2D Animation: Bird / Wing Flap

 

 

In this Video, we are going to Animate a 2D Bird / Wing flap animation as outlined in the "Animators Survival Tool Kit" by Richard Williams.  

 

 

The Book has a bunch of really useful Methods, Principles and Formulas perfect for beginner Animators. 

I have found it to be such a massive help with these videos and recommend checking it out here.

 

 

 

 

We first start by drawing our Bird. You can follow the previous videos principles by using construction lines to create a rough sketch and then go back and add your Detailing/Inking step. In this tutorial I create some materials instead.

Once the Bird has been drawn, we need to create a Chart. 

This will help show us the positions of the Wings on the given frame. It will also give us a visual representation to the Timing. We can see how much or little the wings are Easing in/out.

 

 

We will be talking about Easing in more detail in future videos but as outlined in the Book, the positions work well for a cartoon Bird / wing flap. 

In fact it could be used for a number of flying creatures not just Birds!.

Thankfully we only need to draw 8 Frames for the wings and then we can just duplicate them to loop the action. We could even use the Timer Offset Modifier much like we did in the Previous Lip Sync Tutorial.

Then finally we can add the Up/Down Motion. As the Wings go down, the Body goes Up and vice versa.

I hope you found this video helpful and as always thanks for watching!.

(Note: The Link to the Book is an Affiliate link)