Have you ever wanted to see something you’ve drawn, or illustrated, move? Just the thought of animating is enough to put you in a cold sweat if you’ve never taken the plunge. If you love watching animation like I do, you’ve probably seen videos of Disney artists painstakingly draw 24 frames per second… that’s over 5 million drawings in an hour-long show… Yikes! I get tired just thinking about it.
Well, thankfully today we have products like Adobe Illustrator and Adobe After Effects to ease our workload. Illustrator is a vector-based drawing software program and can be used to make extremely simple shapes to complex illustrations. Part of the fun is figuring out how I want my character to move. Will they be driving in a car? If so, I’ll need to make separate shapes for the hair to blow in the wind. Do they need to walk? If so, I’ll need to make separate shapes for the upper legs, lower legs and feet.
After my character is built with all their parts, it’s time to open After Effects. This is where the animation magic takes place. My youngest son, Max, has complained over the years that Algebra has no real-world use. Well, for most that may be true, but animating a character definitely puts the right side of your brain to use. It’s not that it’s hard to do, but you certainly need to master timing which is based on numbers and their relation to one another. Without timing, animation isn’t believable. From a head tilt to a finger point, timing is everything.
With 20 years of experience making shapes move I’ve developed my own workflow, but however you go about it, seeing a character you’ve illustrated blink their eyes for the first time is exhilarating.