outlines of my hands, I'm just going to pretend I'm not wearing a hoodie and add the great vest I'm wearing on today.

So, you can just get some of those lines out. It's okay if your lines are shaky, I know my hands are always unsteady. Your sketch layer particularly, doesn't need to be perfect by any means. Make it as messy as you like. If you want to build out shadows, you can do some lines to give. So, the example of one, I might want some of my image to look a bit darker in certain proportions, maybe the side of the face. So, I'll add some lines. But yeah, just do the details that you want. I will zoom out a little bit. I'm going to actually pinch zoom this time just because sometimes I find it a bit easier than hitting the plus key and I can be a bit more accurate outlying bit of my details and just ignoring, you can see there's lots of wrinkles in my jumper. So, again, I'm just ignoring that. I tend to do wear sort of the top of my torso is 'cause that gives me a measure as well.

So,, if we hide our background now you can see we've kind of got a sketch out of what I want to do. I actually also, particularly my eyebrows often get hidden by my glasses. So, while I've taken that reference photo, I can add some of those details that I think the picture is missing. I also have a little bit of eye bags and you know there are certain features of us that we like and don't like and especially with a portrait, you know, it doesn't have to be a complete accurate depiction. You can just do whatever you are happy with and makes you feel good.

The next thing I'm going to do is do a more refined sketch. So, I'm going to turn the layer, the opacity on that layer a bit lower so it's a sort of faint grey. And the next thing I do on layer two make a new one is I'm going to refine it and sort of change little details. For this picture, I think it needs to look a bit happier. I feel like I have a very distant look in my eyes, which is not the vibe I want to go for. I kind of want a warm feel to go these. So, I might go a little bit happier in my drawing. Again, you can use the same colour, you can use the same grey. Or if you like to be adventurous, feel free to go a red or something. So, for the second layer, I'm just going to be a bit quicker with my lines and just make it a bit stylized.

So, while that ear is refined, I am just going to go a bit more simple and make it a sort of C shape. Same. I'll put in those glasses. But this time I'm going to make my eyes look a little to the side. Circles are really good to make this shape. I think circles you can sort of, if they're messy, like that's completely fine. You can see that these are not perfect circles, but you can absolutely tell they're still eyeballs. Nose, I'm kind of using that outline, but I'm really just sort of refining it so it's a bit cleaner. So, with some portions of the face, while I'm using the sort of outlines I made in the initial sketch, sometimes it feels it might not match the feeling or mood I'm trying to set with my illustration. So, this one I think I might make myself look a little happier.

I can take a reference if I want. You can just take a picture of yourself or if you have a handy mirror nearby, you can just make faces at the mirror. Alternatively, you can sort of freestyle or be a bit more openly creative with it. Does that make more sense? Yeah. So, I'm going to go the smiling line a bit lower. I'm going to add a little teeth and because I'm making a bit stylized, I am just making the face a bit smaller and making the hairline a bit lower just because this sort of moves the picture from looking realistic to almost a slightly more cartoony or animated feeling to it. So, we'll zoom out a little bit. I'm going to make the shoulders a bit higher just because it gives a bit more of a goofy feeling. And the other thing I'm going to do is just stylize some of these hair pieces. Giving them sort of pointy edges to it also adds to that cartoonish feel.

There's no right or wrong way to illustrate, especially while you are finding your style. Feel free to play around, look at artists that you admire. Look at shows and movies you enjoy and see what looks and feels good for you. For a lot of people, including myself, hands can be pretty difficult. I always recommend trying to have a reference nearby or good thing about most of us is a lot of us have hands or you feel free to use your friend's hands as reference if you never need a look. Photos are really good if find images online. You can see here that I am slightly changing a little bit of it, but I'm keeping sort of the general shape with it as well that of those hands because it's quite a good ref, reference. So, if we go there on bottom, I'm going to give the jumper I'm wearing earlier.

So, I'm going to put a couple of those lines in just connecting to whether I made those torso lines earlier. I'm just putting some round portions as well, which just makes this jumper look a bit softer. T-shirt as well. So, we zoom out a little bit, we can compare the two images that we had earlier. So, this one is my starting image. I'm going to hit the eye to remove visibility and if we go back to this one, it's a bit more fun and silly in comparison. So, from this illustration standpoint, next thing you can do is you can add colour. Colour tends to be the next step with it.

