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Hello, everyone.

Havtza here.

Last lesson we've seen multiple ways

to creating storyboard and basically starting our project.

And planning it and deciding on which shots

and which timing we're going to use.

And in the last section, we've learned all the techniques

that help us to achieve the animations that we're trying to do,

at both the technical parts and the more cinematic parts

with the perspective and camera.

And in this lesson,

we're going to learn how to combine these two

and basically transform

our storyboard into rough animation.

When it comes to animation,

there are two main approaches on how to animate as we've

discussed in multiple lessons.

These are the straight ahead and pose to pose approaches.

The straight ahead lets you be free and get interesting results

in your animation.

While pose to pose lets you be efficient and keep consistency.

Most commercial animation studios or really any projects

made by multiple people which uses storyboards

will work with the pose to pose approach,

since by default having the main poses

and timing already decided by the storyboard

limits the freedom you can have with your movement.

That being said, some elements in a character design,

such as hair and clothing work better with the straight ahead approach,

and many nuances of the movement as well as its pacing

within the storyboard confinements

are up to the animator making the rough animation stage.

There are multiple tricks and approaches that you can employ

to make your animation smoother while being efficient,

and we're going to let them in this lesson.

Being an independent animator which is in charge of the entire artistic look

and direction of the project

gives you a high degree of freedom in your project,

as you are the person that determines the overall timing and poses

within the storyboard and you will probably be able

to make changes to the storyboard and not stick to it as tightly

as in a more commercial setting,

in which teamwork and clarity are important for the process to work smoothly

because you depend on the works of other people.

This gives you as an independent animator the opportunity

to make large chunks of your animation

with the straight ahead method,

which gives it additional smoothness and makes the animation more interesting.

And actually I on my own personal project,

usually go with an almost straight ahead approach

where I add most of my rough animation as animation in low frame rate

and then just add additional in-betweens as necessary.

But in general, the amount of keyframes

as you can call it is pretty high

because it's almost a straight ahead approach.

But of course, when they have actual clients where they have a storyboard

and limitations with the entire length of the video

and the timing of each individual movement,

then I go with the more traditional pose to pose approach.

But even so, there are somethings that you can do

within the animation itself to make it more appealing

and make the entire process easier.

So if you're here for independent animation and being a single creator,

I generally just create the thumbnails

of my storyboard in the actual format that we've seen last lesson,

and then I animate my ideas straight ahead and basically just change around

the timing of each individual shots

to make it fit with the movement

instead of going the other way around

and fitting the movements to the length of the animation.

This approach will give you the most natural looking movement,

but you also need to be able to estimate your abilities

and the amount of effort

that you want to dedicate to your project.

And create something that balances your vision

with the amount of work that it requires.

Otherwise, you might not be able to actually finish your project

and get frustrated and just abandon it.

Now this, same as when making projects for a client,

might limit the actual time and amount of frames

that you can dedicate for each individual shot.

So you would need to limit yourself to the confinement

of the timing in the actual storyboard.

So in this cases, you will actually need to plan your movement in advance

to fit the length of the shot and not the other way around.

Ideally, you want that within the time of your shot,

the movement in the animation will be clear to the viewer

and that you will be able to complete it.

So you might need to change it,

tweak it, or simplify it to make sure that you

get both of these conditions,

while planning your animation in each shot.

And if you're working with an animatic or with a studio,

the length of some shots might not even be decided by timing,

but by the amount of frames, so you really have to plan

each individual frame.

So the first step to actually planning your animation in advance

and transforming your storyboard to animation

is importing your storyboard

into your animation software.

So as we've done in the last lesson,

we basically created either

a still storyboard or an animatic in Procreate.

There is no real way

to transform the still storyboard,

so we first have to make

the still storyboard into animatic,

and then we're going to import it

into FlipaClip as a video file.

To do this, we simply save the Procreate file as an MP4

and then again save the MP4

to our actual files application.

We do this because importing it as a file

instead of as a video

from our photo album will make it,

so it's in better quality.

Then we go to Filpaclip

and open the toolbar at the top right corner

and then choose the import video option

and add the file option within that

and just import our video.

FlipaClip translates the video to the frame rate of your project.

So in instances where each frame is planned or in cases

where you're working with professional clients,

make sure to match your frame rate to the frame rate of your actual

final production to get the exact timing of your storyboard.

Again, the industry standard is currently 24 frames per second,

but in cases where you know the timing,

it doesn't have to be frame perfect,

or when you're making your own personal project

which doesn't have to be on 24 frames per second,

you can just import this to Procreate

in any frame rate which is convenient for you.

