Today’s Flipaclip tutorial we will learn how to animate using Flipaclip an android phone but this will work for iphones as well so the app i’m going to be using for animating on our phones is called flipaclip. There’s also other apps that i would recommend like rough animator which is about five dollars and is also a very good app and also procreate but in this tutorial flipaclip is free and pretty much accessible to everyone so that’s the one we’re going to use. A flexible Framework for predictive diagnosis
We’re going to open up our app store and we’re going to type in flipaclip to download it then click the install button so now that you’ve got flipaclip downloaded let’s open it and i’ll just turn my screen horizontal so we can see what we’re working on it’ll ask some questions when you’re first installing i don’t want to give away how old i am 22 then when it first starts up there’s a little tutorial We recommend checking out its default tutorial just so you get familiar with.
How to Use
All the tools but we’ll also go over the tools in this video so we going to click dismiss for now so to start a new project. We’re going to click on the plus button to create a new project give a name to your project. We’ll call this one first animation click done and then we can choose a background for our animation so it comes pre-installed with all these backgrounds. We already loaded onto it or you can use the paint bucket to select a color use the image gallery or you can take a photo with your camera button.
Here but we’ll just leave it blank for now and then for the canvas size you can select all these different default options we going to select youtube 1080p because that’ll give us the highest resolution for our project. Then click the check mark to say ok and for frames per second.
How to animate on Flipaclip for Android
You can think of this as how slow or how fast your animation is so for this project we’re going to do 12 frames per second i recommend starting this way because it’ll give you a nice smooth animation but you also won’t have to draw as many frames if you’re okay with drawing a lot of frames 24 frames per second is pretty standard as well and will give you a nice smooth.
Animation so we’ll set our project to 12 frames per second press the check mark and we’re all ready to go so select create project and we have our project created so for some phones you’ll be able to rotate your canvas using your two fingers and rotating some phones will not be able to support.
This but we’ll turn it on for this example just so you can see what that looks like and when you first open up flipaclip all your tools are on the left side your animation timeline is on the bottom your layers is on the bottom right and your play button for your animation is on the right then you have your tools for your canvas on the top right to move around your canvas and flipaclip you can use two fingers to zoom in and out and you can also rotate it if you enabled that option before so zooming in can be really useful for drawing like fine details for example and to zoom back out you can select this four arrows on the top right here and that’ll reset your view back to a hundred percent so the pen is selected by default when you first start out and if you select with your finger and just start drawing.
it’ll start drawing for you if you want to undo just click the backwards button here and to redo select the forward button if you select any of the tools after it’s been clicked on already you’ll get your options for your tools so this top option if we click it we can select pencil paint brush or highlighter and then the next option is the size of your brush so if you press and hold you can see a little size option and then if you drag up you can get a bigger brush and if you select that circle and drag down you can get a smaller brush and then the square below that.
Animate for FREE on iPad: FlipaClip Beginner Course
how you select your color
so you’ll see that it has all these default color palettes next to it i like selecting the sketches palette personally and then you’ll see these colors appear on the right so you can select different colors on your palettes or you can create your own palette by clicking this add palette button at the bottom of it or you can select what color you want on the outside ring and then selecting how dark or how light it is in the middle my next tool is my eraser so i can select that and then select it again for the options and again you have the size as your first option and then you have the hardness of eraser as the next option so it’ll have either a really soft outline so you can get really soft edges or if you drag it all the way to the bottom you’ll have really hard edges for really.
