Build a Friend: From Pencil to Movement

Do you ever feel like the characters you draw are missing something? Like they're a bit stiff and lack that spark of energy? Maybe you've thought about bringing them to life with animation, but you're not sure where to start.

This is where motion graphics expert Carlos Albarrán, better known as Zenzuke, steps in. In this online course, he teaches you basic animation concepts and simple techniques to transform a sketch on paper into an animated friend who can walk, run, jump, and even change facial expressions.

By the end, you'll have a digital puppet that you can easily animate with hundreds of poses and movements.

Begin by meeting your teacher, Zenzuke. He gives you a brief overview of the course, the tools you need, and what you can expect to learn.

Next, he shows you how to sketch your character and create thumbnails with different poses for the animation phase. Transfer the sketch to Photoshop and finish your character design before moving on to After Effects.

Now it's time to turn your stiff cutout into a fully flexible 3D friend. Learn how to animate the individual body parts step by step, starting with the limbs, followed by the torso, and finally the head. Then see how to piece them together into a working body and make your character walk without looking like a robot.

Finally, add a background to give your friend some context. Zenzuke wraps up the course by introducing you to some advanced concepts for more expressive faces, including smiles, scowls, blinking, and looks of surprise.

Now you know how to bring any character to life piece by piece, like a modern-day Dr. Frankenstein.

Create an animated character from sketch to rigging—the set of controls that allow our puppet to take on different poses—using a free set of After Effects extras and tricks.

Anyone who likes drawing and is interested in learning about character animation, as well as artists with experience in character creation who want to take their work to the next level. This course is also great for anyone who's already familiar with After Effects and wants to learn new tricks to get the most out of the program.

A working knowledge of Photoshop and basic notions of drawing are recommended to get the most out of this course.

As for materials, you need a pencil, a digital camera or a smartphone (if you decide to sketch your character on paper), a graphics tablet for color in Photoshop (your teacher uses a Wacom tablet), and access to Adobe Photoshop and After Effects (Zenzuke uses version 5.5 throughout the course).