Learn how to bring an inanimate object to life as a fun and quirky animated character.

This class covers a complete character animation workflow for beginners, including illustration, rigging and animation.

This class utilizes non-human characters that can be animated in a stylized way, to avoid the need for accuracy, and instead focus on the foundational aspects of rigging and animation. Plus, personifying something unexpected is an exercise in learning the nuances of movement that give something human-like qualities, even if it isn't human.

Character animation enables the viewer to picture themselves in the character's shoes, and relate your message to their own life. But character animation can be challenging if you don't know how to set up a character to be animated (aka rigging), or how to move a character in a stylized yet realistic way.

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This class is a mixture of theory and hands-on step-by-step instruction.

On the theory side, you'll learn about:

• how to balance form and function in your character illustrations
• different tools for character rigging and animation
• how to choose what to animate that will well work for a 2D character
• different "modes" of animating

On the hands-on side, you'll:

• illustrate a 2D character
• set up a reusable rig using my After Effects add-on tool of choice (Limber)
• and finally, create a short looping character animation

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This class will give you a little taste of each step of character illustration, rigging and animation. From here, you'll be ready to dive deeper into each topic to master different styles and more complex characters.

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These 3 animations are covered, step-by-step, but the skills you'll learn can be applied to many different character animations:

24 Lessons (2h 48m)