I personally import in eight frames per second,

when making my own personal projects

because my main frame rate is eight

and then I later duplicate certain frames

to adjust the timing to the 24 frames per second standard frame rate.

Once you've imported your storyboard into FlipaClip

and you know your exact timing

for each individual shot and each keyframe.

Now you can start planning your actual rough animation.

Again, there two approaches to actually creating your animation,

even if your overall timing is dictated

by the keyframes in the storyboard.

And we're going to choose them

depending on the actual trajectory of the movement itself.

If you have a very clear trajectory

where you can basically

just plan your entire movement in one go,

Even if your movement is complicated,

then it is better to use keyframes

because you will make sure

that your spacing is consistent, your character is consistent,

and that each ease in and ease out, works well together.

But if you have a shot which has a lot of camera movement,

the character basically

stays in place for the entire scene and just each individual part

is seen from multiple angles,

or if your character movement is going back and forth and repeating

and it's getting really complicated to understand

which direction is which,

it might be better to actually go

with the straight ahead method.

And again, certain object and character

design details are better

to do in straight ahead as well

because they do depend

on the main action of your animation.

So starting with the pose to pose method,

first, you just go into your storyboard

and plan your trajectory.

Put a marker on each keyframe in your storyboard

and have your trajectory completely

mapped out between each frame on each scene

so you can see it and have a clear view for

where you're going to put

your ease in and ease out.

This will also help you understand the overall number of frames

that you have for each individual shot.

So, you know if you have enough frames

to complete each part of your movement.

The next step is to actually draw your keyframes.

The entire pose to pose method

works by how important they are to the overall movement.

And then just filling in the blanks between each individual keyframe

or breakdown pose.

Basically, you have three or four main passes

in your entire animation process,

which are the keyframes which dictates the overall movement

and the correct timing,

and they are the most important poses.

Then you have the breakdowns

which are just in the middle of the action

or closer to the edges.

Where you have your indication of

ease in and ease out

as well as any major direction changes in your movement,

which are not affecting the timing,

and then you have your in-betweens

which are just additional frames

which help you smooth

the ease in and ease out

between each part of your trajectory

as well as raise up your frame rate,

if you want to increase it later on.

Just remember that if you

are increasing your frame rate,

you still need to make sure

that your timing is being kept.

So you need to add

your additional in-betweens

with the concept of

ease in and ease out in mind.

So basically, if we're going with the pose to pose method,

we have full clear passes with each one

serving a slightly different purpose.

First, we have the storyboard poses,

which are the base poses

and can also be classified as key frames.

These are the crucial poses

needed to understand the perspective, positioning

and timing of your character in the shot.

Next, we have the actual key frames.

These include the storyboard frames

but add the additional frames,

which help better define the pacing

between each of the storyboard poses.

These frames are the most essential poses

that help you understand the complete movement

with the correct timing and nuance

with the smallest amount of frames.

After that, we have the breakdown poses.

These are poses that are important

to determining the pacing

of the overall animation

and help you plan the location

between each key frame.

You will often find them in the middle of the movement

and close to the key frames, as they are important to indicate

the slow in and slow out in your trajectory.

The final stage is the in-betweens,

which are the lowest priority connecting frames.

So if you are using a low frame rate,

you can just omit them,

and they are there to support the movement

and make it smoother

as well as helps you raise the frame rate if needed.

The higher your frame rate,

the more in-betweens you will have,

they will usually increase in a much higher rate than your

key frames and breakdowns frames

because your frame rate is not going to change your actual timing.

So there is no reason to add additional key frames or breakdown frames

which are just for the timing and nuance.

The spacing between your frames

also needs to follow a clear and complete arc.

You have to make sure that your frames

are not accidentally being bunched

together in a way that obstructs your movement.

As you can see,

here I first had the timing

dictated by the storyboard frames

and then planned the actual movement of the character

between each major change in the storyboard.

And since my animation is at a pretty low frame rate

and the movements themselves are pretty low energy

and quite straightforward between each pose,

I did not need to consider

that the breakdown and the in-between

the same way I would in higher

frame rate production.

That being said, this technique is also applicable as a base

when later increasing the frame rate.

Basically what I talked about before,

where I basically create a lot of keyframes

in low frame rate animation

in the straight ahead method.

You can almost say that

by choosing to use a low frame rate, you'll actively choosing

to only use your keyframes and breakdown frames

and to increase the frame rate,

you will just need to add additional in-between

in the appropriate number

that will allow you to achieve a smooth movement,

with increased frame rate while still keeping the timing.

As you can see

in my initial trajectory plan,

I do not include

the overlapping movements and details

in the breakdowns and key framing.

