jdlaclede

That Time Of Year - Weather Effect

Added 2016-11-22 06:29:25 +0000 UTC

So! Here's something I don't think I've ever explained - animating weather.

The thing to know about these animations is that, unlike arms or eyes, they can't be broken down into 3- or 4-frame bites. In order to be effective, they need to be large, whole-cycle motions. So here's how I did this one:

Step 1. Kelly is drawn as her own separate document in CS, flattened, then put in the bottom left quadrant of this large document in Photoshop.

Step 2. The snow particles are drawn here in black, inside the large blue circle. The particles and the circle are separate layers in the same group.

Step 3. Because Photoshop CS5 doesn't let you tween-animate rotations (only translations), I make 24 copies of the snow layer, and rotate each one 15 degrees in turn. 24 x 15 = 360, for a full rotation. I delete the last copy, so there is no double-frame when the animation loops.

Step 4. The black snowflake layers are all put in their same group. I delete the blue circle layer and put an Invert layer over the whole group. This makes them white and gives us that nice figure-ground effect against the white background.

Step 5. The rest is simple click-and-repeat. Each snow layer appears for one frame, then the next frame is rortatd 15 degrees, then the next, and so on. This gives 24 frames of a looping circle. I duplicate all these frames for 2 whole seconds of animation.

Step 6. I paint two frames of Kelly blinking and put them at the front of the timeline. Kelly will blink every two seconds, while the snow loops every 1 second. I also add that white gradient for a bit more of an airy look.

Step 7. I crop the document to its intended edges, resize it, and publish. Ta-daaaaah.