WEBVTT Kind: captions Language: en 00:00:00.599 --> 00:00:05.840 This tutorial will show you how to animate 2D characters that have texture in a bunch 00:00:05.840 --> 00:00:07.140 of different ways. 00:00:07.140 --> 00:00:08.140 We’ll 00:00:08.140 --> 00:00:09.310 Make a textured puppet character. 00:00:09.310 --> 00:00:12.470 Paint texture onto animation frames. 00:00:12.470 --> 00:00:16.460 Apply texture to a traditionally animated character with a special effects program 00:00:16.460 --> 00:00:21.460 I use Adobe software for this video but this chart shows common non-Adobe programs that 00:00:21.460 --> 00:00:23.480 can (for the most part) do what I do in this tutorial. 00:00:23.480 --> 00:00:24.840 I’m going to switch programs a lot, so this icon at the bottom of the screen shows if 00:00:24.840 --> 00:00:25.840 I am using Animate, Photoshop, or After Effects. 00:00:25.840 --> 00:00:27.720 Textured Puppets For a textured puppet, when you build your 00:00:27.720 --> 00:00:32.750 character be aware of where different pieces meet, because when the joints move the texture 00:00:32.750 --> 00:00:36.970 will move with them, and if your texture is poorly designed, this is the result. 00:00:36.970 --> 00:00:39.230 The textures grind against each other. 00:00:39.230 --> 00:00:43.129 You’ll notice this in Bojack Horseman, where his neck meets his chest. 00:00:43.129 --> 00:00:48.420 Normally his clothes cover the crease, so think of things like that to hide joints, 00:00:48.420 --> 00:00:52.609 or add a soft fade to the joint location of the top piece. 00:00:52.609 --> 00:00:55.449 Or hey, accept the fact your textured joints show. 00:00:55.449 --> 00:00:57.350 It’s still good enough for Netflix. 00:00:57.350 --> 00:01:02.929 You can create highly detailed puppet pieces directly in Photoshop by hand drawing them. 00:01:02.929 --> 00:01:06.469 You can use texture brushes, apply pattern overlays, go crazy. 00:01:06.469 --> 00:01:07.469 Your options with this method are limitless. 00:01:07.469 --> 00:01:11.850 Once finished, import puppet pieces to Animate or After Effects, build your rig, and animate 00:01:11.850 --> 00:01:12.850 it. 00:01:12.850 --> 00:01:13.850 Don’t want to paint? 00:01:13.850 --> 00:01:18.740 In Adobe Animate you can use raster-based textures as a fill or a brush. 00:01:18.740 --> 00:01:21.390 For a fill, click the paint bucket tool. 00:01:21.390 --> 00:01:24.960 In the color panel, use the dropdown to select bitmap fill. 00:01:24.960 --> 00:01:27.710 Here’s a texture I made in Photoshop. 00:01:27.710 --> 00:01:28.780 I’ll import that. 00:01:28.780 --> 00:01:31.950 Now click the area you want to fill with the paint bucket. 00:01:31.950 --> 00:01:33.600 The graphic automatically tiles. 00:01:33.600 --> 00:01:38.890 You can rotate, scale, and skew the pattern by choosing the gradient transform tool and 00:01:38.890 --> 00:01:43.469 then clicking on the fill area. 00:01:43.469 --> 00:01:48.159 Animate will not remember the transformations you make, so if you adjust one pattern you 00:01:48.159 --> 00:01:52.649 are going to have to manually change it everywhere unless you use the eyedropper tool and allow 00:01:52.649 --> 00:02:01.259 lock fill. 00:02:01.259 --> 00:02:04.950 Notice the fill pattern follows my character. 00:02:04.950 --> 00:02:09.360 If you want the fill pattern to stay on the same place on the stage, then when you click 00:02:09.360 --> 00:02:12.860 the paint bucket tool you need to select the lock fill modifier. 00:02:12.860 --> 00:02:19.010 Here’s the difference. 