solid erasing
and then the next option is the
transparency amount so if i didn’t want
to erase it completely i could set this
to say 50
and then erase it and it’ll only erase
our drawing 50 percent of the way
there’s also the paint bucket fill tool
so if i create a shape
and then use my paint bucket tool and
press in the middle it’ll fill it in
and again you can click on it again and
then press the color button to select
what color you’d like it to fill in with
the next tool i want to go over is the
lasso tool so the lasso tool is very
useful
so what you can use it for is selecting
a part of your drawing
and then you’ll see this transformation
box around it so we can select our
corners to scale our drawing
or we can select the sides to scale it
only on one side
or we can select the circle to rotate
our drawing and we can also move this
anchor point in the middle here
so that it rotates along a certain point
of the drawing
so this is good for say moving arms
around or moving the head around on the
point where the pivot would be which
would be the neck
and you can also select flip horizontal
on the side here or flip vertical
or delete it entirely with the trash can
when you’re done transforming your
drawing
just select off of it and the lasso tool
will disappear
so the next thing i want to go over is
layers for your animation
so your layers panel is on the bottom
right here right where this stack of
paper is
and that’s kind of what you can think of
layers as is stacks of paper
so if i select it my sketch layer is on
the bottom here and then my ink layer is
on the top
if i want to add a layer i can just
click this plus button on the bottom
here NoxPlayer
and it’ll add a layer to delete a layer
i can swipe
to the left and i’ll get options to
either lock the layer
copy the layer or delete the layer if i
want to change the opacity for a layer
like i did with my sketch layer here
i can press and hold and i’ll get the
same opacity
slider so i can drag up to make it more
opaque
or drag it down to make it more
transparent
so i have it at 50 right now and if i
want to make it invisible
i can tap it instead of holding it and
you’ll see a little eyeball with a cross
through it showing that it’s invisible
but it’s still there and to rename a
layer i can tap on the name
and rename it it’s important to name
your layers just so you have everything
nice and organized
always a good habit to get into so for a
quick example of how layers work i can
add a layer
call it color so if i color in this
layer
you can see the color is appearing
behind the ink layer
but if i take that layer and drag it on
top you’ll see my color is now in front
of my ink layer
so this is typically how i like to
arrange my layers i like to have the
sketch on the bottom at about fifty
percent
my color layer in the middle and then my
ink layer on top
so now that we know how to draw and flip
a clip let’s animate something
so the example we’re going to use when
we animate is a bouncing ball
it’s a really great exercise when you’re
first learning to animate and it’s kind
of a cool thing to show off once you’re
done
so to start off draw a small ball at the
top of your canvas
or if you’re having trouble drawing a
ball you can use this ruler tool
at the top here and these are the shapes
that you can draw with the ruler
so we’ll select circle bring in the
sides to make the circle smaller
and then drag it in place using the
square in the middle and then whatever
tool you have selected in your drawing
tools
you can trace around the circle like so
and you’ll get a perfect circle
then just click the ruler icon to get
rid of the ruler so to add a new frame
in your animation simply click the plus
button down in your animation timeline
at the bottom
and this will add a new frame you’ll see
a ghost of the image before
this is called onion skin and it allows
us to see where we need to draw the next
position
in our animation to turn the onion skin
on and off
you can click the three dots on the top
right and select this toggle for onion
skin
and the way animation works is we’re
basically drawing the same thing
just in a slightly different position so
for this next drawing
you can either draw the next circle or
you can go back to frame one by
selecting it like so
and then clicking this copy button on
the top and then go to frame two
and click the paste which is this little
clipboard icon
and it’ll paste the same drawing but
we’ll need to move it into position
so we’ll select our lasso tool select
our drawing
and we’ll move it just slightly down
so the way a bouncing ball works is
gravity slowly affects something right
so these first few drawings are going to
be really close to each other
this is called an ease in so we’ll
select off of it
we’ll go to our next frame by clicking
the plus button to add a new frame
we’ll press paste again to paste that
same ball select it again
and this time we want to move it even
further down
so we’ll do this a couple more times i’m
going to add another frame
paste it again lasso around and then
move it down
but this time we’re going to do what’s
called a stretch drawing
to stretch this ball we’re going to
squeeze it in on the sides by selecting
the side transform
squeezing it in a bit and then for as
much as you want to squeeze it in
you want to create an equal amount of
stretch on the opposite side so we’ll
stretch it out
a little bit that way and then the next
drawing is going to be
even more extreme this will be our last
stretch drawing
so squash and stretch is a very
important principle in animation
most everything moves with squash
stretch and it’s a very important thing
to
practice and a bouncing ball is a very
basic example of it
so for our last drawing we’ll have it
stretch all the way at the bottom like
so
and then when it finally impacts the
floor we’ll have this ball
do a squash drawing so instead of
stretching out because it’s moving so
fast
it’s squishing down because it’s
impacting the ground so we’ll have it
squished down like so
so now that the ball is squashed on the
