This tutorial will show you how to animate 2D characters that have texture in a bunch
of different ways.
We’ll
Make a textured puppet character.
Paint texture onto animation frames.
Apply texture to a traditionally animated character with a special effects program
I use Adobe software for this video but this chart shows common non-Adobe programs that
can (for the most part) do what I do in this tutorial.
I’m going to switch programs a lot, so this icon at the bottom of the screen shows if
I am using Animate, Photoshop, or After Effects.
Textured Puppets For a textured puppet, when you build your
character be aware of where different pieces meet, because when the joints move the texture
will move with them, and if your texture is poorly designed, this is the result.
The textures grind against each other.
You’ll notice this in Bojack Horseman, where his neck meets his chest.
Normally his clothes cover the crease, so think of things like that to hide joints,
or add a soft fade to the joint location of the top piece.
Or hey, accept the fact your textured joints show.
It’s still good enough for Netflix.
You can create highly detailed puppet pieces directly in Photoshop by hand drawing them.
You can use texture brushes, apply pattern overlays, go crazy.
Your options with this method are limitless.
Once finished, import puppet pieces to Animate or After Effects, build your rig, and animate
it.
Don’t want to paint?
In Adobe Animate you can use raster-based textures as a fill or a brush.
For a fill, click the paint bucket tool.
In the color panel, use the dropdown to select bitmap fill.
Here’s a texture I made in Photoshop.
I’ll import that.
Now click the area you want to fill with the paint bucket.
The graphic automatically tiles.
You can rotate, scale, and skew the pattern by choosing the gradient transform tool and
then clicking on the fill area.
Animate will not remember the transformations you make, so if you adjust one pattern you
are going to have to manually change it everywhere unless you use the eyedropper tool and allow
lock fill.
Notice the fill pattern follows my character.
If you want the fill pattern to stay on the same place on the stage, then when you click
the paint bucket tool you need to select the lock fill modifier.
Here’s the difference.
Everything I said about the bucket also works for the brush tool.
Painting Textures One very time consuming way to texturize your
characters is to paint every single animation frame by hand.
This is easy to do in a program like TVPaint, or if you happen to be animating directly
in Photoshop, GIMP, or some other painting program.
Otherwise you need to first export your animation frames to paint them.
Here is WeimTime’s character.
To export it as frames File >> Export >> Export Movie.
Make a folder for all of the PNG images and save.
In Photoshop, click File >> Open and click the first frame of your exported animation.
Check the “image sequence” box.
Photoshop creates a timeline.
You need to click Window >> Timeline to see it.
Quick note for pros: converting the timeline to frames does not work anymore, so this is
how to paint in timeline view.
Go to Layer >> Video Layers >> New Blank Video Layer
Drag your layer outside of the current video group.
Then in the timeline bring it to be above your character.
Paint on this.
If you need to paint multiple layers, make more blank video layers and repeat the process.
You can group your painting layers to the character layer so they don’t bleed outside
the character boundaries.
You’ll notice when I go to the next frame, it’s a copy of the previous one, but the
painting disappears.
To solve that, go back to the previous frame, Layer >> Video Layers >> Duplicate Layer.
You can use onion skinning.
To turn it on, click the menu button on the corner of the Timeline window.
Here is your onion skin, and here are your onion skin settings.
If you want, you can apply FX overlays to the entire character animation layer.
They won’t move with the character though.
Wow, look at this hideous paint job.
Let’s save it.
Click the arrow in the Timeline window, or go to File >> Export >> Render Video.
You can save as a video file.
Only some kinds of formats will support the alpha channel, which means your transparent
background.
Note that video files with transparent backgrounds are very large and that they are not compatible
with low-level video editing software.
The other option is to make a PNG sequence!
Change this to Photoshop.
Transparency is important, so make sure your Alpha channel is something other than None.
String your saved images together in your video editing program, and place the character
animation layer on top of your background.
If you’re using Windows Movie Maker or iMovie you’ll have to do something like this, where
you put all the images in your timeline and then set the duration to a fraction of a second.
Special Effects Textures A quick texture technique you can do is place
a static texture over your character.
The problem with this is it looks like the character is moving through the texture, since
the texture layer doesn’t go anywhere.
In After Effects, duplicate your character animation layer.
Drag your texture onto the timeline, underneath the duplicate.
Set the track matte to alpha.
If you can’t see track matte, click these sneaky icons on the bottom left.
Now if you want, you can try tweening the static texture layer to follow the character.
Animators get around the problem of the previous texture method by creating an animated texture.
I’ll do a quick one by making a texture with the same brush a couple of different
times and making a movie file out of the images.
Meh.
It’ll do.
Import the animated texture into After Effects.
Right click the animated texture, Interpret Footage >> Main >> set loop to 100.
Drag the texture onto the timeline underneath a duplicated copy of your character animation
layer and set the texture track matte to alpha (again, if you can’t see track matte, turn
it on here).
Fiddle with the settings.
This is the important part.
An animated texture on a still character is ugly.
Right click the texture layer and Time >> Enable Time Remapping.
Add a keyframe at the location where your character is frozen in place and a keyframe
where it starts moving.
Click the frozen in place keyframe and hit CTRL + C, then click on the starts moving
keyframe and hit CTRL + V.
Now the texture is only animated where it should be.
Repeat this process at each stop and start point.
Happy?
Good.
Play around with the settings.
Phew.
That’s enough texture.
I’m done with texture.
Keep experimenting and you’ll find many ways to put texture on 2D animations!
For more tutorials, look for yellow Scribble Kibble episodes in the YouTube playlist, or
check the website.
Come back next Friday for a new episode.
Whee!