Animating Illustrations: Illustration 1 Animated

After completing my illustration, I separated the layers for animation - lights on the red jumper, the star/spring on the headband and the layer of smoke above the mugs, merging the rest together to make working in After Effects much easier. After creating an After Effects project, I imported the .psd file, keeping the layers separate. I used effects and the glow tool for the lights on the jumper, which was extremely easy and something I have experimented with before.

For the smoke I changed the scale, size and opacity between frames but it doesn't move that well, and next time it may be easier to animate in photoshop, maybe over 12 frames and the repeating them

I had fun animating the star the most. I rotated the image first, but it rotated from the wrong point so rather than using a lot of positioning keyframes as well, I created a null object and placed it at the base of the spring. I parented the layer to the null object, creating my rotation keyframes through that rather than the layer. This time the image rotated from the right point, but it looked too flat and not very believable. I wasn't sure how to go about this, but I guessed that using the same sort of technique could work. I duplicated the star/spring layer, before using the eraser tool to delete the bottom half of the spring. I then placed another null object where that spring half of the spring started, parenting it again. I tried rotating it on top of the rotated star below, and it let me give a much more exaggerated movement. I erased the bottom half of the spring on the original layer, so that between the two layers they made up one full image.

I had to use a lot more position keyframes though to match the top half of the star to the bottom half, since the point where they should connect obviously moved when the bottom of the spring was moved. This didn't take too long though, and eventually I got the animation working with both parts.

I had a lot of fun creating this image; I feel like I found a way to colour that I enjoy and could actually finally stick to, and just trying to backgrounds more makes me want to actually concentrate on creating a few more complicated and well thought out backgrounds. I learned more in After Effects about movement and null objects than I expected to, and even though I am not a huge fan of animating, I am actually excited to try some more small pieces of After Effects animation to go on images I create. This was definitely a great exercise, and I would recommend it to other animators/illustrators.

If I was to do that again, I would probably think about the overlapping action a lot more, maybe separating the spring into three parts instead, and making the top half have a more exaggerated movement so that it was still very much to the side while the base began to move the other way again. I could still have had a lot more parts of the image animated, as they are more subtle I think than Rebecca Mock's, so in the next piece I make, I will take into account the pieces that could move/change/interact and what would add something extra to the illustration if it wasn't still.

Animating Illustrations: Illustration 1

Recently, I have been inspired by the artist Rebeca Mock's work, who uses slight hints of animation in still illustrations to add life to an an image, and tell a story without having to make a full image or video, or have another page/panel/image. I feel like thinking about small details like this would help my practice a lot, thinking about what is happening in an image, how I could show this, and how to really enhance any small details in my pieces.

For my first illustration, I took a drawing from my sketchbook (a season inspired piece of fanart and relevant right now) and decided to turn it into a full illustration. I tend to just draw characters without any context, and since Mock creates full scenes in her images, this is a great chance to actually try adding a background too. I usually stick to basic colouring or get a bit too carried away trying to pain something and not being fully happy with it. This time, I thought it would be best to actually use reference images and tutorials and actually stick to the way I intended to create the image.

I found a few reference images of  christmassy living room on Google creating a palette from the most popular colours in the images, and blocked out some basic shapes. I didn't want to background to be too busy and full of detail since I had a lot of other things to concentrate on, and I wanted the viewers to pay more attention to the characters and the animation.

I hid the background and create a new layer with a solid light brown colour, to give me something to work with while colouring. After inking my characters, I set the lines to a dark red/brown colours so that they were less harsh, and worked much better with the background and feel of the image. Using my palette created earlier, I blocked out the characters' base colours, making some adjustments to get a nicer contrast.

For the shading, I found a tutorial that I have read a few times, but never actually put into practice before. I usually just try to figure out the right colours based on my knowledge of colour theory and do them on top of the base colour, but the tutorial I found uses a greyscale layout with multiply, with extra detail and colours added afterwards. I changed the hue and saturation of my shade layer to a warmer, pink colour to go with the feel of the image. I used warmer shades for the shadows, and lighter, colder colours for the main lighting, coming from a very light window with lots of blue outside. I did the same for the furniture and background objects, trying to keep the colouring style consistent.

The tutorial can be found here.

I wanted to leave the skin do do myself, using more of a normal cel shading technique, with a blurred layer of the flat shadow underneath it.

On top of this I created a subtle yellow to orange gradient, using it as an overlay to enhance the image. I tweaked any parts of the images that needed some colour correction or more or less contrast, until the image looked close to finished.

After this, I moved on to animating in this post.

Rebecca Mock

Rebecca Mock is an illustrator and comic artist based in Brooklyn who creates illustrations with slight animation. She has created variant covers for the Adventure Time comics an illustrations for The New York Times.

The animation she uses in her images ranges from subtle to noticeable but still covering less than half the image. She uses this to tell stories and really set the atmosphere in her pieces, even if there is no text or actions happening. Her colours are also chosen very well, adding to the atmosphere and really letting you know what the setting feels like. This technique gives more depth to the image, looping perfectly so that you do not have to just watch one animated scene to see it.

I would like to create more animations/illustrations like this, to explore more sides of image making and illustration that I am not quite as strong at while still animating, and learning more techniques to make things move and interact. I feel like this could help me with my story telling, using still images to get something across while enhancing it with animation to make it feel much more alive. even just for my character designs, I could use small extra bits of animation like this to reinforce any of the character's personality traits through small movements, or important details that may move/glow etc. This would really make me think about how they act/look off of the page, and maybe with some moving environments too they could help to flesh out my characters a lot more.

My favourite piece of Mock's is the laptop one, above; the image holds so much life without there being a person present. The colours are very vivid and bright, imitating the environment that someone with this set up would really be in, drawing your attention straight away. The deep colours again help to give the image life and it feels much more of a living piece than a plain scene. It gives you just enough of a scene to be able to visualise a character, to put someone or yourself into this image. It is relatable, making it easier for the audience to connect to this image and I feel like it is very effective.