For colouring, we're going to make a new layer. And it's no real wrong or right way to colour. I tend to colour do a little base colour first. So, one method is that you can make a new layer, select which colours you want to do. I think there's a little test, I'm just going to go to the colours here. I'm just going to play around at what I think is a good skin colour. There's a couple of different samples you can use in swatches as well. It tends to hold the last 15 colours up top that you last used. if in case you need to go back to them. But you can see here there's also some different palettes which might be useful to you as well. Before I actually layer it on the skin, I'm just going to do a little sketch colour. I can see that this is a bit darker than I want it to feel.

So, I'm just going to go up in the colour wheel and make it a bit brighter until I'm happy with what we've got here. One method I'm going to show you is I am going to increase the brush size. So, like I said earlier, you can go up top left and pull that, pull the little wheel, you can see the little pointy arrow to adjust or if you hit the closed and open brackets on the side you can see that my pallet changes as well. So, one method I tend to do is I just go anywhere I want that skin colour, I tend to just slab it on a new layer. Just make sure you're on the right one.

Can often be a common issue of being on the wrong layer. If you find that you keep colouring the wrong layer. Another method that we talked about earlier is locking. If we go to that Layer 2, we can call that our refined_sketch so we know what it is. And we can call that Layer 3 that I mean the colour, we can call that colour_layer. Just differentiate it and on that refined sketch we can lock it. So, you can see that even if I'm on it at the moment, pick a dark colour. You see that it says cannot use brush tool because the layer is locked.

So, that stops me from making any more changes that I don't want to be there. So, it's a really good way to lock your layers in case you're worried you're going to draw on the wrong one. On my colour layer, while it's covering it at the moment. What we can do is that if we click and pull on it with the mouse, we can pull that under the refined_sketch and you can see that now it's under it. So, we don't have to worry about that. Another method that we can use is I will often duplicate my layers. So, I'll hit Control + J. You can see that this one has copy. If you have that skin colour, just going to eyedrop that. Under this refined_sketch copy.

On the left hand side you've got a paint bucket tool under eraser. If you right click, sometimes it can be hiding. They have a gradient tool as well. But we want paint bucket can actually click in these to sort of select areas. The thing about the bucket tool however, is that anywhere that you've got a closed line, it will fill in. So, what that means is you see here that my line isn't closed all the way, it will actually fill in that layer, which is might not necessarily be what we need. Same with this one. There's obviously a line that isn't fully closed.

You can see it's here and here. So, that will actually just get the entirety for the bucket tool is good for filling in large portions, but it also might not be what you need. The other method is that you've got the quick selection tool or the magic wand tool. This can be a bit finicky, it's gotten a lot better than how it used to be, but that is a good, this is a good method. You can see if I zoom in, but it's sort of made an outline in an area. So, if we click the brush tool from that, you can see anywhere that that dotted line is I can colour in. So, you can use that to do quick areas.

So, all you need to do is click the wand, oops in the area that you want it, sort of want to want. So, you can see that this area, while there's a dot line here, there's not one here so I'm going to click that as well. So, now when I use the brush, it's nice and selected, but sometimes it will only let you do one stuff at a time. If you ever find yourself in an area where you've clicked a button, don't know what to do. There's two methods. Sometimes if you hit Control + Z, you'll go back. Other times if you hit the Escape key up top it will undo. I find that sometimes they hit the Crop tool, which is just under the magic eye. So, with colouring, do what method works best for you.

I'm going to delete that second refined sketch and I'm going to go back to that initial colour layer. So, to get rid of some of these lines that I've coloured in, I am just going to get the eraser tool, which you can go here or hit the E key. I personally, like using the erase tool as it's a bit more peaceful and calm. Also fun watching stuff that you've made disappear. We're going to move up the size of our eraser. With these colours, we are mostly just blocking them in at the moment. So, even though we've got a vague skin colour skins tend to be multiple shades. It's just not one hue of pink or orange or yellow or brown. It tends to be lots of different shades and lots of various yellows and browns and reds at once. But for our initial sketch, it's okay if it's a little bit messy or not as clean.

