Creative from Home: Animation

Think about some of your favorite movies. Do any of the have characters or animals that movie and talk as if they were real? These types of films are created through animation, a unique art form that requires creating many different images that rapidly change to make it look like the drawing is moving.

Animation is a visual storytelling tool, where animators (the artists) make a storyboard that creates and illustration though a series of picture or frames. To make it look like the characters or objects are moving, they have to draw how a character moves from one scene to another. In traditional animation, images are drawn or painted by hand, but today most animations are made by CGI, or Computer-Generated Imagery.

Today, we are going to make our own animation! We will being by showing you a simple flip-book design, but it uses the same concepts as the artists who create movies and shows for companies like Disney or DreamWorks.

Let's get started!

You Will Need

• A pencil, market, or crayon

• A pad of post-its or sticky notes

Step One: Meet Our ‘Character’
We are going to start with a simple animation: making a ball bounce. 

Our character is going to be the ball that we will make move around the page. The ball needs to stay mostly the same in each image so get comfortable with drawing the shape and design you want for your ball. As long as you can draw a circle, you can be an animator!

Step Two: Storyboard
We mentioned earlier how animators have their story planned out before they start drawing. This step is important because it let’s you know what you are actually going to draw. 

To start your animation, ask yourself, “What would happen if I bounced a ball?” It would bounce off the ground and come back up, but slightly lower after each bounce. All we need to do to visualize that through animation is draw the ball at different locations on our post-it, and then fill in the steps in-between.

Step Three: Draw Your First Frame

To start your animation, draw a circle in a corner on the open side of the post-it. Make sure you can flip through the pages of your post-it. The non-sticky end of your post-it-note is going to be the “top” of the scene.

Step Four: Move the Ball A Little 

The next frames will show the ball moving slightly. There should only be one ball shown on each individual post-it page. 

Keep in mind, you want to move the ball along the pathway set up in the storyboard. Since we started with the ball up at the top of the post-it, gradually moved it down and closer to the middle.

Step Five: Make the Next Frames

Continue drawing your circles, moving little-by-little on each post-it.

• First, gradually move the ball down and towards the center of the post-it. When you’ve reached the center, you want your ball to start bouncing back up. 

• Move the ball gradually back up the post-it frame. Once you reach the top of the post-it, you can have your ball bounce back to the other side if you want. 

• Follow the same pattern of going down and back up as you move through the post-it pad, as shown in the frames below.

Step Six: Watch Your Ball Move

When you like the path your ball has taken, it’s time to watch it bounce! Hold the closed end of the post-it pad between your thumb and pointer finger. With your other hand, use your thumb to scroll through the post-its like the pages of a book so that they move quickly. You will see your ball move along the page!

Congratulations! You’re now an animator!

Don’t forget to share your animations with us on Instagram at @arckboston!