00:02:19.010 --> 00:02:23.060 Everything I said about the bucket also works for the brush tool. 00:02:23.060 --> 00:02:28.250 Painting Textures One very time consuming way to texturize your 00:02:28.250 --> 00:02:32.140 characters is to paint every single animation frame by hand. 00:02:32.140 --> 00:02:37.000 This is easy to do in a program like TVPaint, or if you happen to be animating directly 00:02:37.000 --> 00:02:40.370 in Photoshop, GIMP, or some other painting program. 00:02:40.370 --> 00:02:46.370 Otherwise you need to first export your animation frames to paint them. 00:02:46.370 --> 00:02:48.080 Here is WeimTime’s character. 00:02:48.080 --> 00:02:51.900 To export it as frames File >> Export >> Export Movie. 00:02:51.900 --> 00:02:59.120 Make a folder for all of the PNG images and save. 00:02:59.120 --> 00:03:03.780 In Photoshop, click File >> Open and click the first frame of your exported animation. 00:03:03.780 --> 00:03:06.380 Check the “image sequence” box. 00:03:06.380 --> 00:03:08.700 Photoshop creates a timeline. 00:03:08.700 --> 00:03:11.270 You need to click Window >> Timeline to see it. 00:03:11.270 --> 00:03:16.380 Quick note for pros: converting the timeline to frames does not work anymore, so this is 00:03:16.380 --> 00:03:18.250 how to paint in timeline view. 00:03:18.250 --> 00:03:22.300 Go to Layer >> Video Layers >> New Blank Video Layer 00:03:22.300 --> 00:03:27.510 Drag your layer outside of the current video group. 00:03:27.510 --> 00:03:31.340 Then in the timeline bring it to be above your character. 00:03:31.340 --> 00:03:34.480 Paint on this. 00:03:34.480 --> 00:03:39.870 If you need to paint multiple layers, make more blank video layers and repeat the process. 00:03:39.870 --> 00:03:43.220 You can group your painting layers to the character layer so they don’t bleed outside 00:03:43.220 --> 00:03:44.700 the character boundaries. 00:03:44.700 --> 00:03:52.870 You’ll notice when I go to the next frame, it’s a copy of the previous one, but the 00:03:52.870 --> 00:03:53.870 painting disappears. 00:03:53.870 --> 00:04:01.760 To solve that, go back to the previous frame, Layer >> Video Layers >> Duplicate Layer. 00:04:01.760 --> 00:04:03.400 You can use onion skinning. 00:04:03.400 --> 00:04:07.070 To turn it on, click the menu button on the corner of the Timeline window. 00:04:07.070 --> 00:04:13.140 Here is your onion skin, and here are your onion skin settings. 00:04:13.140 --> 00:04:17.240 If you want, you can apply FX overlays to the entire character animation layer. 00:04:17.240 --> 00:04:20.269 They won’t move with the character though. 00:04:20.269 --> 00:04:25.950 Wow, look at this hideous paint job. 00:04:25.950 --> 00:04:27.430 Let’s save it. 00:04:27.430 --> 00:04:32.910 Click the arrow in the Timeline window, or go to File >> Export >> Render Video. 00:04:32.910 --> 00:04:35.660 You can save as a video file. 00:04:35.660 --> 00:04:40.380 Only some kinds of formats will support the alpha channel, which means your transparent 00:04:40.380 --> 00:04:41.530 background. 00:04:41.530 --> 00:04:47.570 Note that video files with transparent backgrounds are very large and that they are not compatible 00:04:47.570 --> 00:04:50.100 with low-level video editing software. 00:04:50.100 --> 00:04:56.330 The other option is to make a PNG sequence! 00:04:56.330 --> 00:04:58.740 Change this to Photoshop. 