Welcome to the first of many newsletters from the Goob-Zone! This week I will be covering the process I use when I animate attacks for smaller character concepts.

Below is the character I animated an attack for.

Before we get started, If you’re in a good spot and have time, I would encourage you to animate your own attack while reading this.

It helps me a ton having an example at hand while I’m animating or even just drawing something, so give it a go!

Key-poses.

This is usually the first thing I do when animating an attack for any character. The process of this principal are as follows:

Determine what the key poses of your character will be. These poses will be the most important and parts of your animation. They will serve as the foundation during the process of animation

I normally draw 2 key poses for a simple attack but you can do more depending on how many stages your attack has.

These are 3 things I use to help me determine whether or not a pose would be determined a key pose.

The reason I use these as determining factors is because these frames are usually the most potent and exaggerated parts of your animation, therefore they are the most noticeable and important to define right away.

Since this guy will only be going back into his base stance after the attack, I wont need to add a key pose for after the attack so in this case I just need 2 key poses

The 2 images below are the key poses I drew for this attack I animated.

What do I do if I’m having a hard time figuring out key poses?

If you are having trouble getting your key poses right, try to act out the motion/pose. 

Yes I know it sounds goofy and yes you will look like you are fighting your demons but I promise this can help so much with getting the poses and motion right!

While doing this mentally take note how each part of your body is positioned and keep track of what the motion/pose looks like!

Then while you’re drawing that pose, exaggerate it by making the it look like the character is doing something more than necessary.

For example, in the first key pose I brought the hammer almost to ground level and brought his foot up off the ground to sell the pose even more.

Timing

Before we start animating the in-betweens (The frames in between the key poses) Lets first decide how we are going to time the animation.

What I mean by this is how will we pace the animation by using more or less frames.

One way this is done is by using the slow in, slow out. What this means is that the we have more frames during the build up/anticipation phase.

Then we have less frames during the attack motion and finally more frames for when we exit the attack back into the base stance.

Timing is important because this will really determine how smooth and realistic your animation looks, so keep in mind how an attack would look if it were in real life.

Since my character is using a larger weapon, it would make sense to have a longer anticipation before the attack as well as a longer exiting out of the attack pose.

That’s cool and all, but how do we even animate this?

The in-betweens

While you’re animating your in-betweens, always keep in mind your method of timing and animate accordingly.

Since I’m using slow in and slow out, we need quite a few build-up frames. To do this I broke down the attack even further. (The italicized list items are the extra in-between actions I broke down.)

1. Picking up the hammer off the ground

2. Leaning backwards more and more while bringing the hammer further back

3. Enter key pose 1

4. Enter key pose 2

5. Sliding the hammer closer to the character before he picks it up

6. Picking the hammer back up

You’ll notice that I skipped adding in-between frames from key pose 1 → key pose 2 because of the slow in and slow out timing method I used!

For each in-between action, I usually add 2-3 frames for each action as a baseline to get started, You can add more or less if needed!

The below frames are the in-betweens I created for him picking up the hammer off the ground.

What if I don’t like a frame or the current animation I made?

Animation is an iterative process, so nothing is completely set in stone! If at any point you feel like something doesn’t look good or you don’t like it, go ahead and change it up!

You wont always get things right the first time and that’s okay!

The in-betweens are a rinse and repeat process for each action I broke down above. Do this for all actions and soon enough you will have the entire animation done!

If you are wondering about VFX or other animations, I will not be covering those in this email because this is already pretty long.

I will however cover more general tips further down so keep reading!

General tips on cleaning things up

Now since everything above just about covers it for animating the base attack, the last bit of this email will be general tips about how you can make your animation look cleaner as well as tool based tips regarding Aseprite!

How to not get overwhelmed and lost in the details while animating?

While you’re animating, it is important to focus on one detail at a time but this can lead to you getting “lost in the sauce” and wasting time! It is important to always have the bigger picture in mind!

To get the a preview set up, use the preview window in Aseprite and constantly check back to watch the animation play out after drawing or changing something to see the animation as a whole!

My animation is too fast or too slow, do I really need to remove/add frames to change this?

Nope! You can actually adjust the time it takes to go from frame to frame!

Keeping track of volume

The last tip I would like to share is to always keep a consistent size and shape of your character during animation. It doesn’t have to be exact every time but keep it close and consistent at least!

This is especially important when creating movement in a cloak or cloth I do tend to add/remove one too many pixels at a time!

An easy way to do this is to just keep track of how many pixels you remove, then add those somewhere on the cloak or character that makes sense!

This can even be used to create the illusion of movement/swaying!

Closing thoughts

Well that just about covers it here for this email! I hope you have gained some valuable insight and knowledge about the process of animation!

I know this can all seem like a lot to keep track of but the best way to go about it is to just practice one principle and step at a time as you need them!

You can always come back to this for any information you need while you’re creating an animation. With enough practice this all becomes second nature!

Anyways that just about does it for me here, I hope you have an absolutely amazing week and I will see you next Sunday my fellow goofy goober!