I always find that during colouring is the best time to sort of figure out what brushes you enjoy using. So, for this sort of colour blocking as well, I'm just going to put some lines where, so the lines in my vest will be, I'm just doing a sort of grid shape. Honestly with these, the more organic and less straight lines, the better, mostly 'cause it will sort of show where our shirts shift. I'm also just going to lower the opacity of this layer just so it's a bit clearer. This as well. While I tend to colour block on one layer, my method of drawing is that I will layer over it like an oil painting. So, I will do different portions of the same image at once. And sort of put each individual ones on different layers.

I'm just hitting the eye tool to get at these sort of hues from my jumper. This green is a little bit darker than I want. So, on the right side I'm just going to raise that colour, raise that hue so it's a bit brighter. Like I said earlier, if you've got little lines there, you can quickly grab the bucket tool, make it a bit cleaner, and just get some quick methods. Colour pick that yellow, make it a bit brighter, go to the bucket. Hopefully that's filled in, it's not. So, we just need to make a little bit of a quick refined of that. So, make that sure that's filled in. Same with these, same with these ones. So, now when I bucket, I've done that correctly. You can see that I can do that and go to swatches. I had that orange earlier.

Just going to pick yellow. I'm just going to put in some yellow. Lastly, we're just going to get that darker colour and also colour bucket that in. Now this tends to be the point where I hit Control + Z the most because sometimes you'll accidentally hit colour where you want and hitting that quick tool definitely makes it a lot easier to clean up. I'm just as well, like I said, I'm going to make a new layer, which will be colour_layer2 name on the right, and I'm going to actually pick one of these more. I'm going to pick one of these more faded brushes just because we will add a bit of a softness to it. So, colour pick from the skin. I'm going to go colour and I'm just going to make that a little bit more red. I'm also another thing like you can change capacity on your layers. You can also change it on your brushes. So, what this does is that it will make some of those hues that we draw on a little bit lighter.

Put in some of those shadows. You can also go brighter if you want. The opacity up. And it tends to just brighten some of those colours a bit or lighten areas that we want. If you have pen sensitivity as well, you can see that I can get some thinner lines and I can get some heavier lines by how hard I'm drawing on this. I'm also just going to quickly go to our skin, back to our initial colour layer. And I'm just going to put a little grey bar where my teeth is just so when we zoom out from afar, it's a little bit different. There's a bit of variety there. So, this is very loose, but kind of gives me a gauge of how I want the image to look. I can see it's a bit warm, I can see it's a bit friendly. For the moment, I'm going to get rid of my second reference of the t-shirt.

I'm going to pull it apart. What we're going to do now is I'm actually going to pick a lower layer and we're going to call this background sketch just so we can get a gauge of what we want the back of our illustration to be. I think we want a bit of whimsy for it. So, I'm going to pick little bit of a cream colour to sort of vary from these sort of dark shades. And I really like shapes and patterns. So, what I'm going to do is I'm just going to put some like swirl shapes in. So, give some more shade there. Going to make sure that my lines are attached just in case I'm going to put a bucket tool, I can do that. Same here, I'm going to outline sort of these edges just because some art programmes don't recognise that this is the edge of your canvas and sometimes it won't know that you filled in your lines if you haven't done it to here.

So, add a little bucket tool here. I quite like this green in my shirt, so I'm going to hit I on the colour to pick. I'm also going to make it a little bit brighter and this area though, fold in, put it here as well. Same with the yellow. I think that's really fun. I'm actually going to play around with a different brush. The general brushes are really good ones to start on, but you can see down here there's some different ones as well. There is down the bottom under special effects, there tends to be some screen tones. Now if we put this all the way up, if we pick sort of a darker colour, it's not as visible on the liner and we zoom all the way in, you can see these fine dots here. And they can just add a little bit of varied variety to our works. So, pick a darker of yellow.

For free, sometimes I tend to use my pen instead of my brush because it quick moves a little bit quicker. But also because sometimes I want a bit of those harsher lines as well. I always recommend while you're doing your illustration to save every now and then. So, if we go to File on the left hand side, you can save here and that will save it automatically as a Photoshop file. Now Photoshop tends to save to a cloud method. So, it means that if you decide to use a different computer but you log in with your Photoshop account, it will stay with that login. Save it there. You can hit Save. Another method for saving, you can export your image.

