What’s stopping you from turning your own drawings into an animation? Do you find animation too time-consuming and too complex? Or do you have far too much to teach yourself?
5 tips on how to use hand-drawn animations!
The illustration itself is already complex enough! How can you manage to animate the drawing? Don’t worry! It’s also possible to learn to animate without a lot of time and once you get the hang of it, it can be really addictive.
Why I love animations so much?
One of the things I love so much about animating is that I can tell a longer story with the clips than with just a static picture. It gives me the opportunity to add more excitement and wit to my work as an illustrator. When you make a static illustration, the viewer sees at first glance what it’s all about.
Animations, however, give you the opportunity to captivate longer. A good clip makes you so curious that you really want to know how it goes on and the viewer literally sticks to your illustration. Even if it’s only a small 5 second film. And believe me, so much movement can happen in 5 seconds.
In my opinion, animation is not only for professionals, but for everyone. You don’t have to be a professional motion designer to make your own little movies.
What animation is still suitable for, I would like to introduce to you in the following points.
5 TIPS ON HOW TO USE ANIMATION CREATIVELY
Animations can be used in many different ways. To convince you a little bit more, I would like to introduce you to my 5 tips how you can use animations as a creative.
#1 FOR ILLUSTRATIONS AND GRAPHICS
Sure, the first point is obvious. As an illustrator I like to animate my own drawings. I draw them in Procreate and then get them as jpgs or pngs in the animation app roughanimator. It currently costs 5,49 Euro in the App Store and offers many possibilities for beginners to create a simple frame by frame animation. Of course you can also use Photoshop.
Your illustration gets a shot more magic with animated elements. And your followers will love it. If you would like to learn how to create simple animations, subscribe to my newsletter. There you will be the first to know when my free “How to Start – Illumotion” email series will be released.
#2 TO INTRODUCE YOURSELF TO YOUR TARGET GROUP
How about your next profile picture winking at your followers? Maybe the wind is blowing through your hair, or a small bird is landing on your shoulder. You’ve probably seen Harry Potter before, haven’t you? Don’t you think the moving pictures and portraits from Hogwarts are as cool as I am? I’m sure your followers see it the same way! With an animation, your illustrated profile picture becomes something very special.
#3 FOR BANNERS ON YOUR WEBSITE
Whoever runs a website or has an online shop needs banners again and again. No matter what you want to advertise, a small built-in animation spices up your banner and is a real eye-catcher. With Roughanimator you can easily create banners for your website. Just make sure you don’t move too much at once.
#4 TO DISPLAY COMPLICATED FACTS IN A SIMPLE WAY
Yes, I’m talking about explanatory videos. :-) Animations help you to clarify complicated facts quite simply. This can also be a small icon-graphic, which introduces your business.
#5 FOR HANDLETTERINGS & LOGOS
Handlettering is a real trend and is indispensable in the creative sector. Animated, your letterings get a very special touch and can, for example, be written by magic.
Pose-to-Pose Action
Pose-to-Pose Action is the term used when the animation is carefully planned. The animator draws a sequence of postures, for example the first phase, some in-betweens and the last posture, and then all in-betweens (or another animator or the computer draws the in-betweens). This technique is used when the scene requires more planning and when postures and timing are important.
As far as classic animated film is concerned, which is used in the exercise examples as an introduction to the medium of animated film, the rather spontaneous straight-ahead approach is certainly recommendable for a first approach, simply to get to know the tool and gain initial experience with the medium.
In contrast, the following animation exercises illustrate what is meant by the term “pose-to-pose” animation and what principles and steps are applied.
The following exercises are intended to illustrate the basic elements and parameters of animation, which in principle can be applied to all imaginable animation film techniques.