Animate with Blender Grease Pencil 

Hey thanks Sam!

@@SketchySquirrel Well that was 2 months ago now you have 5k:)

@@georgie3528 Wow, someone other than me noticed! I only had 220 in January. Thanks for your comment!!!

@@SketchySquirrel HILDA

Now it's 13,000 XD

Hi there, thanks for the comment. I have recently made a Grease Pencil head turn tutorial where I set up a pose library for automatic lip syncing - ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-8LqqdrXpUaE.html here is where I set up the pose library for the mouth shapes. I am about to publish a character tutorial that shows me setting up hand shapes with a frame offset modifier.

Thank you so much! You are very kind.

Thanks, you are very kind!

Thanks for you encouragement and comment.

Thanks Fabio!

I'll try to make a simple start-to-finish cut-out animation style tutorial soon (with perhaps a separate one detailing rigged head/body turns).

Wow, thanks Nathan - that's a huge encouragement! Rig complexity can certainly discourage the use of this style of animation and sometimes degrade the end result. Simplifying the rig by using hand & mouth shapes can certainly help. I've also found (in Moho) that using separate rigs for side, rear and front view can often speed up the rigging process without restricting the animation process. I no longer seek to rig a 2D character with a 360 degree turn around. I wanted to keep things a little more straight forward for this one. Thanks again for your kind comments. Joel

Thanks for the sub!

@@SketchySquirrel I did want to point out a problem though because at 3:59 you say "Remember you don't need a head turn you can just do a simple cut out rig and it's relatively straight forward". It's straight forward to you but to me who is someone sitting here in aww trying to figure out how you did it and really wanting to jump ship to blender from my current 2d software I don't know what you're talking about and I'd love to know how you made that girl and her rig so a tutorial on that would be really helpful. Your skills are at a level of professional so If you feel like you need more motivation then make a decent series and jump on Udemy and sell a course and upload snippets of those onto RU-vid.

Thank you for your encouragement, I'm so glad that my videos have been helpful. My next tutorial will be freely available, but after that I'll certainly think about putting together a more in depth course. Thanks again for the kind words and I hope to see you around. :)

Thanks for your encouragement. Learning to animate is fun, and it's like most things, it's best not to try to learn everything all at once. For me it's about learning something small each day and applying it. I hope to see your animations one day :)

Thanks for the advice!! I really appreciate it!!❤️❤️

Wow, thanks so much for your encouraging comments! Yes, I'm now 16.

Thank you so much. It really means a lot. :)

Thanks so much, moving on from our anime studio tutor days :)

Glad you like it! Thanks for your encouragement!

Thanks Kram, I was going for a subtle shadow, but you're right, it should be a lot better.

Thank you!

Thanks for watching! I'll try to put out a more step by step guide on rigging a simple GP character after my next project is complete.

Sketchy Squirrel Cool! I’ll look forward to that.

@@SketchySquirrel i cant wait

@@SketchySquirrel yes please!!!

Thank you very much!

I totally agree. I am a Moho user and will transition to Blender Grease Pencil over the next wee while. Like you, I already see the benefits of the Blender environment, and look forward to seeing how the Grease Pencil team will expand it's tool set (especially regarding rigging and smart-bone like tools).

@@SketchySquirrel So great and promissing your little guided tour - thanks!!! i was aswell a faithfull Moho user, fond of its smartbone actions, layer animations... and most of all - it's "clean" timeline , great for reworking timings (-without having to deal with loads of keys on tons of layers - at least 30+ for a simple character in Duik AE, Animate or Toonboom, making timing corretions a real drag) ...but sadly, SmithMirco doesn't seem to want to invest and push on this powerfull animation tool any more... So i might aswell migrate to Blender having to learn everything from scratch... The fbf animation seems already much better than in Moho (but thats not difficult ;) i know not enough about the rigging to know what the animation process would be. What seems so very hopefull is that you seem to have found similar "tools" (like actions and switch layers for your rigs !..). So i'm realy looking forward to learn this workflow for rigging aswell as for animating in Greacepencil. I wonder is it possible to keep the dopesheet (timeline) simple or are there hidden keys on tons of layers in the end? Are sculpting fbf in a rig combinable ? i wonder... but first i have to get aquainted with the environement ... ;) thanks in the meantime for your generous sharing.

You are so welcome! Thanks for taking the time to comment :)

Thanks! Will do!

Thank you! This will be covered in my next head turn tutorial when adding the mouth shapes for lip-syncing. Thanks again for your encouragement!

Thanks for subbing! Working on a tutorial today, will post soon.

@@SketchySquirrel yayyy cant wait ✊💖

Blender is truly amazing... thanks for your comment

Thanks a bunch!

@@SketchySquirrel You're quite welcome.

Yes, soon. I'll try to make a simple start-to-finish cut-out animation style tutorial soon (with perhaps a separate one detailing rigged head/body turns).

@@SketchySquirrel waiting 🤩

You're very welcome! Thanks for letting me know you liked it.

Thank you!