This is quick export as PNG, but I think it's always good to look at which file you want to save it as. So, if we hit Export As, you can change your file to any of these different methods. PNG tends to have higher quality, but jpeg tends to be really good if you need a smaller file that you can share with others. As you can see down here, we'll keep it at high quality. You can change that if you just need a small example. We're not going to adjust any of these scales. We canvas size we're happy with, and we're going to export. It will ask, where you want to export it? Once again, if you want to change the name, but otherwise just hit the Save button.

So, with this we've got the beginning of a digital illustration. All of the methods that we've used you can take to other different programmes. And for this method, it's really easy to experiment and have fun. You don't have to worry about your canvas drying. It's just a really good way to sort of gauge what you want to make and make something colourful and happy. So, have fun. Hope you enjoy digital illustration as much as I do and just create to your heart's content.

[NSW government logo.]

[End of transcript]

[Light music plays, screen reads 'Creating a digital animation'.]

Indy Boag

For our next video, we're going to be looking at animation and how to go for a bit of a workflow for that. So first thing we're going to do is we're going to make a new file, going to go Film & Video again. And instead of picking the 4K, we're going to go a bit lower and we're going to go 1080p. Now the reason we're doing that is because I've got a bit of a slower computer, so sometimes it's better to go a smaller resolution so it doesn't exhaust your computer and you won't actually get much footage out of it. I'm going to click 1080p, I'm going to call this animation one. Again, name your files, what's best for you, and we're going to hit create on the right side, we're going to go to view, going to go to guides down the bottom here, and we're just going to click guides to get rid of these blue lines on the side.

The next thing we're going to do is we're going to add the timeline because we're doing an animation. So if we go to Windows down the bottom here, we've got the timeline. You'll see that pulls all the way down the bottom here. Because it's blank, there's nothing here, so we're going to create video timeline for the moment. You'll see that it adds a new layer on my right hand side. I am just going to leave this as a sort of background layer. I'm going to name it as such. And we're going to act, add a file on top of that. So we're going to make a new layer, layer one, and we're going to call this our reference footage. Now you can see when I add that on the left hand side down the bottom, you can see that it's also made a new layer for it.

I'm going to pull up our timeline a little bit by just using my mouse and pulling it. And if you see this little bit of like film reel down here, this is where we're going to add our reference footage. So you can see down here we can add media and we're just going to find the video that we want to use. So mine I believe is going to be in recent and it's just going to be this little moving recording here. So I'm going to hit open. You can see that that little piece here is our footage. So down the bottom we can make that a little bit bigger so we can see it better. And next thing we're going to do is change the frame rate. So we're just going to check if we go to the right hand side, you've got these three lines on top of each other. And then down the bottom we are going to go to set timeline frame rate. This is 29.97, which is not what we want.

We're going to change that to 24 and just make sure that's the same as well. So that changes our timeline a little bit. And when we zoom in all the way, you can see that for every 24th it says it's a second long. So every 24 frames creates a second of footage. If we want to scroll on the timeline, you've got the little bar at the bottom that you can pull across. Or sometimes if you've got a little touch bar, you can also use two fingers to sort of move that across. So we're going to move it out a little bit smaller. And what we're going to do, you can see when I added the new file, it actually created a new layer.

So I'm going to delete that initial one I made and now my video pops up. So we're going to change this to three seconds by pulling and dragging on it with a mouse. And this video is a lot longer, so we're going to sort of cut it and shorten it as well. So in this bit of footage, sort of playing around with my hands, I was waving, I was sort of flicking up and down. I was doing different parts of smiling. Your reference footage can really be anything. Lots of animators will do silly and over exaggerated poses just so they can get a bit of reference for what they want to do.

Once I zoom in now, I'm just going to pull this bar to the right and I'm just going to check that it's the right size, length. So if we zoom all the way to the right, you can see that it's three seconds long. Next thing I'm going to do is I'm going to create a new layer down the bottom here, which will be the first frame of our animation. So with that I need to click background and do new layer because if we click our reference footage, it will sort of exist in the blue area where we won't actually be able to access it. So now that I've created a new layer, what I'm going to do is I'm going to pull the video group up top, which is our reference footage. And I'm just going to pull that under our layer. And now you can see on my timeline here, my layer one is now at the top.

