How to animate a character (2 mins)

If you ever wondered how animation films are made... this 2 mins video explains the process of animating a character.

 

SHORT EXPLANATION

- Make or use an object

- Make an armature (=skeleton with bones)

- Parent the object to the bones

- Then give the object different poses at different frames in the timeline (an animation is just a rapid succession of frames).

 

Done.

 

LONGER EXPLANATION

 

1. Start from an object/character you made.

 

2. Then make an armature, i.e. bones, which is like a skeleton for your object. Obviously your bones will have to move in a clever way, for instance when you bend the knee, it will have to bend forward, not backward. This can be done with inverse kinematics which is an object constraint you can add to a bone, that has to affect a chain of bones.

 

3. Then you parent the object to the armature (skeleton) you made.

 

4. And finally in pose mode, you can keyframe different poses in a timeline. For instance at time zero your character is in its default pose. At frame 5 you move it down and make it bend its knees, keyframe that. Then move frame 10 and move it up and to the left, keyframe that position, and so on.

 

(I added a plane and some colours)

 

5. And then you hit the play button!

 

 

 

Done