I will only be adding them later on

on the multiple separate layers,

while using the straight ahead method

in order to preserve the natural

look of the drag effect,

which can be easier to understand

once you have your full movement of your character

with the correct momentum.

And once you have all of your frames

and the animation is basically all done,

then can change your actual frame rate

by increasing your frames per second to 24

and then duplicating each individual frame the appropriate amount

depending on the nuance and timing that you want.

So if you have (slow movement), you will duplicate it

three times to have 8 frame per second

And if you have fast movement,

you might want to duplicate it once to make it 12 frame per second,

or you might want to leave it at once

for 24 frame per second.

It all depends on the effect that you want

to have with your timing.

This technique can really

help you with your independent animation

because it allows you to save energy

by lowering the amount of actual frames

that you have to draw

and making the overall workload lower.

This might not be possible to do

if you're working with clients

because they might need consistent

frame rate or they will specifically choose

frame rate for individual shots or parts of your movement.

If your character movement

does not have a very clear trajectory

then it's better to use the straight ahead method.

By this, I don't mean completely going off the rails

and basically changing your entire scene,

both short lengths and character movement

because you've used

the straight ahead method.

What I mean by using

the straight ahead method

is that between each individual

keyframe on the storyboard,

you're going to fill them

in using the straight ahead method.

The first step to do this is basically analyze the environment your character is in

because your character perspective

will depend on that environment.

This is especially important

if you have moving camera or 3D spaces.

The next stage is to actually mark your keyframes.

You want to be sure that your movement

is following your actual storyboard

and that you're not going

to just randomly go off the rails

and just completely ditch the original movement and idea,

especially because you already have the perspective setting.

Once you do have your

keyframes and the overall perspective

of each individual frame,

then you just go back and forth

and fill in the blank frames between each individual keyframe.

To do this, I usually reference

both the background and the perspective

as well as the Onion Skin.

Now the Onion Skin feature has the possibility

to show less or more frames

by changing the settings.

So to be efficient

when I have a large gap

in the number of frame between each individual keyframe,

what I do is that I just go to the middle

between the keyframes

and then increase the Onion Skin feature

the appropriate amount of frames

so I can see

which poses I need to connect

and connect it naturally

like I would in a regular straight ahead.

Now, the reason I call this

straight ahead instead of pose to pose

even though we are filling in blanks

between individual keyframes

is because we don't actually know

which pose is going to be correct.

We have uneven spacing

in the amount of frames in each gap,

and we're basically just making guess work

to the placement of your character

within the trajectory.

I have a loose guideline

where if I know that the spacing is uneven

and that I increased the Onion Skin

more in one side,

I will try and shift

and draw the character's position

closer to that side of the trajectory,

especially if I know

that I'm going to use ease in and ease out.

But if it doesn't work out

well, I will just delete and redraw it or

I’ll adjusted to fit the overall trajectory of the movement.

And basically I will just go back and forth between each frame

and fill it in as necessary.

Really, this method is just

basically a combination

between straight ahead and pose to pose and works

best where you have a lot of keyframes

like I do when they actually create my animatics.

This is important

because we still want to keep our timing

like it was in the storyboard

and the consistency of our character model.

In general, I wouldn't recommend going

completely straight ahead and adjust

and never adjusting your trajectory or your timing

because it can get very frustrating

and also really hard

to adjust your trajectories

with slow in and slow out

if you don't know

your overall timing

and range of movement.

Now that we've reached the rough animation stage in the production,

we've actually arrived at the first big barrier

and the motivator

when it comes to independent animation production.

Up until now, we've put a lot of effort into many different things

in the animation production.

Even though each one of them

was very time consuming,

it was still pretty thoughtful work

and you had a lot of variation

in the process itself.

Even if a certain character design

or background took a long time to complete

at least you were working on different parts of it

with different techniques and different brushes and different colors.

Even if your animation

took you a long time to figure it out,

you are still thinking constantly

and trying new things and variations

within the process itself.

But now that we've reached the rough animation stage,

this is where the work starts to become automatic.

You've already figured out the base of your movement

using the pose to pose or straight ahead methods.

You've already had your understanding of your animation

and your camera movement.

You already know how your scene is going to be designed

and you figured out the perspective

and you have your character designs

and your background already made.

You don't need to think about anything anymore.

You just need to mechanically

add the frames in between.

This is the in-betweener's job

and this is the most technical aspect in actual animation.

This is where you just look at the joints of your character,

the positioning in your timing,

and just add them completely mechanically

and completely automatically

because there's basically only one correct answer

between two individual poses,

if they are close to each other

and if you're having a slightly bigger movement

which lets you have more wiggle room,

it's still not enough to create completely new poses

or think of completely new ideas

because you still need to work

within the limitations of your keyframes.

