Welcome to lesson two of animated loops.
In this lesson, we're going to focus on loop design.
We'll finish off designing the character that we started in the last lesson,
turning it into a fully functioning rig,
which will then animate in the later lessons.
But to begin,
I'll tell you a bit about why I choose to design my loops the way that I do.
If you've ever seen any of my work, you'll know I like circles.
They're simple and smooth.
A circle is 2D but it can be made to look 3D very easily
just by adding a simple curve.
It can appear to spin just by sliding details across it,
and you can do this in any direction.
You can also do this with other less smooth shapes too,
but it's not quite as simple.
By using smooth shapes to begin with,
then you're halfway there to making smooth animation.
I prefer to keep things simple with the design,
but make things more complex with detailed animation
and a wide variety in the types of scenes that I animate.
Using a very simple flat design style
actually makes it very easy to work with lots of different perspectives,
giving your animation a lot of depth, whether for 2D, 3D or isometric.
It can work for them all.
But while being varied in the types of things I animate,
I like to be consistent with the colors that I use.
I do this in After Effects by creating a composition that I use as a color palette.
Within that, I use different colored shape layer squares to build up a palette.
I usually create a pallet with two different shades of each color,
but you could have a pallet with three shades of each color if you prefer.
Then when creating an animation in a new composition,
I'll just drag in my color palette composition
and pick colors from this layer when designing.
This ensures that I'm always using exactly the same values for each color.
You can also set the color palette layer to a guide layer
so that it won't appear in final renders.
Which colors you use is completely your choice.
My advice would be to start with two or three colors that you like.
Then as you're creating animations,
you can gradually add two or three more colors as you find that you need them.
It won't be long until you have enough colors for designing
any scene you can think of.
I will sometimes vary these colors a little particularly for more natural colors,
such as skin tones or shades of gray.
But I will use just the colors in my main pallets 90% of the time.
These colors are just my personal choice,
but I encourage you to create your own color palette
to use for all of the loops you'll be making on this course.
Using a consistent color palette
is a great way to make all your different loops
feel part of the same collection, making them recognizable as your own.
But it's also very important when it comes to exporting your loops as gifs.
This is less important these days as most platforms such as Instagram
allow you to post your loops as videos instead.
Although on Twitter, for example, posting a gif
will usually result in higher quality compression than if you post a video,
so using a gif is often the better choice.
Gifs are limited in the amount of colors they can use
from just to all the way up to 256 less colors means a smaller file size.
But even 256 colors isn't that many if your designs have gradients.
Because every different shade of color will be a different color in the pallet.
If you design using a strict color palette to begin with,
then you'll be able to export your gif with fewer colors while still looking good.
You also need to be careful with how you use these colors too.
The other main contributor to good gif compression
is the amount of movement in your scene.
A good way to think of this
is how often are each of the pixels in your gift changing color.
If you have a scene with a background that's mostly one color for the whole loop,
then the gift will compress very well
because most of the pixels never changed color.
If you have a fully scrolling background, even just with a simple pattern,
then most of your pixels are changing color every single frame.
So your gif file size would be almost three times as big,
even with the same amount of colors.
This could mean your file size is too big for where you want to upload it to.
Instead when adding scrolling background details like trees,
try to make sure there are still large areas that don't change color very often.
Then your file size won't increase too much.
This is also something that's important to consider for videos too,
as fast-moving detailed patterns often result in blurry video compression.
Try to keep things simple.
If you can tell the same story with less detail,
then that's usually a good compromise for having a better-looking loop.
Now we know why we're designing and the way we are.
Let's get back to designing our character.
I'm going to show you how to rig a very simple character based around a circle.
And it's completely fine for you to make the exact same character too,
but if you're already an experienced animator,
then you could also add some of your own personality into the design yourself.
You could make a character with a separate head and body
or more detail such as clothes or facial features.
Even if you do stick to the circle character that I'm making,
you can also customize it with your own face design too, or just a different color.
Whatever you choose to do, make sure you think of your character as a 3D object.
Even though we're animating in 2D,
being able to give a character depth is very important.
Just remember to keep the design simple and smooth.
See you in the next parts.
Thanks for watching.