Dynamic Animation with 2D and 3D Illustration

Meet Willie and Jill Russell, founders of Advntr Studio. Hear about their creative journey and how the couple combined their talents to form their studio. They share their inspirations and the artists who influence their work.

Get inspired by exploring references of your favorite artists, studios, and websites. Think of the story you want to tell by coming up with a concept and writing a visual script. Then, take your visual script to the storyboard and start creating your scenes frame by frame in Photoshop. Willie and Jill provide a template to facilitate the process.

Dive into the production phase and start designing the protagonist of your animation. Willie and Jill guide you step-by-step from the initial sketches of your character to the finalized illustration in Photoshop. Bring your storyboard and character together to complete your frame. Next, explore the different elements of your design and decide which pieces should be 2D or 3D.

Explore Cinema 4D’s powerful digital tools by learning different techniques such as box-modeling and poly-modeling. Willie and Jill give you a walkthrough of some software essentials before demonstrating how to model a 2D design into a 3D one. Then, learn how to model the most important element of your character: the face.

Time to start animating in 3D! Begin by understanding how to pace your animation in After Effects. Jump back into Cinema 4D and learn how to keyframe movement in your work. Learn how to use pose morph tag, which animates the face of your character. Discover how to make the movement in your animation look more realistic through physics simulation techniques.

Move on to 2D animation and learn how to build and rig your character to move throughout every frame. Explore basic animation principles and apply them to your work. Then, add some flourishes to enhance your work.

Bring your animation to life by learning how to add lighting and texture. Learn how to use Octane Render to create unique textures and natural-looking light in your scene. Finally, learn how to render and composite your piece before sharing your work with the world.