Thanks for your encouragement! In my next tutorial video, I'll expand on the rigging video by making a head-turn using action constraints and will also touch on lip-syncing. :)

Thank you for your kind words!

Awesome! Thank you for the sub!!

Much appreciated!

Thank you! Will do!

The head is simply 2D but animated with action constraints. This technique simplifies things when animating. You basically pre-animate a head or body turn and drive these actions with a bone.

Just making one now :) Thank you for the sub!

Thanks for your wonderful comment, you are very kind!

Hi Agung, I don't intend to make a tutorial on this particular character, however I have published an in depth, four part series on making the head of character. ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-gzxMrKAkvQ4.html

I'll try to explain the automatic lip-syncing with Rhubarb Lip Sync - here is the add-on and links to Rhubarb github.com/scaredyfish/blender-rhubarb-lipsync

Thanks!

Thanks for subbing, Tom!

Sorry for the late reply, I have recently made a tutorial series on rigging a head and I used the same technique to make the mouth. Essentially, it's just frame by frame animation which is controlled by a frame offset modifier, allowing us to switch between hand poses. I hope that this helps, thanks for the comment.

Thanks a lot! :)

Working on it today :) Will post in the next wee while.

Thank you for your encouragement!

Hi Rachel. As far as I know this is not how hilda was made, I believe they chose to create it using frame by frame animation. Even so, I'm glad you liked it. :)

Thanks for your kind encouragement + sub!

Thank you very much! Yes, I hope to start using GP more in the near future. I will especially try to put out a tutorial on ways to simulate head and body turns using GP and action constraints.

@@SketchySquirrel Great :)

You are very kind! "Glue Bob" = Rhubarb... I blame my Kiwi accent... Rhubarb Lip Sync - here is the addon and links to Rhubarb github.com/scaredyfish/blender-rhubarb-lipsync it is a great tool if you don't have time to lip-sync manually.

Thanks for your encouragement!

I'll try to make a simple start-to-finish cut-out animation style tutorial soon (with perhaps a separate one detailing rigged head/body turns).

@@SketchySquirrel hey sketchy I hope you and your family are well and safe during these unprecedented times I am so new to Blender I plan to move to Blender from Moho to be honest for my upcoming projects however I was wondering if we can achieve some kind of smoothness for not vectorial shapes but images like in Moho you know what I mean wrapping that type of thing is it possible to rig images inside Blender ?

@@dennissabrievski4543 Hi Dennis, thank you for your concern, I hope the same for you, I'm lucky enough to live in New Zealand, so covid isn't really affecting my life very much. To answer your question, yes you can rig images in Blender just like in moho. In fact, my latest tutorial is on this topic: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-ChqSqDGCTRA.html I'm glad to hear that you're switching to blender :)

Sketchy Squirrel ash I see I thought you are from the UK or something you sound like a British never heard of New Zealand accent before but it’s more clear and sounds so unique! lol another side of the world! There is Weta over there I hope you make it to these big studios someday man! You have potential I see I had a quick look on that tutorial for animating with images. Looks quite nice and simple doesn’t seem like you went through all wrapping thing like in Moho the bizarre thing is when you move the character around there will be deformation you have no control over paint skin Influence much in Moho like in Blender. I’m a 3D animator. But inside Moho I found it difficult to animate especially while offsetting stuff I want to specifically finesse each bones separately without affecting other bones so on and I want to see keys of the selected controller rigs if that makes sense like in Maya whereas in Moho you see all the keys it’s really hard to select keys of the selected controllers specifically maybe there is a way that I’m not aware of but with all that and if the graph editor is developed more like 3D software style Moho would be far the best software. animation wise I like working in sections, different rooms and different keys If they just copied some stuff from Maya and Blender yeah it will be much more effective! I feel like Blender is quite nice and pretty straightforward, faster I might move to Blender if I figure it out like how to do Another problem I’m having is in Moho after the first character setup and rigging is done. For some reason the second character tends to move by itself whilst animating the camera like legs, arms floating for some reason and move separately does it happen to you ? Or what’s causing this to happen while working with a camera ? Thank you Cheers

​@@dennissabrievski4543 It took a long time to figure out how to offset keys in moho too. Turns out, the grey keys represent the keys for the entire layer/ rig while the red keys are for the selected bones. That means you can select the bones that you want the move the red keys, and they will be offset. Regarding your other second character issue, I'm not sure what that is. :( If it is a bug I'm sure Moho's new owners will sort it out soon. :) It's interesting that you thought my accent was British. I grew up in Afghanistan, surrounded by people from all around the world. That's why my accent is subtle. :)

Thanks so much - hope you find my tutorials useful

Thanks 🤗

Hi there, I'm so glad that you found my video helpful. Though the outcome is very similar when rigging in Blender or Moho, the process is very different. I would say that Moho favors speed over flexablity. You can rig a character very quickly, but if you want something too complicated there may not be the features in place to achive it, while in Blender is a little slower to use, but it works with a very modular system alowing you to do almost anything you could want, even if it's a litle tedious to set up. Blender in general is being used more and more in production, even when it comes to 2D Grease Pencil, however regarding rigged animation like that in Moho, it's very uncommon at the moment, but shows great potential. I hope this is helpful, and I hope to you see you around in future :D thanks again. :D

Many many thanks

Thank you!

