2D Character Animation: Dialogue and Acting
What you'll learn
- You'll learn animation techniques to bring a character to life!
- You'll learn how to add a dialogue track
- How to create mouth shapes
- How to animate the mouth to the dialogue
- How to animate key poses, with anticipation + overshoot
- How to rig your character to animate eye blinks, hand poses and facial expressions
- How to animate a scene
- You'll learn Adobe Animate
Requirements
- To take this course, you should have a basic understanding of animation principles: I've covered these in the first 2 courses in this series, so check them out first if you need to!
- In this course I use Adobe Animate, but you can apply the workflow to any animation software
Description
Thanks for checking out this course on 2D Character Animation for Dialogue and Acting!
If you love animation and want to know how to bring your characters to life, have them speaking and moving around a scene, this course will teach you exactly that. I’m going to guide you through, step by step, the exact process that professional animators use to add lip sync animation to a dialogue track, and set key poses to their character in any scene for a TV show or a movie.
This course is the third course in a series on learning 2D animation. My first two animation courses are:
Learn to Animate: Animation Principles
2d Character Animation: Walk Cycles
If you are brand new to animation, and want to know how to set key frames, how to work with animation principles, check out the first 2 courses in the series. This course focuses solely on how to rig and animate a character for dialogue. At the end of the course, you’ll be able to animate a character to a short audio clip, and be bale to do smooth, acting poses.
To start out, you’ll learn things like the proper order of rigging and how to build a simple character in Adobe Animate.
From there, you’ll learn how to take your assets and build out multiple frame options, inside each one, so that you can have things like eye blinks and facial expressions.
You’ll then learn all about animation mouth charts, I’ll show you exactly how to make your own mouth charts and set them up inside your character, so that when it comes to animating, all you’ll have to do is use Adobe Animate’s powerful Frame Picker to speed through your dialogue scenes.
This saves you so much time, and allows you to focus on the fun part of animating, which is setting up the big acting poses.
Then you’ll learn the template used for making any key pose read like a fluid and natural movement. I’ll show you how to set your anticipation, over-shoot and settle and explain why you animate in these 3 steps.
As you progress step by step throughout the course, there is opportunity to complete assignments and to ensure that you are moving through the process and able to achieve the final project.
After you are finished, you’ll be a fully fledged animator, with a crucial dialogue project under your belt. With this, you’ll be able to finalize your animation reel and know that you’ve got a professional grade portfolio piece to show to an animation studio.W
When you enrol in this course, you’ll be joining a growing group of artists and animators, that have come together and are sharing their skills, talent and ideas. You’ll be able to see their work in the project section, and you can also direct message me at any time to ask questions, or to get personalised feedback on your work. I love working with students and spend time each day discussing ongoing projects and work.
I can’t wait for you to join in and get started. Animation is an really exciting, creative and rewarding field to work in. Together, we’re goon to spend the next few hours with me, to improve your animation skills today and help you take your first steps towards an exciting career path in animation.
Who this course is for:
- Animators and character designers
- Illustrators
- Storytellers
- Anyone interested in animation, who wants to learn animating techniques
Featured review
Instructor
- 4.7 Instructor Rating
- 8,164 Reviews
- 33,959 Students
- 21 Courses
My background spans the disciplines of drawing, painting, filmmaking and animation. I studied Film in Dublin, and spent a semester on a scholarship at the Tisch School of the Arts, NYU in New York. I later studied drawing and animation. Since 2005, I have worked in studios in Vancouver and Dublin as a professional Background Designer and Environment Artist. I've also worked as a storyboard artist, concept artist, and I have directed a number of short animated films.
All in all, I've worked for over 15 years as an Artist, Illustrator and Animation Professional. I've provided artwork for studios whose clients include Disney UK, Sony Pictures Animation, HMH Publishing, to name a few.
I also have an ongoing painting and drawing practice, and I paint portraits on commission, and exhibit my work in galleries. My passion is to teach others the whole spectrum of art skills that I've learned and developed over the course of my career.