Hand-Drawn Digital Animation: Bring Illustrations to Life

Begin by getting to know illustrator and animator Yukai Du. She takes you behind the scenes of her creative journey before sharing the artists and influences which have inspired her career.

Explore how to compile references for your artwork using keywords from a brief. Then, narrow them down and use your images to create a mood board with Keynote or Google Slides. Find out how to extract the color theme from your mood board using Adobe Colors.

Sketch your initial ideas on paper in the form of a storyboard as a starting point for your animation. Yukai then talks through digitizing, refining, and organizing your drawing in a storyboard template in Photoshop. Experiment with adding color to your work before finalizing your key designs and cropping them in different frames.

Time to start animating! Begin by analyzing your frames, looking at how to animate each part, and preparing your assets in Photoshop. Then set up your project in After Effects and animate the character, shapes, and background. Import your work into Animate to create frame-by-frame transitions before putting the finishing touches to your animation.

Learn how to export your final animation in different sizes and formats to share on social media or in your portfolio. To finish the course, Yukai shares her tips for promoting your work on different platforms.