Creating your parallax walking animation

NB - Exporting Parallax: Image>Canvas Size> 1920px by 1080px

 

By now you should have created 10 frames of your character walking (frame 4 & 5 will have to be reversed to create frames 9 & 10 to complete the process - and test your drawing skills).

 

Once you have finished Export as a GIF: File > Save for Web & Device > GIF (second drop-down menu)

 

BUT CHANGE THE SIZE OF THE DOCUMENT TO (APPROX) WIDTH 500PX BY 100PX.

 

Now to create the parallax animation you need to create the following documents.

Stationary Model - your character walking on the spot.

Moving Model - your character walking across the screen.

Background layers - the setting for your characters stroll.

SO THREE PS DOCUMENTS.

1) Stationary Model

Create a new document with the following settings
PRESET > Film & Video > HDTV 1080p/29.97 > W:1920px - H: 1080px - Resolution: 72px/inch

Then take your 10 frames (or as animators describe them, onion skins) from your character walking and stack them on top of each other in much the same way as you did when creating the 360 Rotating Character GIF. Save.


2) Moving Model

Create a new document with the following settings
PRESET > Film & Video > HDTV 1080p/29.97 > W:1920px - H: 1080px - Resolution: 72px/inch (same as above)

Instead of stacking the 10 walking layer, you position them from left to right appropriately to have the character begin walking from side of the document to the other. This will take more than 10 frames so duplicate the process and space them out to change the speed of the movement.
Save.


3) Background Layer

Get a piece of A3 and sketch out the background you want for the walking animation. While you're sketches will be a single image keep in mind you will be turning this in FIVE seperate layers in PS, so you'll need the ground and maybe the sky but what three layers will you have in between?
Ground - ? - ? - ? Sky

Once you have decided upon the background create a new document in PS with the following settings: FILE > NEW > WIDTH: 7087 PIXELS, HEIGHT: 1080 PIXELS, RESOLUTION 72.

Create FIVE separate layers with the SKY being in LAST in order and the GROUND being the FIRST. Start to try to recreate you background ideas - use whatever techniques you want - think back to you Children's Book project for inspiration. Think about what silhouettes or simple shapes that would work combine with key details that will bring your work to life. 

 

Here is some similar work by the Year 2 diploma students.