Motion Practice with Ben Marriott

Do you want to find your own style and create truly unique works? The best way to achieve this is by combining various techniques and tools! In this practical course merging traditional frame-by-frame animation and After Effects, we’re going to create 6 animated projects. Each project is focused on a different technique integrating frame-by-frame animation into your workflow. We will be taking a deep-dive into every step of the process, explaining all the decision-making that goes into merging these 2 different methods together. By combining the best elements of both worlds you will bring unique creatures to life focusing on the process and workflow.

#1 Intro to Frame-by-Frame

We’re covering the basics of frame-by-frame animation using Adobe Animate & integrating that with After Effects. We start to cover some of the basic principles of animation and useful techniques to elevate your animations to the next level.

Frame rate

Onion skins

Timing

Roughs

Anticipation

Overshoot

Cleanup in Animate

Exporting as swf

Cleanup in AE with shape layers

Looping

Adding textures

Imitating a frame-by-frame look in AE

#2 Walk & Run cycles

A walk and run cycle are staples of animation. They are so much quicker to make frame-by-frame and you can know if it is going to be effective after drawing only 2 frames. We’re going to experiment with pushing your breakdown poses to create a completely different mood.

Walk cycles

Run cycles

Follow through and overlapping action

#3 Effects

Adding frame-by-frame effects can be one of the best ways to add interesting elements to your After Effects workflow. Here we break down the wave principle, which you can apply to hair, clothes, limbs and practically anything in motion to give it more life. Then use it to add smoke and flame effects to our animation.

The wave principle

Animating Smoke

Animating a flame

#4 Fake 3D

Making flat 2D shapes appear 3D can be incredibly challenging. We’ll be breaking down the process and techniques to sell a believable 3D form and learn how to solve common challenges.

Solid drawing

Adapting a 2D design into a 3D form

The power of Time remapping

Deforming and warping in After Effects

Smear frames

#5 Morphing

The most appealing aspect of animation is a smooth transforming animation.

Using all the skills learned in this course we’re going to apply them to complex animation, breaking it down into small manageable parts and building on each one.

Planning for complex motion

Squash and stretch

Cleaning up complex forms in After Effects