You Probably Already Know This

Most of you reading this already know some basics and already saw so many tips around internet, but when you try to put all of this knoledge into CSP you may find a overhelming interface that sometimes scary you, but that’s what i’m here for!

I’m going to give you some tips to make your animation process flows a little better.

 

 

Using Shortcuts!!

In my humble opinion, this is the most important thing that each one of us has to dominate about the software we’re using. Understanding how to make things easier for you, so you can use all your brain power to draw each new frame!

I recomend using some kind of keyboard that allow you to set macro for your keys, in this way, you can avoid having to dance with your hand over the keyboard and just press a single buttom to peform an action.

I’ll share how I use my shortcuts so you all can use as a template and adapt for better ergonomics for your own.

My Shortcuts

List of shortcuts :

\

- W/X for previous/next frame\

  + \-ShiftW/X:prev./nextdrawing(cell)\

- C : playback/pause\

  + \-ShiftC:backtostart\

- S : new cell\

 + \-ShiftS:erasedrawing

   + \-ShiftK:addframestokey

   + \-Shift\\:removeframesfromkey

  + \-CtrlH:on/offlighttable

 

\

- Space  : move around\

- Z : zoom tool

 + \-ShiftQ/D:rotate15°ccw/cw

- Q : mirror view horizontally

- T : show/hide timeline

- Tab : show/hide all tabs

- O : toggle onion skin

      + \-ShiftCtrlRightclick:selectlayer(veryuseful!!)

When using pen tool :

- E : eraser

- G : paint bucket

- Shift (hold) : straight line

- R : rotate

- V : move tool

- Shift N : new cell folder

- Shift L : rename cells in chronological order

- L : manage cells

- Crtl S : save

- Ctrl E : export as image sequence

   + \-CtlrShiftE:exportasimage

   + \-CtrlAltE:exportasgif

- Ctrl M : export as mp4

[Pro Tip]

I use a keydial for my shortcuts and there I have the option to set this pop-up with 6 shortcuts! It’s very useful to have those buttons on screen for fast pace usage!

Totally recommend!

[PRO TIP] Create your Animation Workspace

I’ve been developing my own workspace for years of work, but you all can take advantage from dinossaurs like me and other artists that share their workspaces online and start tweaking for your personal use and tablet dimentions.

Using a workspace is also amazing since animating isnt illustrating!

In this same concept, we don’t use the same shortcuts and tools for both.

Setting up your animation workspace helps loading your animation shortcuts whenever you change to this workspace!

The thing I can recommend is using @Somon64 workspace as a starting point!

 

 

Animating

The first step for animating IMO is planing!

Planing your animations helps a lot to give consitency and life for it. One of the most important aspects of animating is playing with the pacing of your frames to trick our eyes and brain to see something else!

That’s why we need to plan before drawing! Understanding that before inbetweens we have to create keyframes.

Here i’ll show an example.

In this scene from my still on work short animation project, the woman will bring the food from the stove to the table (both took the invisible potion, so have some imagination!)

She’ll walk a little and then perfom the action of setting the pan over the table.

The bigger numbers are the keyframes, while the small are the inbetweens.

Now that we have our animation planned, we can start working on these keyframes and having fun explorating gesture for our character!

After we finish the key frames we can work on our inbetweens, and for this step I have an amazing tip that is using the light table!

The light table is an useful tool to help you refering your other keyframes and helps a lot keeping our character consistent!

In can turn the light table in the Window menu.

To use the light table you just have to turn it on. Drag and drop the frame you want to use as reference and boom!

It will show up on your canvas!

A good tip on the light table is using the same shortcut to jump between frames to change the frame on the table by simply selecting it and pressing your shortcut!

Easy right!

Clean Up and Colors

After finishing our rought pass on the animation, we can move foward and start to clean up!

I personaly like to turn-off the anti-aliasing from the brush to have super crispy edges (helps in the color stage!)

Now we need to create a new animation folder and start drawing again!

After redrawing our frames and should have something like this.

Dont forgot to use the light table and the onion skin to help you keep the character consitency!

Create a new animation folder and work on those colors with the help of the bucket tool!

Wrap it up!

And now we arrived at the end of the tutorial , i hope it was easy to undestand how I personaly like to use the CSP for animating!

My focus here is to show you all that we can control our workspace to better fit the situation! So please, thanks for the time and happy animating!

If you have any questions dont hesitate to write them in the commets!

 

PS:

Brush: Standard G-Pen, no anti-aliasing, small variation of size with pen pressure (for a most consistent line weight)