Live Encore: Creating Realistic Movement in Animation

Create more believable movement in your animations—while still keeping plenty of personality. 

While animators certainly get some artistic license to create things that look different from the real world, if your movement isn’t anchored in reality, the viewer will notice something is off. While physics doesn’t sound all that creative, understanding some basic principles is critical for animating believable movement. In this hour-long class—recorded using Zoom and featuring participation from the Skillshare community—Jake Bartlett will share how to make your animations feel more true to life. 

To start, Jake will share what an animation looks like when the movement is off. Then, he’ll show you the tools in After Effects you can play with to help fix the issues. Finally, you’ll work alongside Jake to animate three different objects of very different weights falling to the ground to understand how you’ll need to adjust their movement. Along the way, students who participated in the live session were able to ask Jake questions, so you’ll get to dig even deeper into his animation process.

This is an important principle for animators of all levels to understand, and you can learn something even if you aren’t working in After Effects. If you do want to follow along in After Effects, a basic understanding of the program will help you keep up—Jake’s class on Animating with Ease in After Effects is a great place to start.

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While we couldn't respond to every question during the session, we'd love to hear from you—please use the class Discussion board to share your questions and feedback.

• Introduction
• Why Physics Matters in Animation
• Ways to Fix Physics & Motion
• Animate a Falling Tennis Ball
• Animate a Falling Cinder Block
• Animate a Falling Feather
• Q&A
• Final Thoughts