So with it as well, just going to zoom out and decrease the size. And because our method here is going to be drawing on twos, what we're going to do is we're going to pull the edge of this footage and we're going to pull it to this frame two. So that means from zero to the frame two, that will be our footage. So next thing we can do is if we go our reference, I'm just going to give it a little bit of a name of reference footage just so I know which layer that is. And I'm going to call our first layer. I'm going to call that frame one. Once we've got our reference footage, I'm going to change on the right hand side the opacity, just so it's a bit more faint. And next I'm going to lock it.

That means if I try and draw on top of it, you can see that I've got a little circle for line through it. When I click it, it says, could not use the brush tool because the layer is locked and that will just ensure we're not drawing anything we don't want to. After that I'm going to pick I think a nice black and I'm going to go to our first frame and I'm going to switch over to my tablet so I can do the first initial sketch. I'm going to similar to a illustration, pick a brush that you like. You can use the bracket keys to make your brush smaller. And let's just have a little look. Let's just do a quick outline of my face. Similar to a digital illustration, you can just outline details that you want to do. I think sometimes in this early portion, simpler is better.

So I'm just going to give myself a bit of curved eyes, a little bit of circles. Drawings little ears. Add neck. I'm going to give myself a bit of stylized hair. This is also really good in this little animation feature because if there's any movement in my hair we can dramatize that. And I'm just going to draw the outline of my hoodie 'cause we don't need in this earlier sketch to be as detailed. So zoom in, you can pinch to do that, you can do the plus and minus key and also add some glasses. So if we go to our reference footage and we hide it, you can see that we've just got a general outline of myself. It's really simple and that's all it needs to be. Now that we've got our first frame, we're going to duplicate my layer just to make it a bit quicker and change those details of movement. So to duplicate, we're going to hit Ctrl J and you'll see that's a copy now.

Where you have your line on the bar, that's how long it will make the footage and you'll just have to readjust the size as you go. If we zoom in, you can see where we're on frame two and let's change that to frame four. You can see there's a bit of movement when I go from that first post to the second, both in my body and head. And I'm just going to hit a new tool, which will be Ctrl T. So that sketch that I've made initially, I can now sort of adjust the angle with it. So what I'm going to do is we'll make a box around my sketch. You can see there's these little corner boxes here. And when I go near it, it gives me a curve sort of arrow. And we're just going to adjust that slightly just because that will give little bit of movement in our animation.

When we're happy with the result, you can hit return or enter and we're just going to do the slight poke of a hand. It's pretty blurry. And when we do an animation, not all things that we draw will be perceptible by the eye. So we can make this a bit smeary as we want. So we're just going to do a general outline of a hand. You can always, once again, if you take slower footage, these are much easier to draw. Or if you've got a big understanding of hands, you can also try and gauge what you want to do. But this will be a quick second frame, so it's okay if it's a little bit messy as well.

So when we go, you can see that my animation now has a little bit of movement. Again, this will be a lot of repeating the same steps. As you go along remember to name your layers. As we duplicate, let's change this next one to frame three. Pull it along, so this will be on frame four to six. For this next frame, because my hand has changed positions, I'm just going to erase. So you can hit E or click the eraser button and I'm just going to get rid of that. I'm also going to get a bit of my shirt or hoodie erased just because I can see that's gotten a bit blurry as well in the animation. Again, my pose has also changed, so we're going to hit Ctrl T and we're just going to rotate it a little bit more as well.

If you touch the centre of it as well with your mouse, you can also pull it along. I think my hair needs a bit of adjustment as well, so I'm going to make a smaller eraser and get rid of some of those details. So then I can re hand draw it, which just adds a little bit more movement. Next we can go to the hand, which again, pretty blurry, but that's okay. In this initial sort of drawing stage, they can all be a bit blurry. This is why sometimes it's good to take slower footage or do slower movements just because you might end up with some weird looking hands as you go along. But as we go along, it's a bit blurry, so it's not too noticeable. And you can also, if there's anything you think you might need a change with the face, for example, my smile might change. Don't forget, you can hide frames so you can have a look as they go along.

