SPLASH – Spinemation

Categories: 2D Animation
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About Course

Learn to create a BIG SPLASH with your animation!

The SPLASH course was created to help you to bring illustrations to life using the concepts of storytelling and professional techniques to create stunning effects with static images.

For this course you will learn about storytelling, how to analyze an illustration and add your own tweaks to the story it is telling. We will also learn how to plan and animate cameras in After Effects and how to create advanced setups in Spine to tell a good story and have a very polished animation piece for your portfolio.

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Course Content

0 – Introduction
In Splash we will cover the tools necessary to bring an illustration to life. We are going from storytelling, to planning the scene, and learn the Spine to After Effects workflow, using the cameras and set the timings for action and the beats of the scene as well.

01 – Intro To Storytelling
In the storytelling lesson, you will be introduced to story structure, the storyteller perspective and how to add your own twist to the story being told already in the illustration.

02 – Exploring the File and Preparing for AFX
Let's have an overview of the source file (.psd), the layers, characters and how to prepare the assets to After Effects.

03 – Preparing Files in Photoshop
We will learn what is important to keep and why the preparation for After effects, to create an animatic is different from the preparation to export the characters to Spine.

04 – Intro to After Effects
After Effects will be an important tool in this workflow. Here you will have an overview of the software, the main tools and concepts we will use and how to get prepared to handle 3d cameras.

05 – Intro to Cameras In After Effects
We will 3D cameras and 3d workflow in After effects to help us telling our story. With this lesson you will understand how the cameras and the 3d space works, how to navigate in 3d and how to properly use the cameras.

06 – Planning and Storyboards
Back to Photoshop, we will unfold the file and play with layers to create the beats of the story. By reframing the composition we will create a planning storyboard that will guide us along the project.

07 – Timing the Scene
Now let's go back into After Effects to set our layers and animate the cameras to find the right timing. This will be important to the next steps in Spine.

08 – Exporting the Characters to Spine
Once again in Photoshop, we will organize, clean up, rename the layers and isolate the characters to be imported in Spine.

09 – Importing in Separated Skeletons & Organizing
Importing the characters in Spine using different skeletons in order to have a better and organized workflow.

10 – Rigging the Priest
First character to be rigged will be the main character. Here we will understand what solutions he need in order to deliver the planned acting.

11 – Meshing the Priest
After creating the rig, we need to prepare the image assets, turning them into meshes that will allow deformation and a polished animation.

12 – Rigging the Spider
Here we will rig the second character, a Spider that differs in structure from the humanoid character. This will force us to find different solutions to make it act like a real spider.

13 – Meshing the Spider
Same as the Priest, now it is time to mesh the spider in order to have also the same polished treatment we gave to the priest.

14 – Syncing timing between After Effects and Spine
With the characters ready, it is time to some back and forth between Spine and After effects to get the exact timing information we are using in AE to sync our character's animation in Spine.

15 – Animating
After setting up the timing, comes the animation part, where we will put the characters in motion according to the planned storyboard and following the timing we get from AE.

16 – Exporting the Final Animation and Replacing Assets in After Effects
After animation is done. It is time to export the animation from Spine and replacing the placeholders we set in After effects.

17 – Animating the Little Spiders
Now we start adding extra motion to the scene to support the story we are telling. Starting by the little spiders in the columns.

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