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Animation and Posing

Learn multiple shortcuts to extend the exposure of your artwork, add keyframes, and move keyframes further away in your timeline. Stacey shows you how to properly select various Drawing layers, start posing your animation, as well as introduces you to some basic animation concepts.

About the Author

Stacey Eberschalg

Stacey Eberschalg

Toon Boom Software Instructor and Animator

Toon Boom Animation

Toon Boom

Video Transcript

Welcome to Part 6 of Animating and Building an Arm Joint. And what I'm going to do right now is I'm going to start my...

Before I start posing, I have to expose the artwork. Notice that the art that I drew was on frame 1. There is are the frames. and as I go to frame 2 everything disappears. So I'm going to choose frame 60, right-click > Extend Exposure. The hotkey would be [F5] for that.

And now I have an arm that I can animate. I'm going to put a keyframe on frame 1. Let me just press this: Insert Keyframe or the hotkey would be [F6]. We go to frame 2, I'm going to put a keyframe there. And I'm going to start with my arm down.

Now this arm is a little bit bigger than my Camera view, but we'll just ignore the Camera. There is my 2 keyframes of my art. For the frame 1, press [Shift + +]. And that puts a little gap between them. I'm going to tween that and I'm going to put a keyframe.

Now, this is where I can turn my Onion Skin on and plan out, maybe, my breakdown. It's very important that when you select the parts [and] you want to go to the next part, you press [B]. You shouldn't be circling and selecting. It messes up the pivot positions. [B], [B], okay.

Now, we can see that I have frame 1, frame 2, frame 3. One, two, three. I'm going to repeat the same step: [Shift + +]. And I'm going to put a little lead and follow in this animation.

I'll start by putting a keyframe in. I'll turn my Onion Skin on. [B], [B], [B]. Maybe I'll move the lower arm back, move the hand back. Now we have something that looks more like this: frame 1, frame 2, sort of.

Let's make it, let's make the upper arm a little bit further ahead, so it's following a bit more. One, two, three, four.

Now, I need something between these 2 frames, so you would select that frame. Again, [Shift + +] I'm going to tween that.

Put a keyframe in again. [inaudible dialog] I've got arm to follow? [inaudible dialog] Let's see if we can bring this up a little bit further? [completely inaudible dialog]???

So, one, two, three, four.

One, two, three, four.

One, two, three, four.

One, two, three, four.

And you can just go on your timeline, two and two, three, four.

And you can kind of see that, you have a little bit of lead and follow there.

I'm going to select this keyframe, [Shift + +] I'm going to put a keyframe there, because I need something between this frame and the final frame. And maybe this will just be the dropping of the elbow a little bit. [B], [B]. Rotate that back a little bit. And I'll just sort of drag the hand.

And now I have Frame 1--I'm going to turn my Onion Skin off.

One, two, three, four, five, six.

Five, six.

Now between these two, I think I can use an overshoot and settle. So I'll put another keyframe in at the very end.

Now I'll go back to the second last keyframe and I'll just kind of try and see if I can make that overshoot.

One, two, three.

One, two, three.

One, two, three.

Okay, now it looks like I have all the frames that I need, before going into my inbetweens.

One, two, three, four, one, two.

One, two, three, four, five, six, okay.

And that's the end of Part VI.