ANIMATION REFERENCE in 4 easy STEPS

what's up guys welcome to another episode this is episode number 7 and on this episode we are going to cover a reference how you should reference for animation I will show you how I personally do my planning how I go out if necessary to shoot some reference so gonna go up yet again right I'm gonna show you like how I edit it together afterwards how I go into Maya and just before I start animating just to make sure that you guys know what you guys need to do just before you start really setting o

f locking keys and making sure that your work is neat it's clean and it's as effective as possible so follow me and let's get through yet another episode on tips and tricks first step that we need to do before you do anything else you need to think very hard and plan very well what exactly you are going to shoot and how it's going to look in your final shot you need to make sure that when you take a reference that it looks as close as possible to what your final animation is gonna be you can use

props you can use different angles you can use editing whatever magic you want to use you need to make sure that you kind of blend together very well and that's exactly what we're gonna do next we're gonna plan it out we're gonna draw some stuff and we're gonna think about exactly what we want to accomplish that is the first step so let's do this let's [Music] think this through and see what we can come up with for this reference shot what should I do yeah I think I'm gonna do a few shots becau

se I think there will be more representative or how far you can take this reference method so I'm gonna do a few shots maybe maybe three shots yeah I'm gonna go out and there's a part that I know and that has normally an empty space that I can do some stuff so maybe I'm gonna take you guys there thinking that maybe I'm just gonna do like simple walk so let me see three shots right so shot number one or here at least is gonna be the brand phenol a something big is gonna happen maybe I'm thinking

I'm just going to look in my mind maybe I'm in the round I'm actually kind of going down the ramp I'm just walking down the street and I walk that way and I go pass the camera simplify things I go pass the camera this way maybe angle the camera here so I came from there and I'm gonna go walking maybe to get it up maybe a low to the ground shot or I go past here I'm in the middle here I'm doing kick because that's simple enough and because I'm no kungfu master what I kick is gonna be something li

ke this I guess jump and kick obviously this is super simple and I hope it will stretch the point of how you can take this kind of reference in a simple way oh yeah going down the ramp here and then going past the camera so go to the other one so shot number one walk for a little bit that way so I'm nice looking that way going away and and then and then once you get to the place there we'll do a jump and kick and then maybe come out we'll find out from the day okay so now that we have finished o

ur planning we have it all planned out we know we're gonna do we need to get out there and make sure that we capture our footage the best we can so for that I need to thank you guys outside once more let's get out there and capture some reference what of your I hope we can hear me alright I thought this is a good place to actually record loads of space the bit outside the weather today not good at whatsoever but we'll make the most of it I'm sure of it so let's get this started that's it that wa

s a bit uh a bit crazy but it was good I hope I had enough light and I managed to catch everything that I needed now it's time to go home and edit this stuff let's do this so that way back I hope you guys enjoy that I thought it was essential to show you guys because dinner today reference it's all about getting out there and making sure that you get the best assets for your animation whatever it takes now they've captured our reference of doing the kick and looking old you acted the fool alread

y but that's nice that's no problem because you want to animation still look as good as possible so now that we actually have all the footage we're gonna get into the editing and put it together in a way that makes sense so it's one file and it's all looking nice and cinematic and looking amazing as you want it to look in the end with your animations that is what we're gonna do next I'm gonna jump into Final Cut Pro and do some editing let's do it [Music] here here we have like a a blank project

we're gonna import our videos into a project so now we have to put it together and edit at all so it's just one shot so let's just bring our clips down all of them to make sure that all is well so let's cut it just as the I come out of the scene I don't need all the walk I just need a few steps otherwise if it comes too long and I'm thinking about how much animation do I need to do in order to to make it sink but at the same time I don't want to spend too much time animating if I don't need to

let's do the continuation shot so more or less here this is to make sure that it snaps into place just around here I should be able to see myself continuing this show so I can remove all that and then here as soon as I pop in the camera more or less there I'm gonna put in my my feet yeah that's better so now we have the kick some of you we just need a little bit of the in and almost getting into place and then cut I need maybe just this because he are moving so excessive continuation we need to

sell it [Music] so here let me just zoom in a little bit so here I don't need to show the whole thing you don't have to sell the idea I just need to sell it I need to just pull that and then and then the way to the same thing for the other side so we're going to start from there maybe so I don't need that as a pause that we need though maybe not as much as it is at the moment and one kick here to here I'm going to slow it down just because it's fun it needs to be this whole thing that needs to b

