Creating Your First Cartoon - Page 2

21> Now activate the black mouse cursor in your tool set and click anywhere on the document to deselect the character. Then double click on the body to only select it and not the head. (If your arms and legs are touching the body, double clicking the body will automatically select any other line that is touching it. If they are not touching then hold down shift and select the arms and legs to add to the body selection.) Now hit the delete button to get rid of the body.

22> You should now have an onion skin background of the previous frame where your body used to be. We are going to start the walk cycle. Move the head forward slightly, keeping in mind that there is 12 frames per 1 second of animation so don’t move it to far.

23> Now redraw the body starting with the beginning of a step. (Tip: Zoom in to about 200% on your character to make animation easier. Remember zooming is where you previously set view to “Fit in Window” Top right.)

24> Follow the keyframe steps until our character moves out into the scene. And remember to adjust your Onion Skin slider when you create the keyframe on frame 3 to only show one frame behind from your current frame. (Adjust your onion skin back a few frames to make sure your head movements are evenly spaced and move it back when your finished or else all the onion skins will make animation confusing.)

25> I made my character walk in 1/3 of the way across my scene and stopped animating on frame 20. It doesn’t matter if yours is different.

26> Now turn off onion skinning, Change your view to “Fit in Window” and move your frame slider to see if it runs smooth. You can also preview it by clicking Control --> Play. Here’s what my screen looks like now on frame 20:

27> Now its time to add some expression to the character.

28> Lock the Stickman Layer and create a new one renaming it “Expression”. Now create a keyframe on frame 25 (Or 5 frames up from where you finished his walk cycle)

29> Now draw some eyes and a mouth and make him look up at the sky as if he’s seen the anvil. (Layers that are above other layers in the stack draw over the layers beneath them. So if you made a layer underneath the background one and drew a line you would not see it. You cannot draw over the top of a symbol in the same layer that’s why we use a separate layer for the expression.)

30> Ok now its time to draw the anvil. Lock the Expressions Layer and create a new layer renaming it “Anvil”.

31> Create a keyframe 3 frames up from the keyframe you made for the expressions.

32> Set your Zoom to 100% and Start drawing the anvil above your document. (Setting your zoom to 100% will allow you to use the scrollers for the document so you can draw in the space above the scene)

33> Convert the anvil to a symbol by dragging a selection box around it to select it all then right click hitting “Convert to Symbol”. Name it Anvil and set as graphic.

34> Now we are going to use another form of animation called “Motion Tweening” Basically for objects like our anvil that just need to move from point A to point B we use motion tweening to fill in the rest of the animation instead of keyframing every fricken frame.

35> Right click the Current Keyframe and hit “Create Motion Tween”. Your layer after the keyframe should turn blue with stuttered lines through it.

36> Now move 5 frames up the layer and create another keyframe. On this keyframe move the anvil down to the ground where it is going to end its fall. You have now created the motion tween. Move your frame slider to see how it looks.

37> Now its time to animate the character so he goes sqeeeeesh. Lock the Anvil layer and unlock the stickman and expressions layer.

38> Using Keyframe animation delete parts of him as the anvil falls. Making the illusion that he is getting squashed. If you wanted to you could also animate him throwing up his hands just before the anvil hits. You can also hide layers if they are getting in the way by clicking the dot underneath the Eye on the layer you want to hide.

39> This is what my layers look like now: