Welcome back to Animated Loops!
In this video, we’re gonna make our first loop.
It’s a very simple swinging loop
demonstrating the basic principles that I talked about in the last video.
Let’s begin.
We’re going to start by creating a new composition.
Let’s name this composition ‘Swinging’.
We’re going to make the size of the composition 1080x1080.
I normally animate at 24 frames per second,
but as these videos are 30 frames per second, I’m gonna animate at 30.
Make the duration 6 seconds.
The background can be whatever color you want.
OK. Let’s start by creating a circle.
Select the Ellipse tool.
If you double-click that, it will create a circle the size of the composition.
We’re going to make the circle 400 x 400 pixels wide.
Let’s name the layer ‘Ball’.
And I’m also gonna bring in my ‘Colorpalette’ which I’ve created before.
And I’ll talk more about it in the next lesson.
I’m gonna make the ball yellow.
I also wanna create a background layer behind the circle.
So, select the Rectangle tool.
Double-click that to make the rectangle the size of the composition.
Move that to the bottom of the layers and name it ‘BG’.
And we’re gonna make this background layer blue.
Now we’re going to draw a line
which will be the string connecting the ball to the top of the screen.
We’ll do this with the Pen tool.
We want this to just be a stroke with no fill,
so just Alt/Option+click here to turn off the fill.
Then Alt/Option+click here to turn on the stroke.
We want it to be a 20-pixels wide stroke,
which I’m going to make a darker shade of yellow than the ball.
At this point, you can also turn on your grid
because we want this line to snap to the middle of the composition.
So, you’ll need to turn on Snap to Grid.
Then click and drag these points, so they snap.
Then move this layer below the ball and name it ‘String’.
Now you can turn off the grid.
We also want to move the Anchor Point of the string above the composition.
We can do this by selecting the Anchor Point tool or pressing Y.
Then if you click and drag the Anchor Point while holding Shift
to keep it aligned to the middle,
you can move it just above the top of the composition.
Then we’re going to parent the ball to the string
so that we can rotate the string to make the ball swing.
We’re going to animate a 2-second loop.
So, we’re just gonna use the part of the timeline in the middle.
Let’s move the cursor to 2 seconds which is going to be our start point.
Drag out a marker here and name it ‘Start’.
The end point is going to be at 4 seconds.
And we’ll name that ‘End’.
We just want to use the work area between these two markers.
So, at the Start marker, press B to set the beginning of the work area.
But at the end marker, we don’t want to include this frame
because this is gonna be the exact same frame as the Start frame.
If we include both, then the same frame will play twice,
and the animation won’t be a smooth loop.
So, move back one frame, then press N to set the end of the work area.
Then move back to the start, and we’re gonna start animating.
We’ll start with the rotation on the string of 20° at the beginning.
Set a keyframe.
At 3 seconds, the halfway point in the loop,
change the rotation to −20°.
Then, at the end, rotate back to 20°.
Then we’re gonna do Easy Ease on these keyframes just to see how it looks.
It’s kind of OK, but the movement is a bit slow, and there isn’t much weight to it.
To fix that, we’re gonna adjust the velocity of the movement.
You can do that in a couple of ways.
One way is in the Graph editor.
Select ‘Include this property in the graph editor’, then open the editor.
Make sure we’re looking at the speed graph.
And you can adjust these handles by selecting the points,
then dragging them out to set the influence this way.
We want is to be about 50%.
But if you close the graph editor,
you can also do this by selecting the keyframe, right-clicking,
then selecting Keyframe Velocity, and then entering specific values.
We want this to be the same for all of the keyframes.
So, select them all, go to Keyframe Velocity, and set this to 50% for both values.
Now if we play, there’s a little bit more weight to it,
and the movement is a bit more realistic.
The next thing we’re gonna do is add a shadow to the ball.
To do this,
let’s go the midpoint of the swing,
when the string is perfectly vertical in the middle.
We’re going to create a new circle with the Ellipse tool.
Let’s move this below the string and name this layer ‘Shadow’.
We’re going to make it 300 pixels wide and 50 pixels high.
Move the position below the ball.
We don’t want a stroke, we just want a fill.
And we’re going to make it a darker shade of blue than the background.
We need the shadow to move with the ball, always staying below it.
Go to the start, select the shadow, press P to show the position.
And we want to move this 200 pixels to the left.
So, type in ‘−200’ after the current value.
Set a keyframe.
At the halfway point, at 3 seconds, we want it to move 200 pixels to the right
from its middle position.
So, type in ‘+400’.
Then at the end, we’ll copy and paste the first keyframe,
do Easy Ease on those.
Check how it looks.
We need to adjust the speed of the shadow movement
to match the speed of the string rotation that we’ve changed.
So, select the position keyframes,
go to Keyframe Velocity, and change the Influence to 50%.
Now we have the movement matching.
But we also want to increase the size of the shadow
as the ball gets closer to the ground.
So, select the shadow.
Press Shift+S to show the Scale.
Set a keyframe at the start where we want it to be a little smaller.
Move to the midpoint of the swing, and set the Scale to 110%;
at the other side of the swing, back to 90%.
Copy and paste these keyframes to repeat on the swing backwards.
Then set all of these to Easy Ease.
It looks pretty good.
Now we’re gonna add a face to the ball.
I’m going to use the Rounded Rectangle tool to make some eyes.
Name this layer ‘Eyes’.
Name the rectangle ‘EyeLeft’.
I’m gonna make this eye 60 x 60 pixels and change the roundness to 60.