ground we want to have it bounce back up
in reverse order
so we can draw the frames again or we
can copy and reuse the frames we’ve
already drawn
so go back one frame hold down your
finger on that frame and you’ll see a
bunch of options for it
you can insert blank frames by selecting
the plus buttons on the left or the
right
this is good for adding in betweens we
can delete the frame with the trash can
or we can copy it with the copy button
right here
so once we selected that we have that
frame copied then we go back to our last
frame
hold down our finger again and select
the paste button with the arrow pointing
to the right
and that’ll paste that same drawing onto
the right side
then we want to go back one more frame
which is frame four in this case
hold down our finger copy that go to the
end of our animation hold down our
finger
and paste to the right and we just
repeat this process until we finish
copying and pasting our animation to the
right
and i won’t copy and paste the first
drawing since that’s the first drawing
in our loop
to test out our animation we can click
the play button on the right here
and you’ll see we have our bouncing ball
if we wanted to add an in-between
between any of these frames to smooth it
out
say for example from the squash drawing
up to this stretch drawing
we can add a blank frame in between by
holding down our mouse button
and clicking the plus with the arrow
pointing to the right and that’ll add a
blank frame
in between then we can put an in-between
by
pasting our ball again and then just
putting a little in between so we can
smooth it out a little bit
and now you’ll see when we play our
animation it’s been smoothed out for
that frame so that’s how you can add
more in-betweens to kind of smooth out
your animation
remember that the more drawings you do
the smoother your animation is gonna be
but also the slower it’s gonna be
so now that we’re finished with our
animation let’s export it for youtube
so to export your animation click the
three button up on the top right
select make movie and we’re gonna leave
all these options the same but you can
change them and then to start exporting
it we’re going to select make movie
and now our video has been created if
you want to upload it to youtube just
click the share button
and select youtube from the selection
here so now that we know how to do a
very basic animation
and flipaclip let’s talk about how to
do a lip sync character
so we have our character already colored
in but we haven’t done a mouth animation
yet
to add audio to your animation click the
music note on the bottom left of your
screen then to add audio
click the plus button on the bottom
right and with the album picture
you can add a downloaded piece of audio
or with the microphone
you can press the microphone and press
and hold to record your own audio
let’s record something right now why
hello there
and you can play to preview your audio
why hello there
and then press the check mark to add the
audio to your animation
and then drag it in to where you want it
to be and we don’t need the silence at
the beginning so
click the audio to select it and then
drag this bar
to get rid of the beginning silent part
and then click and drag and move your
audio back to the beginning
and you can also trim the silence at the
end here when you’re done editing your
audio
press the down arrow on the top left of
your screen and you’ll see the waveform
down at the bottom of your animation
timeline
and if you click and drag your timeline
you’ll hear your audio do what’s called
scrubbing so this is how you can see
what sounds you need to animate to for
example in
y you might start with an o shape like y
and go into a and then i
so let’s do that but first off we need
to make this frame hold for as long as
we want so we need to copy this frame by
pressing and holding
clicking copy and then paste to the
right and keep doing that until you
covered your entire
animation this is how you create a hold
frame
if you wanted your character moving you
would want to animate your moving
character before doing any lip sync
lip sync is really something you should
do at the very end of your animation
so now that we have our hold frame all
created
let’s create a new layer so click our
layers button press the plus to create a
new layer and we’ll call this layer
mouth and for the first frame we’ll do a
closed mouth shape with just a smile
and then we’ll scrub through our audio
to see what frame number two sounds like
so we’re going to make an o shape and we
can zoom
in to better draw our mouth so we can
see better what we’re doing
and to give an example for which mouth
shapes would be best to draw
here is an example of a phenome chart if
you don’t know what kind of mouth shape
to draw try doing the sound in a mirror
and see what shape your mouth makes
and then for frame number three
it’s like an open a shape so i’ll draw a
mouth where you can see the teeth and
the tongue
and then i’ll use my paint bucket tool
to fill in the color of his mouth
and then for frame four
it’s sort of an e shape why and if you
ever want to reuse any of these mouth
shapes don’t forget to use the copy
button up at the top here and then paste
it where you want to reuse it
so we’ll go through and we’ll complete
this entire lip sync animation
a few moments later
so now we have our lip sync all finished
and if we play it why hello there why
hello there
we now have a talking character and
that’s how you animate and flipaclip
i hope this was helpful to you if it was
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youtube channel for
future animation tutorials don’t forget
to share this video with friends or
family who would also like to learn how
to animate on their phone
leave a comment down below to tell me
what you’re working on or if you have
any questions at all
thanks for checking out this tutorial on
how to animate on your phone and hope
you have a good day
take care guys i’ll see you next time
you
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