BETA YOURSELF ANIMATION

You're not going to become the next Disney overnight... but as Craig Grannell explains, with the right apps and approach you can add movement to just about anything

- Craig Grannell

THE BASICS

Start small 

You might want to animate the next Toy Story or Akira in your shed, but rein in your ambition at first. Start by trying some basic animation: a simplified flying bird, a bouncing ball or a walking stick figure. Create a loop that repeats every few seconds and expand from there.

Watch the world

Unless you're planning to create abstract animation best suited to late-night 1980s Channel 4, what you build will be based on the real world. So study it. When you want to create a walk cycle, record someone walking (with their permission!) and play that back in slow motion, watching how parts of the body move. Once you fully understand the basic principles, you can add your own style.

Learn the trade 

You don't need to swallow a dozen books on animation to get started there's plenty of easy-to-digest information online and within apps. Stop Motion Studio Pro (see panel opposite) includes a range of properly useful tutorials, for example. And a quick web search for the 12 principles of animation will net you the key building blocks.

Make a space

If you're delving into stop motion, you'll need a work area that can be left as-is for the duration of your project. You'll also want any camera you use to be stable: nudge it or knock your setup and you could ruin days of work. And even with hand-drawn stuff, you'll want a calming place in which to focus.

Back it up

We often recommend backing up work, but that goes doubly so for animation - where you could spend days of effort eking out a few seconds of footage. You don't want your project files to be eaten by digital gremlins, so make lots of copies.