So we can see here my smile gets a little bit more wider. So on this third frame, let's make it a bit more transparent, erase it a little bit, we'll just make it a little bit more happier. So with animation, like I said, you'll be doing a lot of the same stuff and that's okay. It's only by practise that we get better at stuff. And definitely that is the case with animation. We'll change this name from frame three copy to frame four. You can see there's even more movement in our animation. So again, my first thing is to get rid of the hand, get a bigger brush if you need. Hit the close brackets buttons to adjust it. And then I'm going to hit Ctrl T again just because I can tell that I've moved a little bit more. And we're just going to pull that into an approximate location. If you want a bit more movement to your work, you can also redo some of the lines of your clothes, 'cause that will make your body look like it's moved a bit more. You can see here that my hands a bit clearer this time, so it's a little bit more easy to draw it.

So with animation, you'll continuously go back to see how your frames relate to the other ones, just to see if it gets the same sort of feeling. You can see on this first frame here, I've got a little line for my hoodie on the right. So I'm just going to add that back in again by hitting the B for the brush, adding it. To check progress on how our little loop animation is doing, what we're going to do is zoom out on our timeline. We're going to go to our endpoint of three seconds and we're going to pull that all the way close to the last frame that we've done. Now, if we go to settings with the little cog key, we're going to put the resolution at 50%. This just means that it's a little less detailed, so it won't take as long to load onto our screen.

When I hit the play button, you can see that we've got the start of a little animation. As you can see, our animation is really quick, and that's because we've only created five out of 12 of the frames that we are making for one second of footage. However, if you continue working on it, you can see if I go to this other one I've created, I've created about three seconds footage. It's really messy at the moment. And you can see at the start, there's a bit more hair movement and a bit more movement in my clothes, which gives the rotoscoping a bit more feeling of life. And that less sort of changes towards the end of the footage with the face and the smile makes it look a bit more stilted and not realistic. This is still a work in progress, but we can continue, keep going back to make it more detailed and refined.

Animations take a little bit more work than the illustration, but they can still come out just as beautiful and extraordinary. Next thing we're going to do is we're going to explore our animation. I've got my reference footage hidden at the moment. What we're going to do is we're going to hit the little three lines on the right hand side, and we're going to go to render video. As we're exporting it, we're making sure that it's named correctly, we're making sure that it's going into the right folder that we want, and we're just leaving most of these details as default.

The one thing we do want to change is our preset. To match our timeline, we're going to go to 1080p and 24. All of the rest should be okay, and then we can render. This is always the perfect time to go make yourself a cup of tea or walk away from the computer and stretch out so your back's not feeling a bit sore after spending all of that time animating. Now let's finish exporting. Last thing we're going to do is' going to go into our files and we're just going to make sure that it is rented properly. So I put in my, you can see, double click it and it's given us our little animation. You can see that's three seconds long, which is as long as our video was.

And I'm pretty happy with it doesn't have my little reference footage in the background as well, so it's not covering that up. It's got all the frames that we've wanted and it's given me a general idea of how my animation's going to be. With animation, it can be a lot more work, but it's so satisfying to see something that you've created moving. So have fun creating.

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[Light music plays, screen reads 'Top tips for animating'.]

Indy Boag

For our next section, we're going to have a look at how to set up for our animation. Down at the bottom, earlier we added our timeline. You can see this right at the bottom. However, I think it needs to be a bit more visible, so I'm just going to pull this upwards with my mouse to make it a bit more visible. You can see that I've already set up my layers in groups on the right hand side. Same with the reference view. I've also already named them just to make it a bit cleaner. For animation, it tends to be set at 24 frames a second. This means for every second of animation, there's 24 little bit of frames. However, that doesn't mean that we have to draw every single frame for our animation. What we're going to do is we're going to work on twos, so for that, as you can see, I've got this starting for my first frame, our video work at the bottom.

However, if I open up my layer groups, you can see that all of these little files are two frames long, which means we only have to make 12 frames per second of animation, and it also looks a little bit cleaner. The way we can set up our frames on the right hand side, just to make sure our timeline is correct, is on the right hand side, you'll see these three little lines. If you head right down the bottom, you can see Set Timeline Frame Rate. If you ever need to change it, you can change it here. For our frames as well, what we can add is something called onion skins, so if we enable that and I add my little frames here, when we do these animations, it means as we get towards the second one, you can see this little ghost effect.

