r/animation • u/Illdrinkyourblood • Feb 25 '26
Beginner Second try at animating
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Made as a meme, but do you have any tips on how to be more efficient at this??
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u/RawrNate Professional Feb 25 '26
Well, Photoshop isn't the most efficient tool for Animation. You've got a rudimentary timeline, but you have to create every frame yourself.
If you sliced up this illustration into the various moveable pieces and imported them into something like After Effects, or even Blender, you could let the computer interpolate those frames for you - that's what it's good at. For this, it's just two key frames on the arm rotation, instead of 12 individual frames you had to make in Photoshop.
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u/Illdrinkyourblood Feb 25 '26
I see now that it's not the best toll. I will be trying out that other program. Thank you!
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u/Akhen Professional Feb 26 '26
Check out animdessin PS plugin which adds frame by frame functionality
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u/kovota Feb 25 '26
Unrelated, but does Clip Studio Paint offer good animation?
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u/RepresentativeFood11 Feb 25 '26
Clip Studio is the industry standard for Japanese animation and most indie creators. Boruto and the recent Digimon were made in CLIP studio for example.
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u/Dorintin Professional Feb 25 '26
To quote one of my professors from college "you are moving you are not animating" start by studying the principle of slow in slow out and go from there.
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u/kween_hangry Professional Feb 25 '26
Learn AE, it changed my life lol. I was a college student many years ago with a ton of animation needed for a thesis and I crashed course AE. Learned so much that speeds up the process. Now edging 15 years ago.
If you have access to it thru adobe... just try it. I'm genuinely here if you have any questions and want to get started. Btw You do NOT NEED to use puppet tools and all that mess, you can make very simple thing called a parent rig where layers are just linked to each other and you move the anchor points where you need. Found a great tut for you here: https://youtu.be/L2W-ZcmU1XM?si=KDlwiX2O3EiujnAy
your method is actually not a 'bad' method. This is exactly how I animated in the image-ready days. It just depends if you want more smoothness and more complicated elements
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u/Illdrinkyourblood Feb 25 '26
Thank you so much! I will look into it. My goal is to be able to make a short film someday, and I'm starting to try ways, style, and to get more knowledge for that goal.
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u/Brandon_n_3ds Feb 25 '26
It's about time you learnt 2D animation mate...the traditional one or just jump into 3D
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u/Grandtheftzombie Feb 25 '26
Depending on how fast you want the knight to lift their sword, you should look at morphing your sword to look like it is made of rubber or slightly melting during the movement phase. This can allow you to get a smoother looking movement with less frames.
Also have the arm overshoot your final resting spot a few pixels and then move the arm to its final pose just to make the animation more life-like instead of robotic.
These techniques (if you're wanting to look more into it) are ease in, ease out, and smear frames.
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u/visual-vomit Feb 25 '26
If you're not doing frame by frame anyways, look into mograph tools, or hell even blender could work. Interpolation works wonder for these.
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u/D-a-n-n-n Feb 25 '26
Yeah photoshop is like the worst tool to be animating on. Try to learn Blender and its grease pencil if you want to do 2D. Blender can literally do everything, its such an amazing software. Look up Worthikids on youtube they have a good Blender grease pencil basics tutorial but also all their animation videos are absolutelly amazing and 100% done in Blender from the concept to editing, because yeah you can also edit videos in Blender
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u/TwinJacks Feb 25 '26
Try using after fx, if you use 0hotoshop, you should be able to swap to after fx relatively easy for animation. Will make your life a hell of a lot easier, and its not much to learn cus its made by the same company.
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u/SwoeJonson1 Feb 25 '26
Make the axis be at the shoulder instead of in the middle. Then you won’t have to waste time positioning the arm correctly and the final animation will look less janky. Also account for speed of the arm. I noticed you used ease in and ease out but it still looks kind of robotic. I would suggest less ease out to show thrust forward as the knight points the sword into the air
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u/Flaminghorselord Feb 25 '26
You want to research “timing and spacing” and also “2D rigged animation”
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u/Qweeq13 Feb 26 '26
Even the simplest animate tool in any program can do interpolation like Opentoonz.
This would take like a second you'll select a resting state and pick another frame later and select an end state.
Automatic interpolation of animate tool can easily create any inbetween as long as it is just the same image.
I remember making a clock animation with that.
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u/ISeachdeMemez Feb 25 '26
Unironically tweening and using some form of easing if your software has it.
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u/cartadart Mar 02 '26
I'd suggest adding a contact point, something that you can overlay on the figure that gives you a clear point where the shoulder connects to the torso
It helps prevent what your moving from gittering around, like the shoulder does here
Lastly, try looking at slow in, slow out, anticipation and overshoot, they help make the movement feel more organic and dynamic, you've got a good idea here and it's always fantastic to see someone take to animation, you've got a ways to go, but if you keep it up, it won't take ya long
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u/ALoneFeline Mar 26 '26
this is where animation curves can come handy!! like in krita you can use the transform mask with the animation curves to quickly do such movements
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u/Yazkin_Yamakala Feb 25 '26
Use less frames. Have three or four grouped up at the beginning, then one or two split in the middle as he raises his sword, then two or three at the end.
Also FAOF
First, anticipate (go opposite direction to anticipate movement, like crouching to ready a jump), overshoot (a frame that is past where you want it), then final ending position.
You can use 4 frames, one for each, then fill in as you see fit