Animation for Web Comics (The Basics) Part I

Okay, some explaining is probably in order for the title. This part and the upcoming second part are quick animation tutorials specifically geared towards web comic artists who wanna add animations to their comics for more dynamic storytelling. These overviews will also give a rudimentary knowledge of frame-by-frame animation and the most basic tweening using Photoshop. I'm gonna go ahead and assume a familiarity with Photoshop and for this post I will be using CS5. None of that will really matter in this post cause we don't get to that until Part Deux.

Animation can be broken down into frames. Film and animation standards are 24 fps (frames-per-second). If you do animations on "ones" you're drawing an altered drawing for each of the 24 frames in a second. Animating on "twos" means an altered drawing for every two frames; this can also be called 12 fps. It is common to use a combination of these two, utilizing animation on "twos" when the movement is very subtle and there is no noticeable need for every frame to have an altered drawing. Infamous animator Bill Plympton animates on "sixes" or even "eights" which means 4 or 3 fps. The logic behind fewer frames of animation per second = fewer drawings per second = easier BUT the more frames of animation the smoother everything looks.

NOW, when you first begin laying out the animation, step one is to place key drawings or poses and time everything out; these are called "keys" or "keyframes."  By playing through the animation with the key drawings, you get a real sense of timing.

NEXT are "breakdowns." "Breakdowns" are drawings places between keys to bridge the gap with the exception of keys placed so close together that there is no need for one. Playing through the sequence with keys and breakdowns should really give you a good preview of what is to come.

LAST, "in-betweens," bridge the final gap between keys and breakdowns. There is no set number of in-betweens between the drawings in place-use as many as need be.

The following image depicts 3 keys: first, middle, last or 1-13-25, 2 breakdowns, and quite a few in-betweens

Note: I would personally consider all of the non-key poses in this sequence to be breakdowns

Note: Note: as depicted-standard walk cycles time at about 1 second-per cycle

The 3 (out of 12) Principles of Animation

There are a full dozen principles but here's the basics.

Squash and Stretch - Generally a reminder to ALWAYS keep weight in mind. Weight propels motion; squashing when stopped and stretched when in motion.

Anticipation - Before any movement is set in motion, the thought must be given time to travel. You got a split second of thinking of moving an arm before actually moving an arm.

Ease-in Ease-out - Before any movement reaches its full speed of motion, that motion must begin slowly to build momentum. In stopping that motion, the momentum must be dispersed, gradually slowing the motion to a halt.

Welp, that ought to give you the basics. For further education I suggest looking online or better yet you should check out the books "The Animator's Survival Kit" by Richard Williams and "Animation: From Pencils to Pixels" by Tony White.

Next time on Dragonball Z...

....basic animation in Photoshop!