Thank you so much. I'm not sure how much detail you would like regarding the hair, but just in case, I'll bore you with the details. Regarding the hair, I drew the hair as several different GP objects, each with their own lattice (I was just learning GP at this stage). Then I made shape keys for the turn, but for some reason I couldn't attach the action constraint directly to the shape key slider. I attached a driver to a bone, and then I could attach an action constraint to this. I would recommend using a lattice parented to a number of bones, and animate them in the action, as the way I did it, was slightly different and more time consuming.

You are so kind

Thanks 😊

Glad it was helpful!

Will do.

Hi Enos, try following the tutorial link in the description, they will get you started. I plan to work on some tutorials (head and body turns etc) after my next project is complete. I'm new to using Grease Pencil too, but it looks promising and I plan to use it more going forward. All the best.

@@SketchySquirrel thank you

Hi there. I plan to work on a tutorial after my next project is complete.

If it's not too much to ask, we would really appreciate a guided tutorial

@@SketchySquirrel Thanks friend.. hoping to see soon the tutorial..

@@SketchySquirrel niicee...i always love this greased pencil project

I find rigging slower with Blender (with the current toolset) compared to Moho, but once the rig is complete, I prefer to animated within Blender as there is a lot more control. Thanks for the comment.

@@SketchySquirrel Thanks for the reply!

Hi there. Yes. In this case that is what I did. This was possible because the ears were a separate object from the head.

I'll try to make a simple start-to-finish cut-out animation style tutorial soon (with perhaps a separate one detailing rigged head/body turns). I'll also explain the automatic lip-syncing too with Rhubarb Lip Sync - here is the add-on and links to Rhubarb github.com/scaredyfish/blender-rhubarb-lipsync

@@SketchySquirrel That sound pretty nice. Thanks for your help!

Good point, yes, using GP for 'cut-out' rigged animation like this is currently not the norm.

Yes, hopefully soon.

Hi there, I'm so glad that you liked it. I have made a tutorial series on this style of head turn if you're interested: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-tgy2j3yy9B4.html Basically, I start with one drawing of the face, and then shift body parts around, using actions to control the head turn. I hope that this was helpfull. :)

Thanks for the reply. Wow thats cool!

Hi Strange Lord. Thanks for watching. His legs are separate objects, this way I can change the layer order by moving them forward and back. Once they were drawn, I made a simple deformation rig, with a few bones from the hip to the toes, then I attached them to a simple IK rig. I hope that this was helpful. Let me know if you need further explanation :)

@@SketchySquirrel oh okay okay thank you so much for replying man. I'll try this and if any problem occurs then will get back to you. Thanks

Thanks for your kind comment. Re: flicker - It's subtle but certainly there. Can I ask which render engine you are using? I had used EEVEE (also was using an alpha release at the time) but perhaps cycles would make a difference? Let me know if it persists in cycles.

@@SketchySquirrel Thanks for your reply! I have this issue in Blender 2.83.6 and 2.9 with Eevee and Cycles :-( It looks like a Temporal Anti Aliasing problem... It's very visible when GP is static!

@@jeanlubtchansky I think you're right, it looks like a blend mode/alpha/anti-aliasing issue, hopefully it will be addressed again soon (it has been an issue in the past). Could try Blender 2.91 to see if they've addressed it already. One issue that may break the previous "fixes" is starting the blend file on one version then upgrading and continuing to work on it with another. I don't seem to be getting the same issues with my latest project, but we can be happy that this issue will be fixed (as it has been on the table before). Thanks for your comment.

Thanks for the vote of confidence, I also hope to transition to GP. While I work on my current project, I'll be publishing step by step Grease Pencil character rig guides, these would hopefully be suitable for your Phungus & Mowld :) They will be free and available on this channel.

@@SketchySquirrel respect for making that all free. Education shouldn't be a paywall :)

@@SketchySquirrel which tablet did you use for this?

@@maraudersrock2536 I managed to save up for a second hand Wacom Cintiq 13HD, but there are a lot of other great drawing tablets out there. I find that I use it mostly in the sketching stages, then simply use the mouse and keyboard when rigging. It's nice to have but certainly not essential. Thanks for your comments!

@@SketchySquirrel in thinking of buying a xp pen g960 tablet.....Would you recommend it for a complete beginner in digital art? Eagerly waiting for your answer.... Please reply

I'll try to make a tutorial especially for the head/body turn using action constraints soon - including blend files.

@@SketchySquirrel I'd be very interested too! Picking apart files is a nice way to learn.

Wacom Cintiq 13HD

I will show this in my next video. I'm just recording the audio for a rigging tutorial video today. I will publish in the next few days.

Thanks for the comment!!!

You sure can.