The reason I find this part to be the biggest barrier

when it comes to animation

is because even though this step is extremely simple,

it's very very time consuming.

You can see here with this example

that even though

this part of the video is edited

and run in high speed,

this section is still way longer

than any other sections

that we had before.

And the type of work that I'm making

is very very repetitive,

especially in frames that look very similar to each other.

I want to give you some advice

on how to keep yourself motivated

because the rough animation stage

is only one of three barriers

that you're going to have

as an independent animator.

The reason this one is special

is because you have to have it

in order to have animation at all.

With the clean up and coloring,

you're just not going to have a complete product.

But without the rough animation stage,

you're not going to have an animation at all,

unless you're working as part of a studio

where you have dedicated in-betweeners,

you're going to have to complete this stage

in order to create any type of smooth movement.

And of course, if you are an independent animator,

the other two stage of cleanup

and coloring are even more mechanical

and even more time consuming.

But I find that once you get over

the initial barrier

of the rough animation stage,

it's much easier to get into the mind frame that allows you

to create the other time consuming stages of independent production.

So here are my tips on how I keep myself motivated

while creating this very long and time

consuming steps.

Of course, these are only my methods

and they might not work for you.

So you really need to sit with yourself

and see which things

can give you motivation

to complete your project.

Once you start making this exercise by yourself

that this last section in the course

is basically just a whole bunch of manual labor.

So it's important that you figure out your motivation now,

or you might not be able to actually complete it.

So the first thing that keeps up

my motivation when I'm working

is that I give myself a very clear goal

when it comes to my personal works

and my professional works.

On my personal project

I decide straight from the beginning

the length of the video

that I'm going to work on,

and I calculate the number of frames

that I have to draw,

and I give myself a

limit of the amount of frames

that I'm going to dedicate to each project.

For me, the limit is around 120 frames for personal projects per week,

because I know that I'm going to work on

professional projects as well.

With these types of limitation,

I know how to divide my work

per the amount of time

that I'm willing to give my project.

I know, for example, that I need to make around ten frames per hour

and so I give myself a quota

which I need to complete,

and it's very easy to keep track of.

Of course, you will need to adjust your frames

quotas according to your own ability.

So think about one of the first lessons

where I talked about

adjusting the workload

to your physical and mental condition

in order to not burn yourself out.

Even within the quota,

you can give yourself smaller goals,

which helps you divide the work even further

and help you keep track on it.

So it doesn't feel quite as endless and repetitive.

For example,

if you are dividing

your character details

into separate layers,

you can decide on

only completing one detail

within your dedicated number of frames.

So, for example, in this case

you could decide to only animate the hair

or the clothing or the eyes

for a single day quota.

Using this method is actually very useful

to get your quality up as well,

because you can give yourself time to focus

on the smaller details of your animation.

You can make sure that you have the right

effect and animation exactly like you want them,

which also keeps your mind

a little bit more engaged

and makes the entire process

a little bit less stifling.

Another thing that you can focus on

is trying and keep your line quality consistent.

Right now we are still not making our final lines,

so you don't have to make sure

that the line itself is at final quality.

But you do want to make your sketches as

readable as possible,

even if the line itself is not completely stable

and doesn't connect at exactly the right spot.

You still want to find

the one perfect line

which completely captures the volume

and model of your character design.

And of course, the final thing you can focus on

when it comes to making your rough animation

at a higher quality

is actually paying attention to the variations

between the location of the poses

in your ease in and ease out

sections of your rough animation.

Like we've seen with the timing example,

way back at the first animation lesson,

you can create a completely new nuance in your motion

by small changes to the position of your object

within the trajectory.

In your rough animation stage is where

you're going to have your final timing

and nuance in the motion.

So focusing on getting it exactly right

is a good way to make the entire process

more thoughtful and enjoyable.

If any of these fail and don't entice you enough to complete

the entire process,

you can also use outside methods

to keep up your motivation

because this type of work is so repetitive,

you can take this time to complete

any other tasks or interest that you have

that only require audio.

A lot of the time when I'm animating,

I'm not listening to music

because my music selection is not big enough

to the amount of animation that they're making.

Instead, having something like podcasts or audiobook is very helpful

to keep up your concentration

and keeping the world interesting

because you can really focus

on what you're hearing

since the process is very automatic.

Using this time

for other listening activities

such as lectures, phone calls

or language lessons

is also very nice in my experience.

When making this

part of the animation process,

you can actually communicate

and meet up with other people,

and I find this to be a pretty pleasant

part of the work

when combining

all of the outside things that you

can make doing it.

There aren't many other

jobs where you get to do

manual activities

which allow you to continue listening

and seeing other media while working.

Honestly, the main limitation

with making this part of the process

is that you have to continuously

use your hands.

Other than that, you can basically do

whatever you want.

But even after hearing all of this,

you might be struggling with this stage,

if you're just a beginner,

or even if you are an experienced animator

who just dislikes doing it.

I want you to know

that these manual stages of the animation

are still the parts that they really don't like

about my animation process.

No matter how you try to sugarcoat it,

this is a very time consuming and repetitive process.

So if you are still struggling

with this part of the process,

know that it's completely

okay and natural.

Same as with every other thing that we've covered up until now,

it takes work, time and practice

to build up your patience

for you to be able

to sit for long stretches of time,

just doing this part of the process.

But same as with any other thing

that we've done up until now,

the fact that you have to work so much

to complete this part of the animation.

makes it that you're going to improve in it

so much quicker than any other part.

The more animation you're making,

the quicker you're going to get at making them.

You can probably already guess by my output

that they managed to shrink down

this process quite considerably,

and it reaches up to a point

where I make a completely new frame

in less than a minute.

So the overall process doesn't

really take that much time at all.

It's just a process to getting there,

that takes a lot of time,

patience and determination.

So really the best advice

I can give you about keeping up your motivation

is the same is my advice on starting your project.

You need to think about

the actual skills you're acquiring

and the practice itself

and not the product

that you're trying to create.

And you need to keep in mind your capabilities

and physical condition

in order to not burn yourself out.

Once you've completed all the rough stages,

including finalizing

your overall movement

and adding the overlapping elements

with the correct pacing,

using both in between

and frame multiplication

to create nuance with your timing,

you need to make sure

that your characters

are actually easy to understand,

with the correct volumes, proportions

and details in the character design.

Especially if you have multiple layers in different colors

that are hard to understand

and differentiate.

And overall create a pretty messy drawing

that will make it

so that the your cleanup artist

would not know

where to place the clean line.

In order to complete your rough animation stage,

you need to add an additional layer

which goes over the different layers

and combines them in a way

that allows you to have clear vision

of your character.

In this stage your lines do not have to be pretty

and can still retain some imperfections

for the cleanup artist to fix later,

of course, the less imperfections,

the easier jobs they will have,

and if you are an independent animator,

you would want to make this stage easier

for yourself as well.

What's really important

is to make sure

that you keep your character

model consistent and make it

so that it's kept

with the correct proportions, size and volume at all time.

The cleanup artist's job is to make the lines clean.

They need to have a good base

to work effectively.

They don't actually have the time

to clean your volumes

and correct your details.

If you are an independent animator,

you might put less effort in this stage

because you already know

how to fix this volume imperfection

in the cleanup stage.

Because as both the animator

and the character designer,

you already know where you have

incorrect details.

In my personal project, I sometimes leave the animation

line art in this rough stage

because it is clear enough for my viewers to see,

while taking much less time and effort

to create the final product.

I also quite like the aesthetic

and the extra energy

that these squiggly lines

bring to the animation.

But even if the lines are squiggly,

you need to make sure

that you only use one line

and that you're not making

too much of a mess of your sketch.

Because if you're adding too many lines

and affecting the thickness of your sketch,

it's still going to be very difficult for your clean up artist

to place the line in the correct way.

If you are an independent animator,

you can kind of get away with simplifying

some details in your character

because you know that

you're going to add them later

on in the cleanup stage.

This is what I usually do

when I add hair or certain eye details

because I know they are

going to be edited in the cleanup

or in the actual coloring stage.

Still it's worth keeping them, at least in a rough version

if you know that you're going

add them later on

just so you can make sure

that you keep your model consistent

and that you don't have any flickering on these details.

The exercise for this lesson is pretty straightforward.

Basically, just create rough animations

from the storyboards

that we've made the last lesson

try and create the rough animation

using the two different approaches

so you can test both of them.

Again, make sure that your line quality is correct

and that you're keeping the proportions

and volumes of your characters

as well as the correct perspective

with the environment.

To recap

today, we've learned how to import your storyboard to FlipaClip

and how to animate within its timing

limitation in two different methods.

We especially expanded

upon the pose to pose animation method and seen several tricks

that can be done with the layers

and duplication features of FlipaClip

to make the animation process more efficient.

Next lesson we learn how to effectively

polish your animation

and make preparations for your coloring

and compositing stage.

Thank you for watching and see you next time.

Bye.