2D Character Animation: Walk Cycles

This course is LEVEL 2 in my series on Learning Animation using ADOBE ANIMATE. Check out my first course: "Learn 2D Animation", if you want to know the basics of animation principles.

If you are ready to take your animation to the next level and start working on CHARACTER ANIMATION, CHARACTER DESIGN & CHARACTER RIGGING, then this course is for you.

If you love animation and cartoons, and want to know how to design your own characters for animation; if you want to learn animation skills that can open the doors to an actual career path in the animation industry, or if you just want to learn how to make your own short animated films, this course will teach you exactly those skills. This workflow is based around character animation in Adobe Animate.

Here’s what’s you’ll achieve in this course:

• how to come up with a concepts for characters, and how to draw rough drawings, and test poses

• how to finalise your drawing to import into animation software

• how to use Adobe Animate to design and build a fully working and animation ready character rig - this includes working with drawing tools, layers and symbols

• how to animate a character frame by frame and with Aniamte's tween function

• how to animate a jump; and how to animate a walk cycle

• finally how to add your animation to a scene with a background, how to add music, camera moves and overlays.

This course covers a complete Animation Workflow - from concept all the way through to final movie clip - using Adobe Animate

The course is made up of 3 parts.

The first part is about how to draw your character from scratch and then how to import your sketch into Animate. From there, i’ll show you step by step how to make a build that is ready for animation. You can use your own drawing, or use one of my sketches to work on.

Likewise, in the second part of the course, you’ll have a choice of working with either my rig that I made as a demo, or using your own. The 2 projects in this section are the Jump and the walk. The walk cycle is one of the most important projects for any beginner animator. This is a crucial project to complete successfully and I will show you exactly how to do that. I’m going to show you a couple of ways to animate a walk, including animating a looped walk using tweens.

In the third and final section you will learn how to build an entire scene around this seemingly simple walk cycle. I am going to give you a background that you can use if you want, but if you have your own artwork you’ll learn exactly how to work with it so that your animation looks like it’s seamlessly part of the world you’ve created.

I’ll also show you how adding a short piece of music to your scene can suddenly elevate it and make it look like it’s part of a larger sequence or movie.

The main outcome is to have a whole set of professional looking pieces for your animation portfolio. You’ll be able to walk away from this course with some amazing work that you can show to any studio when you’re applying for jobs; but not only that - you’ll walk away with skills that you can apply to any kind of animation that you want to do. Because, even though this course is project-based; what you will be learning through these projects are core animation principles that you’ll use from here on out if you go on to become a working animator.

After you enrol, you have lifetime access to this course, including any updates that I’ll do in the future. YOu’ll also be able to receive all the downloads and files that go along with each of the projects; and you’ll be able to contact me directly, get feedback on your work and discuss any questions that you have. I’m here to monitor your progress, give you advice and help you out as much as I can.

You can teach yourself animation - there’s no doubt about that - and you can start to build a really awesome looking animation portfolio today. I hope you enrol, and I look forward to working with you.