Animators I Like.

Animators that I know of;

Ubbe Eert Iwerks (UB Iwerks),
Born March 24, 1901 - Died July 7, 1971.

Iwerks was a young starting animator, who actually was good friends with the well known animator Disney, he was the first animator to follow Disney to his success and help to create the beginning characters that are well known by everyone in the Disney company and around the world, such as Mickey Mouse. He was also responsible for the creation of other characters such as Horace Horsecollar and Clarabelle Cow, who were rejected by Disney himself when presented to him.

Horace Horsecollar;

Clarabelle Cow;

Iwerks worked in an commercial ad company alongside Disney for sometime, until Disney had a falling out with the company which led him to leave and move to L.A in hopes of becoming successful with his own business, Iwerks followed him along the way, presenting sketch character designs which alternatively got rejected often by Disney.

After a lengthy time spent with Disney, Iwerks felt like he was being mistreated by him, and not credited enough for drawing majority of Disney's greatest animated characters. He couldn't live under the harsh command that Walt Disney had now and so left, accepting a business opportunity from Disney's rival known as Pat Powers. This decision in the end cut off his business partnership and friendship with Walt Disney. And for some time Walt Disney and his business suffered harshly with the loss of Iwerks, but in the end started to pick up when he hired a bunch of young animators to work for him.

Iwerks however didn't seem to achieve such fortune with his business opportunity as a lot of his short animated comedies/series/films went unnoticed and never really got recognised, he was responsible for many creations but they never really drew the public eye.

Iwerks died at the age of 70 in 1971 of a heart attack in Burbank, California.

Picture of Ubb Eert Iwerks.

Walt Elias Disney (Walt Disney)
Born December 5, 1901 - Died December 15, 1966.

(Not finished)

Adobe Animate (Tutorial)

Creating The Stickman;

The first step is to open up the application and create a new scene, like so;

Then once you have started a new scene you begin to create the actual stickman, using the oval tool and the line tool, to make a basic stick man figure but it is important to do it in a certain way.

So first go to the line tool and make sure it is set to 11 on stroke, in order to make sure the stickman body is not too thin.

 And then drag it down the page to create a straight single line.

Once done with that select the oval tool and make sure it is set to 11 too.

And place a circle shape onto of the line, so you end up with something like this; 

Then go down to layers and name it "Torso"

This is the first section done. 

Now you make another line with the line tool. 

 This will be the arm, and it now needs to have movement and joints added to it, you do this by using the bone tool;

(Could not continue this post, or project as the project broke and too many things went wrong with the timing and flow of the animated stickman.)

Character Design (For Animation)

My animation project is going to be a collaboration with my friend called Lucy Burgess in the course with me , I will be designing a small and grumpy looking dog that will eventually be tied in conflict with my friends design which will be a postwoman, he is going to be very small and yappy, and the story line will be based on the postwoman trying to deliver the mail to the door in which the dog sits in the front garden waiting for any person to try and come onto the lawn. The animation is going to be based on conflict so that is why we have decided to make the dog very grumpy and territorial. It will only be roughly 15-20 seconds long but will have enough in it to show the messages we're trying to get across.

I will now show some character design templates done by me and Lucy to show progress of the animation and the characters themselves.



This is a basic character design made by Lucy Burgess for the postwoman character of the animation:

This is Lucy's attempt at drawing my character Spud.

Here is more work of the character Carol that Lucy has made; 

This is a character design template drawn by me to represent the small dog.

NOT YET POSTED.
This is spud, an attempt of Lucy trying to draw my character;

This is a small clip of Spud, the dog character I have made for the animation, and this is one of the scenes.

Here is another short animation clip of a scene with Spud.

Here is another scene on my character, just to show further progression. 

This is the simple chase that Spud does at the end.

Premiere Pro (Tutorial 4 - Keying and Masking)

How to mask and use key effects.

First step you want to do is go on Premiere Pro and then select your video that you have cut out frames for and put them on a separate sequence. 
(P.s: to cut out select frames use the razor tool; DO NOT HAVE SCREENSHOT YET)

An then you got to effects and select ultra key tool, following the steps of these screenshots;


1.)

2.)

 3.)
















Then simply drag the tool onto the sequence below to activate it then follow these steps and click the background of the first frame;

Then go to create a new colour matte, make it bright green, name it green and place it under the line that is the frames.

Now you're ready to start on Masking. In this tutorial the object in focus is one of my class mates jumping. So click the tool;

Make sure you click the pen and then simply click around the image and the object of focus to start masking it like so; 

And then you move the frames along and edit each one with the masking item, till they're complete like so;

End.

PhotoShop / Character Animate Tutorial

To make a simple face that can move and copy your actions on Character Animate CC it is rather easy.

First you draw the head of your character on a transparent layer and make it as simple as possible, to avoid complications later, example;

Once you have the head, create another layer, and follow these instructions;

1.) Pen Tool

2.) Click Shape at the top.

3.) Click right where the chin would start on your head and join with a neck.
(A small blue dotted square will appear indicating its registered.)

Then name the layer Origin and make sure it is under the layer with the head, for easy understanding we will call the other layer Head.

Now you will have a basic headship on PhotoShop and you will have two layers called Head and Origin. Now to prepare for the rest of the activity you will need to create groups shown here;

Make one or two depending on if you will make a body or not, but this tutorial will only be showing how to make a head. And a group named the name you give to your actual creation, for example I will name this creation Max.

Name the folders Head and Body (If doing a body) and a folder named your character and it should look like this;

Make sure the head folder is inside the folder named what your creation is, as it will need to be registered as one whole item. And now inside the head create a new folder and call it +Right Eye. (It is very important you + before hand)

It should look like this;

Inside the folder create three layers and name them Right Blink / +Right Pupil / Right Eyeball.
And make sure when you begin to DRAW the eye you make sure its the creations right and not your right.
Like so;

And it should then look like this;

  So the right eye will actually be on YOUR left.

I will now show step by step, how I made the eye for reference.

> Right Eyeball

> +Right Pupil

> Right Blink

And make sure all layers are visible once done, so it will look a little messy but that is fine;

Once done with that you can simply duplicate the folder, and therefore duplicate the layers inside, move the eye and flip it round so its in the other space and rename all the Right with Left, so you will have two folders for the separate eyes, like so;

And it will look like this;

Now you have two functioning eyes, make a separate layer inside the head folder but not in the eye folders by mistake, and call it +Nose, and simply draw a nose for your character. Like so;

Now for the eyebrows, create a new layer again and name it +Right Eyebrow, and simply draw a line or whatever type of eyebrow you would like, of course make sure that when you draw it on your character the right will be your left.

Then you can simply duplicate the layer like you did with the eye folder and move it to where you like and rename it left. Like so;

So in the checklist you should now have;

> Head
> Right/Left Eye
>Nose
>Eyebrows.

If you do not have all of this yet please look back on the tutorial to make sure you did not miss anything.

From this point on we will want a mouth, however for time reasons I will not sit here and make different mouth shapes as on an average you need about 12/15 mouth shapes in order for it to work. So I will simply go on Character Animate, pick one of the already made faces, let it take me to photoshop and drag the +Mouth folder from the existing character to my newly made character. Like so;

Now you should have a fully functioning mouth folder on your photoshop character like shown above.

Now because my character is a wolf pup, I of course need to add ears, which is just like adding eyebrows. Draw the ear out name it +Right Ear then duplicate reposition and rename +Left Ear.
Like so;

Now one last checklist to make sure you have got all items and named them correctly.

LOOK CLOSELY TO WHAT IS IN THE LIST TO MAKE SURE YOU HAVE DONE EVERYTHING EXACTLY THE SAME.



Checklist:

Folders;
Characters name with a + (Example +Max)
+Head

(Inside Head folder)
Folders;
+Right Eye
+Left Eye
+Mouth

Layers;
+Right eyebrow
+Left eyebrow
+Nose
+Left Ear
+Right Ear
(Only if you do ears of course)
Origin
Head


If you have all these layers and folders you are ready, simply save it as a .psd
Go onto Character Animator CC, file Import your character file and try see if it will copy your facial expressions and move in time with you. Good luck!


End.