e slowed down so slow down 25 and then we're going to do this and see how that looks and I think I like the jump here so I'm going to leave that but needs to have an immediate start walking while not looking at the camera because that breaks away the illusion a little bit more hopefully that that's a bit better okay that is all reference done [Music] [Music] now that we have our video reference ready to go in Photoshop I basically just loaded the video that's all we have so now we have one layer

with the video and the first thing that we need to do we need to have our layers we know and then all time on here we're going to add a video layer new blank video layer after we have it selected here you can draw on top of this bit here like so and that is one front you can see it here very tiny I should also put a layer on top of this this is like a 2d layer so it's not a video layer if you fill the layer with a with a color it means that you can put down the opacity a little bit and you can

see your main keys over your video for the sake of this demo I'm just gonna go into the main bit which is this bit here when I actually do the kick so let's say that I actually want to find out here what are my main poses the poses that I actually definitely want to hit this will be one of my main poses here I wanna hit that one because that is a change if you have any notes they want to add to this to make sure that for example so you can add those to your poses as you drawing them in and you'l

l see them because you have to go through your reference frame by frame you really think about it as you go through it every frame same thing here so this is a main post because I'm anticipating them the the kick and then maybe this is maybe the passing post the anticipation of the kick just before I let go so this is the anticipation of the cake so I want to highlight it make sure that I get the pose if we were to do the animation we want to push this kick to make sure that it's about maybe to

frame cake get that pose spine arms these are means to be straight maybe the hand needs to be straight these armies to be doing something like that the more detail you add to this the better is gonna be in the final animations because you're thinking through your animations and getting through your main poses your past positions and you can just add notes to it as you go along so now let's export this so it's file export render video all drawings there join one by one and so now let's go into Ma

ya now that we actually got your footage edited you're ready to take it into Maya right everything is looking fabulous when outside got your stuff edited amazing so now for this one step after many years of trying different things I got this one way of doing it that I think works really well and I'd like to share with you guys is using a video player and a plug-in and that's all and I think works brilliantly and I'll show you exactly how I do it now [Music] so for this bit in order to get our re

ference into Maya we're going to be using a software called keyframe MP which it's actually just a video player that is fully packed with lots of features so I'll show you here and they the website it's by Chris rubric this player has been around for a few years now but it's getting better by the year chris is doing a great great job the one thing that I'm going to talk about here and the one thing that is really good for reference it's this thing here that is a free download which is my to keyf

rame MP and the only thing that this is it's a plugin for the player so I'll show you here exactly what I mean you have this module here in this module is basically what syncs this player with Maya this is the file that I had you can see here no difference and we're gonna just drop it here or open it it has many many features that I want going to in here one of them is you can draw on top of it now I've done it before in previous videos if you if you want to have a look at it just look at my vid

eo reviews and analysis when you actually decide to actually go into sync you should be green and if it becomes green it means that now the player and my timeline should actually sync to each other so if you scrub here so you just kinda just scrub the timeline and if you have keys you can actually kind of go through them with no problem so let me just open something let's say we have a key there a key their key they're lucky they're lucky there and a key there now we just reset it and sometimes

he gets to sink but now that is correct did you can see now when you have many keys like this it means that as you go three keys the port actually updates exactly as you do in your animation but you can see that like it's pretty straight forward so let's say you wanted to kick now and we have been animating for quite a while and we say that our first frame is number 300 and it's camera 5 so now we will go and slowly go back and forth within our keys make sure that we set our main poses as we sho

wed you before so here is a main pose so I will lift my key here and then I'll go in and post my character exactly as I want it here and I'll just go through and do the same thing for every single other pose and that is basically how you get your blocking done the easy way it's pretty simple open the player sync it block your character that's it nothing more to it once you're done or if you actually don't want to see the sync you can the sync it and then just use it as a regular player and I'm n

ot being sponsored in any way by Chris I'm just doing this because I really believe in the tool and I think he deserves the support so and with that it's a wrap so I got to the end of another video I hope this helps you a little bit with your reference this reference taking business sometimes can be complicated so if this saves you a step or two then it's a win I have to take a moment here to tell you guys that I've passed the 500 subscriber milestone and I'm super chuffed about that thank you v

ery much guys if you subscribe if you're not please subscribe please hit the like button as well and tell a friend to tell a friend that I'm here to stay and I ain't going nowhere so thank you very much for your viewership highly appreciate it I'll see you guys next Monday as always and until next time stay well stay safe page