2D Animation for Beginners with Photoshop and After Effects

Adding movement, life, and character to your illustrations can be a hugely rewarding challenge. Visual artist, and specialist in animation and motion design, Bruno Bayeux, better known as Nobru, shows you how to give your illustrations soul, one step at a time.

In this course, learn to transform your illustrations into 2D animations. Look at some exercises to unleash your creativity, draw those first lines, and give your animations personality, exploring everything that software like Photoshop and After Effects have to offer.

Begin by hearing about Bruno Bayeux’s career so far in the world of animation and illustration, and take a look at some of his most notable works. He also shares his artistic influences, from movies and drawings to skateboarding and street art.

Then start looking for inspiration to define the theme of your piece and create a mood board. From there, do a series of exercises to loosen up your drawing hand and unlock your creativity. Gradually bring your first sketch to life, see how to digitize it, and work on it in Adobe Photoshop.

Next, Bruno teaches you to define a color palette to achieve the desired mood and finish off your illustration in Photoshop by organizing your animation layers frame by frame.

Now it’s time to get animating, starting with looping your frames in After Effects. Bruno shows you how best to put together your timeline and apply motion effects including Puppet Pin, Turbulent Displacement, Wave Distortion, and Particle World.