And I’m gonna make the eye almost black.
You can see, because I’ve made the roundness the same as the size,
it makes it a perfect circle.
The reason why I’m using a rounded rectangle and not an ellipse
is that I want to make these eyes blink by changing the height.
But I want it to flatten as a rectangle instead of a squashing circle.
That’s just a personal choice, but you can do whatever you like.
We’re going to move the position of this eye 50 pixels to the left.
Duplicate ‘EyeLeft’ and name that ‘EyeRight’.
Move that 50 pixels to the right.
Parent the eyes to the ball.
Next, we’ll create a mouth.
We’re going to use the Pen tool for this.
We’ll use a white stroke 30 pixels wide.
Just draw a little smiling mouth.
We’ll give it a rounded cap.
Name the layer ‘Mouth’ and parent the mouth to the eyes.
Now if you play the animation, the face moves with the ball,
but it’s very 2D and flat.
We want to give it a little bit of depth to make it feel like the ball is a sphere.
To do this, we’ll animate the horizontal position of the face.
At the start, set a keyframe at −20.
At the other side, set a keyframe at 20 in the other direction;
then, at the end, back to −20.
Then just do Easy Ease on these keyframes.
It looks OK, but the movement is synced up exactly with the swing,
and we want there to be a delay on the face to give it a more natural motion.
So, we’ll move these position keyframes 15 frames later.
But now there’s no animation on the face at the start of the loop.
So, we’re going to add an expression to these keyframes
to loop them before the first keyframe.
Alt/Option+click on the Position stopwatch.
Then type ‘loopIn()’.
Now the movement is much better,
and the overlapping of the face movement with the timing of the swing
makes the loop feel more continuous.
We’re also going to make the eyes blink.
To do this, we’re going to animate the size of each eye.
Add a keyframe on the size for both eyes.
Then, 4 frames later, add a keyframe with the height at 0.
And 4 frames after that, copy and paste the original heights.
And I like to ease the start and end of the blink.
We’ll also animate some movement on the mouth
just to give the character a bit more life.
I’ll do this two ways:
by keyframing the stroke width and also the path shape.
At the halfway point, make the mouth a bit thicker and adjust the path.
Back to the start, make the mouth a bit thinner, and flatten the curve.
Copy and paste the start keyframe to the end and do Easy Ease.
Next, we’re gonna add some legs.
We’ll draw quite a short leg below the character with a stroke
– a straight line 30 pixels wide, the same color as the body.
Give the stroke a round cap.
Name the layer ‘LegLeft’.
And we’re gonna move the Anchor Point to the top of the stroke at the hip.
Parent this leg to the ball.
But we don’t just want this leg to stick straight out the body,
we want it to rotate as the character swings.
At the start, add a 40° rotation to the leg;
at the halfway point, at 3 seconds, −40° in the other direction.
At the end, copy and paste the first keyframe.
And do Easy Ease.
It doesn’t look great yet because the rotation is totally in sync with the swing.
Like with the face, we want the leg to have a delay.
So, again, let’s add a loopIn expression to these keyframes.
And offset them, so the leg is at full rotation at the point
where it’s passing through the middle of the swing.
Already that’s much better,
but we want to give the leg a bend as it swings by animating the path shape too.
At the start point,
using the Convert Vertex Tool,
we click and drag to add a curve to the end of the leg.
At the midpoint, at 3 seconds, we bend the leg in the opposite direction.
At the end, copy and paste the first keyframe, and Easy Ease.
We also want to adjust the timing of these keyframes,
but with path keyframes, you can’t use a loopIn expression
because it only works with numerical values.
There’s a fairly simple expression that you can use on paths
if the keyframes start at 0.
And there’s a more complicated expression you can use
if the keyframes don’t start at 0.
We’ll need to use the complicated one.
Don’t worry, you don’t need to memorize it,
just copy and paste it from the lesson description.
Adjust the keyframes
so that the bend comes just after the passing point in the middle of the swing.
This expression loops the animation after the last keyframe.
We’re also going to add a foot.
Go back to the start of the loop
and draw a foot with the Pen Tool on a new layer.
A pretty short foot, ‘cause he’s only got a short leg.
Again, give this a round cap.
Move these points, so that it’s at the end of the leg.
Name the layer ‘FootLeft’.
We also want to move the Anchor Point of the foot to the heel.
Then parent the foot to the leg.
We also want to animate the foot rotation.
At the start, set the rotation with the toes pointing in the air.
At the halfway point, at 3 seconds, point the toes at the ground.
At 4 seconds, copy and paste the first keyframe, add Easy Ease,
and add another loopIn expression.
Then adjust those keyframes, so the foot is delayed behind the leg movement.
Finally, we need to duplicate this leg to the other side.
To do this, go to the midpoint of the swing where the string is vertical.
Duplicate the foot and leg together.
Rename these ‘LegRight’ and ‘FootRight’.
Then the way that I usually mirror things is I create a temporary null object
which by default is in the middle of the scene.
Parent the right leg to the null.
Parent the null to the ball.
Then flip the horizontal scale of the null to −100.
And you can delete that null.
Now you have a new leg parented to the body,
but the timing of the rotation is inverted.
We also need to offset the timing of the keyframes for the leg and foot by 1 second
- half the length of the loop.
Then shift these path keyframes back by a full loop
as they’ve now been pushed after the start of the work area.
And there you have a simple looping animation.
That’s where we’re gonna end the loop for this lesson.
Until next time, thanks for watching!