Original subtitles

Hello and welcome to this foundational lesson

The lesson today

We are going to be talking about

Solid design and drawings

So this kind of thing takes place

Right before you're about to start animating

We want to make sure that you are leading with your best foot forward

I am not means that we want to make sure that the effects design

And the drawings that you're about to do are as solid and as visually appealing as you

And make them

So

When we're working from equality design what I mean by that is that I want you to put in a lot of time

Into

Thinking about

The purpose of the effect

And then

The design elements that you want to include in it

This can be a lot of different things

If you are trying to focus in

The animation specifically you want to make sure that you keep your design super simple

If you are trying to go

All out

On the animation and make something as cool as possible

You want to lay out all the

Little Edition additions and pluses to the effect at the stage

Because once we get into the animation

We want to make sure that we have

A battle plan

And that we're going to stick with

So even something as simple as a candle flame on top of the

Candle

We want to make sure that

We are thinking about

All the things were going to include with

Now what I mean is

For something as simple as a candle flame does it have a line

Or is it

Just fill

And how far we taking it are we doing

Inner flame and if we are what is that look like

Where is the place and how is it going to enhance

The entirety

Design

No obviously when we're dealing with something smaller like this there's not going to

Be a ton of things to figure out and question which is good

Because we don't want

Go to Crazy assuming that you are a beginner

Dealing with smaller simpler Concepts at first is a good way to

Kick things off and then once you get comfortable with things

Then

That snowball as it's rolling then you start adding in more and more

Biting off too big of

A commitment

2D animation too soon

Dan have you can can leave you feeling frustrated or maybe that you made a mistake so

We really want to make sure that were were building up slowly

And this is going to happen

Several several several times

Because let's say let's see you animate a dozen candle flames

Right on you got that knocked out

You're like

Candle flame Pro now

And then suddenly you get us do a campfire

Or a water splash

Well your candle flame expert have you done a water splash before what is water look like

How many elements are you going to include on it

So

When it comes to a water splash your centrally starting

Square one again

Where you have to start small

You have to set out a solid battle plan for the animation and the design

And then once again you work your way up

You're going to have to do this dozens of times because Sarah's

And it's actually one of the really great things about effects

But I mean there's there's dozens and dozens of different types of effects up there

You got up

Buckle up and get ready to learn when

It comes to

I'm designing effects and then

Sequentially

Animated

Plan ahead of animation

There's several ways to do this but I can't stress this one enough

Plan plan plan

The more information and knowledge to give yourself

Beforehand

The better the final product is going to be

Now

That's not to say that

Just animating

And just being creative

Doesn't have its place

That kind of practice can be good for for things like creativity block

You just need to get something on the page

However

If you're dealing with

Production or a scene in a short for something like that where

The effect has to be very specific and do specific

Bangs

You want to make sure that you plan ahead as much

Possible

Art of planning ahead

Yes

Creating a design

That's going to work with

The environment

That's going to be

Realistically animated Bowl

I'm more experienced

Effects artist is going to be able to

Anime more

Complex designs quicker

So we want to make sure that we're sticking within your realm of capability

When we are learning these things

Because the last thing we want is for you to get Scrooge

Define things too difficult and

To give up

Because

Animation is

We probably

Oh no

Is very time-intensive

However

Once putting in that time and accomplishing it it's also very satisfying

To see the final product

Planning ahead outside of design in terms of Animation in mean doing

Some drawings

Of the effect

In several different states

As you can see on screen here we have kind of a very simple droplet splash

It enters the water

Fix up some water and then it all falls back to the surface

There's going to be a point in time in which you've done so many drawings

Did you don't really have too much more of an option other than to just start animating

And that's the style of Animation that we'll talk about in a different lesson

But making sure that each one of these frames whether or not you're doing

2 frames through friends or frames

Or whatever

62

Style and the effects design

That you have set out that's the important

That's what we're looking for here

My last

Bit of advice when

Talkin about solid design

And

Approaching animation

Approaching

Effects animation

Is to lock yourself

What I mean by this is if you created a design

And your your newer to animating you'll start animating that design

And

Just through the natural process of drawing

You might stumble

Across a couple design elements that you think are

Cool or that look really good

And if your 12 drawings into a 60 drawing animation

And you decide to change up on the Fly you have to keep in mind.

You will you have now

Dedicated yourself to animating. Little ass back in the animation throughout the entirety

All the frames that are left

Now if you do this sparingly

A couple times here or there

You can roll with it especially if you're experienced

And you might you might end up with a better product at the end of it

However

If you let this get out of hand

You're going to end up with kind of a big

That's on your

York

I use this as an example if this was our design we started off

With something like this

We have

Very angular kind of smoke

Were you saying

Pretty tight tapers

In some of the shadowing

We're going with line

We're going with line Bill and Shadow

However through the course of our animation

By the final frame

We end up with

Something like this where are

Blocky Square shapes that we were using for smoke have now turned into round one

We've started adding in elements of like little

Kurt curly cues

In the

Places where the smoke connects whereas

We don't do that anywhere over with our initial design

And we go from

Light shading

Where the light source is coming as it is falling on the smoke from this angle

And we're going with shapes.

AR

Under curves rather than over curves but by the end of it all of our shed shapes

I've turned into over curves

Neither one of these in terms of shading specifically

Neither one of these approaches are bad

However

Starting with

Starting with this

And ending with this

In terms of Animation it won't look good

So there might be especially when you're learning

There might be several times

In which

You have to stop yourself

Because you started with shade shapes like this and slowly over the course of the frame

They for some reason got a little bit flattered

And then

Very slowly

A transform

From this

Bring one or whatever and then this is frame 33 or something like that

You've made

You made a mistake

You've strayed from the original design

And you're going to end up with shadows that are more thing and looking weird

So when I say lock yourself in mostly what I mean is

Be honest with yourself

Catch yourself

And on every single frame

You can question are you being faithful to your original design

And are you sticking with it

Once you're able to implement.

That will get you nice solid animation where the design is consistent from frame-to-frame

From start to finish and it isn't it doesn't end up doing

Weird stuff that wasn't initially intended

When you first designed it

Allowed as a final note that I often find that people are most creative when they do lock themselves in

Because creativity comes from limitations

In my opinion in most scenarios

So when you put yourself in a box

And you lock yourself in with the limitations of the design

That's often where

I find people will pull out

Their most creative nature

Because they're not letting

The concepts and things get away from themselves they're working within limitations but they're expanding

Those limitations

To a point where they're creating something

Beautiful and gorgeous

Screen

So I hope this is convinced you a couple of good

Methods of practice for

The designing of your effects and the approach to that

Before

You start animating