• For a complete list of Topics Discussed, please see the previous lessons.

Assignment:

• Today, we are going to begin preparing for the final animation that we discussed last week. You will develop your own original character that will be drawn in Illustrator, imported into Animate CC and converted to an armature that will be featured in an original short form animation.

• Brainstorm! Think of your favorite cartoon characters, and use sites like cartoonnetwork.com for inspiration. Think of cartoon characters you loved when you were little, and try to think of what was so special about them.

• Create a new Letter size (8.5 in x 11 in) Illustrator Web document, and use the text tools to answer the following questions about your character:
– Who is this character?
– What’s his/her/it’s name? What is he/she/it like? (Nice? Mean? Angry? Happy? Good? Bad? Somewhere in between?)
– Where does he/she/it live?
– What goals does this character have?
– What is unique about this character? Does he/she/it have any quirky character traits? (i.e. talks funny, speaks only in rhyme, etc.)
– Would you watch a cartoon starring this character? Why?
• Using this brainstorm as a guide, sketch out your character on a piece of paper. Don’t worry if you don’t think you can draw, just do your best to get a visual concept of your character. Repeat: don’t go overboard on the artwork – these should just be concept sketches.

• Later in the week, we will be drawing these characters on another artboard in this Illustrator document, using the shape and color tools, with the intent of eventually taking these illustrations into Animate CC. What this means is that you should use simple shapes to make complex shapes, because these animate better – keep this in mind as you design your character!

• Remember: We will be animating these characters in Animate CC, so your character must have at least two arms and two legs. (No animated blobs, worms or snakes!)
• Your brainstorm document and concept art is due at end of class on Wednesday (04/26/17)

Assigned: April 24th, 2017
Due Date: April 26th, 2017

Student-Friendly Objective:

• I can prepare my Illustrator artwork to make a Bone Tween animation in Animate CC.

Video Link:

• None. See video links attached to Lessons 36 – 47 for review.

• Create a new Illustrator Web document with all the default settings.
• Use the Shape tools to draw six shapes: a Head, a Body, a Left Arm, a Right Arm, a Left Leg and a Right Leg.
• In the Front View document, use the black selection arrow to select the different parts of your character, and use the fn+F8 shortcut to convert each part to a Symbol. Every part of your character that is going to move should be made a separate symbol! Name each of the symbols appropriately as you create them. When you are finished, at a minimum you should have symbols for your character’s Head, Body, Right Arm, Left Arm, Right Leg and Left Leg.
• Save this file as “Your Name – Body Parts.ai”. We will use this file to import into Animate CC.
• Open a new Animate CC HTML5 canvas. Make the size 800 x 600, and set the framerate to 30fps. The stage color can be any color of your choice.
• Use the “File -> Import -> Import to Stage” menu command to locate and import your “Your Name – Body Parts.ai” file. Walk through the prompts to import your body parts into Animate. Make sure to select all the parts, and select “Single Animate Layer” from the “Convert Layers to:” dropdown menu.
• Use what we learned yesterday, and the in-class demonstration today to add bones to your shapes. (Remember: “Start from the heart” and work your way out to the arms and legs.)
• Make your stick figure move! Add up to 120 frames to your animation, and use the Motion Tween-style Armature layer to animate your character’s poses.
• We will use this technique next week with an original character design to produce a simple animation. Save your file as “Your Name – Stick Figure.fla” and submit a copy to today’s Google Classroom assignment post by end of day on Friday.