Photoshop: Quick & Easy Animation Like a Professional

This lecture will provide resources for finding readily available royalty-free and public domain video that you can use in your projects.

In this lesson we will go over what is needed to get started animating in Photoshop as well as go over a few pre-production best practices.

Here we will go over ways to import your video and get set up in Photoshop to animate and rotoscope. We'll also discuss what it means to bring in various HD, NTSC, and PAL video sizes and what this means for your final video output later.

In this lesson we will adjust our frames per second and I'll explain what the different settings mean for your final video. I'll also explain what stop motion animation is and discuss two ways you can create a stop motion animation effect.

In this lesson I will show you how you can start drawing right over your video as well as how to make a very simple frame by frame animation on top of your video. Use this technique to make simple or complex projects alike moving forward.

In this lesson I'll show you how to use Photoshop's onion skinning feature in its timeline to make a simple frame by frame animation. Patience is required for this technique if you would like to make something more sophisticated or complex.

This is a simple way to get more seconds of animation for your efforts. I'll show you how to make an easy looping animation that only uses 3-4 images. This lesson is a little longer than the others, but if you invest a few minutes here you will save yourself hours, days, weeks, and months of work later by learning this simple trick.

In this lesson we'll put our feet up a little and have Photoshop animate some specific things like screen position, opacity, size changes, rotations, and styles for us. This lesson is a little longer than the others but it is jam packed with tons of ways to animate using Photoshop. Don't miss it!

In this lesson I'll show you the technique I use the most in my own work. This is the traditional frame by frame style of animation. It can be done with drawings or photographs only or together with video. In this lesson I'll show you how to rotoscope, which is essentially taking video as a guide, drawing over it, then putting the final drawings in a video timeline to get the final animated product. This lesson is a little longer than the others but I promise you will get a TON out of it. Have fun with this.

In this lesson I'll show you how you can turn your video layer into a Photoshop Smart Object and then apply filters and other special effects to it.

Please beware though that some filters and effects are extremely distracting and cheesy. Try to adjust each filter's settings to make them more subtle or consider just adding the effect to part of your video or one layer instead of on top of your entire final product. Your special effect should enhance, not take away or distract from whatever story you are trying to tell. We don't want to be watching your final work, engaged with your character, only to then suddenly think, "Oh! Page peel transition. Plastic wrap filter." Do you know what I mean? When in doubt, TAKE IT OUT. Less is more. :-)

In this lesson I'll show you how to get a painterly effect by using brush tools and effects over your video.

Here I'll show you how to take your final video and export it into a video format that can be used by itself or later imported into other programs like Premier, After Effects, Maya, Flash, Final Cut, Avid, etc.

Post your experiments, drafts, animated messes, and final masterpieces here.

This is a lesson from my new social media course, Skyrocket Your Social Media Impact: For Artists & Idealists

This is a lesson from my in-depth Web Design Foundations course, Web Snax: Super Simple Recipes For Easy Website Design. This lesson will walk you through creating your first basic animated Gif using Adobe Photoshop.

Here is a quick cheat sheet you can refer back to that will help you with a few key points covered more in depth in this course.

Here's the first minute and a half of my new film in progress. My next step will be trying to see if I can get it down to under 15 minutes. It
covers 18 years in the life of one Indian American immigrant's experience before, during, and after her arranged marriage. It uses the techniques I cover in this course.

Here is a free, fast, and easy way to painlessly and professionally remove text or an object from a still image using a free online tool called Fotor. Check it out!

Don't stop at making animations in Photoshop. Have a look at some of my  favorite FREE and intuitive tools that will have you making social media graphics, web sites, illustrations, and more. Get a taste of what is possible in under 10 minutes and be up and running ASAP.  [This lecture   comes from my full course, Skyrocket Your Creativity: 7 Easy Ways.]

In this lecture are a list of links and resources to help you move on from here.

Thank you for taking this course. Here students will get a proper send-off and learn how to leave a rating or review to help others know if this might be a good course for them.

Students will learn more about my other courses, services, staying in touch, and more.