00:04:58.740 --> 00:05:12.100 Transparency is important, so make sure your Alpha channel is something other than None. 00:05:12.100 --> 00:05:16.060 String your saved images together in your video editing program, and place the character 00:05:16.060 --> 00:05:21.560 animation layer on top of your background. 00:05:21.560 --> 00:05:27.410 If you’re using Windows Movie Maker or iMovie you’ll have to do something like this, where 00:05:27.410 --> 00:05:35.440 you put all the images in your timeline and then set the duration to a fraction of a second. 00:05:35.440 --> 00:05:43.370 Special Effects Textures A quick texture technique you can do is place 00:05:43.370 --> 00:05:45.870 a static texture over your character. 00:05:45.870 --> 00:05:49.290 The problem with this is it looks like the character is moving through the texture, since 00:05:49.290 --> 00:05:52.800 the texture layer doesn’t go anywhere. 00:05:52.800 --> 00:05:57.330 In After Effects, duplicate your character animation layer. 00:05:57.330 --> 00:06:00.990 Drag your texture onto the timeline, underneath the duplicate. 00:06:00.990 --> 00:06:02.250 Set the track matte to alpha. 00:06:02.250 --> 00:06:08.940 If you can’t see track matte, click these sneaky icons on the bottom left. 00:06:08.940 --> 00:06:25.910 Now if you want, you can try tweening the static texture layer to follow the character. 00:06:25.910 --> 00:06:36.220 Animators get around the problem of the previous texture method by creating an animated texture. 00:06:36.220 --> 00:06:42.030 I’ll do a quick one by making a texture with the same brush a couple of different 00:06:42.030 --> 00:06:45.870 times and making a movie file out of the images. 00:06:45.870 --> 00:06:47.000 Meh. 00:06:47.000 --> 00:06:49.260 It’ll do. 00:06:49.260 --> 00:06:51.919 Import the animated texture into After Effects. 00:06:51.919 --> 00:06:59.490 Right click the animated texture, Interpret Footage >> Main >> set loop to 100. 00:06:59.490 --> 00:07:03.870 Drag the texture onto the timeline underneath a duplicated copy of your character animation 00:07:03.870 --> 00:07:08.810 layer and set the texture track matte to alpha (again, if you can’t see track matte, turn 00:07:08.810 --> 00:07:10.199 it on here). 00:07:10.199 --> 00:07:13.680 Fiddle with the settings. 00:07:13.680 --> 00:07:15.090 This is the important part. 00:07:15.090 --> 00:07:22.730 An animated texture on a still character is ugly. 00:07:22.730 --> 00:07:31.360 Right click the texture layer and Time >> Enable Time Remapping. 00:07:31.360 --> 00:07:36.320 Add a keyframe at the location where your character is frozen in place and a keyframe 00:07:36.320 --> 00:07:38.090 where it starts moving. 00:07:38.090 --> 00:07:44.180 Click the frozen in place keyframe and hit CTRL + C, then click on the starts moving 00:07:44.180 --> 00:07:48.010 keyframe and hit CTRL + V. 00:07:48.010 --> 00:07:52.830 Now the texture is only animated where it should be. 00:07:52.830 --> 00:07:55.130 Repeat this process at each stop and start point. 00:07:55.130 --> 00:07:56.130 Happy? 00:07:56.130 --> 00:07:57.130 Good. 00:07:57.130 --> 00:08:00.930 Play around with the settings. 00:08:00.930 --> 00:08:04.320 Phew. 00:08:04.320 --> 00:08:08.699 That’s enough texture. 00:08:08.699 --> 00:08:10.840 I’m done with texture. 00:08:10.840 --> 00:08:16.120 Keep experimenting and you’ll find many ways to put texture on 2D animations! 00:08:16.120 --> 00:08:24.050 For more tutorials, look for yellow Scribble Kibble episodes in the YouTube playlist, or 00:08:24.050 --> 00:08:25.050 check the website. 00:08:25.050 --> 00:08:28.390 Come back next Friday for a new episode. 00:08:28.390 --> 00:08:28.770 Whee!