This is sort of showing where our next animation is going to go to. Onion skins are a really good way to kind of gauge how you think your animation's going to look by frames, and make it a bit easier as you're drawing your next pose. With animation, there's two main ways that we'll draw, so you can do your animation pose by pose, which means every specific pose, every key pose you want to do, you'll draw that first. For example, if a person's jumping, you might have a pose of them in the air and them on the ground. The other style of animation is doing frame by frame, which means we work in a linear line to our animation. As you can see here, as we're doing rotoscoping, I find that doing frame by frame is a lot easier.

For our files as well, when you add a new layer, it will appear on your timeline. You can add your video work here on the left hand side and add media. This way, it will pull up any footage that's on your video, like on your computer. You can add that automatically so you can start working on it. Some programmes won't have capability to add photos, so instead, you might have to use frames from a video instead. Benefit of Photoshop is that we can quickly add a video and start working on top of it. Make sure your reference footage is directly down the bottom. This will make it easier to draw on top. Like I was talking to earlier, I tend to, with my reference footage, change the opacity, just so it makes it a little bit easier to draw on top.

You can change that on the right side, like I said earlier, and now, you can see all of my little frames easier. When playing your video, you can do that on the left hand side. You can see that under timeline, and that will play the video that you have. For your timeline as well, if you ever need to zoom out to see everything on the bottom, you can see this mountainous shape, and that will make it easier to see everything. Up the top, you can see I've got 1:00f, 2:00f, and 3:00f. This means that there's one second of frames, two seconds of frames, and we're going to leave it at three. So if we play this back, it's a little bit laggy on my computer.

You can see it's got a little bit of movement throughout each. If we move to an actual, just because I've got this little animation here, see if that works a bit cleaner. Yeah. If you've got a little older computer like mine, sometimes when you do your playback, it's a bit slow and laggy. Up the top, you can see a little blue bar and as we play our video, it will, over time, quickly become a bit smoother so that your video looks as it's meant to. If we zoom into the timeline by, once again, pulling this to the right to make it bigger, you can see that every layer is two frames long. So on the right hand side, you can see that I've named this each of these frames into groups, trying to keep all of those seconds. I've got frames one to 12 in a group on the right hand side.

And this represents one second of footage, same as if you go ahead, you've got 13 to 24 and 25 to 36. The timeline on the bottom is split up to lots of different portions. On the left hand side, you've got the playback bar. This is how we view our video. On the left hand, you can see go back to the first frame, so that will go to the first one you've recorded. I tend to have it at frame one just so it starts at that first bit of footage. To the right of it, you've got to the previous frame, you can hit play, which is your usual sort of play logo. Can also hit the space bar to get your animation playing. If you want to go forward to frame, you've got this one.

Next to that, you've got audio. If your video has audio, you can switch it on and off and you've got the little cog wheel here to adjust the resolution. This is really good if you want to adjust it on the fly. If you ever want to see your video at a lower quality or if you've got a laggy computer like mine, you can down the resolution so your video loads a bit faster. These tools here, you can split a video, so where you've got it on the timeline, you can cut a video to be a bit smaller, or if you decide you want to add a special transition, you can add it to each of these frames.

Up top here, you can see it starts from 0:00, 1:00f, and that's our first frame, and it will go up to pretty much how long you want this video to be. On the right hand side, you've got the three lines, and this has lots of different areas as well. So you can going to add comments to your timeline. You can, on the bottom here, add onion skins to apply this ghost effect, and like I said earlier, you can set your timeline frame rate here. For animation, we're going to be using 24 frames a second. 24 also splits really nice and even into 12, which means that if we want to draw on twos, we only have to do 12 frames per second. You've also got the playhead, it's just this red line, the blue little top.

Using your mouse or your tablet, you can pull this side to side to pick a specific portion of your video you want to view. If you want to adjust the size of each of your frames, you can also use your mouse to sort of pull it across to adjust the size. On the left hand side, these will match up to all of the frames on the right, so you can have these bigger if you need as well, but you can also adjust this on the layers. Photoshop tends to have a lot of tools that do the same thing, so do what method that suits you best.

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