Welcome to animate a 2d head turn with Blender where we'll learn how to animate This simple cartoon character hi I'm Jonathan Lamb a digital artist with Touch plus and in this course we'll take You through step by step on how to Create a head-tanning animation using Just a few frames We'll learn how to do this all from Scratch but if you're looking for Something that's ready made go ahead and Check out envato elements where you can Get unlimited downloads of video Templates stock video audio tracks Effects and more that's millions of Creative assets all ready to use with Simple commercial licensing plus no Locking contract means that you can Cancel at any time subscribe now with The link in the description Also don't forget to subscribe to the Envato touch plus channel for even more Free tutorials and courses Animating a head turn animation can be Quite challenging because the mass and Shape need to be consistent as do the Elements of the head which includes the Eyes nose and mouth At first you might think to keep all of The elements within the same line of Movement as the head moves from one side To the other Let's take a look at this example where We have the head turn animation moving
In one straight line moving from the Right side to the left side As you can see all the elements such as The eyes the nose and the mouth are all Lined up on the same horizontal plane The top and the bottom of the head are All Guided by this green guidelines here To keep everything aligned however when You preview the animation it looks Slightly off and that's because the Natural head turn will rarely travel in Such a strict straight line instead it's More natural for the heads to be Following a soft Arc like this which is What we'll be doing for this tutorial We'll begin with these three main poses And these are called extremes the Drawings in between these poses will Help smooth out the animation and are Called in-betweens Let's hop into blender and start drawing These out now in blender we need to go To file New choose 2D animation and this is Going to create a new 2D animation Project that we can work from this will Also automatically generate a new grease Pencil tool which you can see in the Scene collection at the top here and This is where we can create our 2D Strokes for our character From there let's go ahead and use the Draw tool so we want to select this draw Tool over on the left and then navigate
To the top panel here where we can see And choose the different sorts of brush Strokes for now we want to choose the Pencil for our sketches Then we wanted to navigate to the stroke At the top here Click on that and we want to maximize Both smooth Iterations and subdivision steps so That's going to be two for smooth three For iterations and three for subdivision Steps Once we've done that let's go ahead and Draw our first extreme pose let's also Bring the strength up to one and the Radius let's thicken it to about 40 just To make our pencil Strokes a little bit Thicker We'll start with the face Facing East so I'm just going to Sketch out these eyes here and draw out A rough Circle for our head And just some guidelines so that we can See Where to place our Features for our face And then just sort of Scribbling in The details for our face Like so And again if you're not happy with the Way some of it looks we can always go to The Eraser tool erase that out
And then Draw them back in again So something like this for our first Face And then a short little body here like That Awesome From there we want to move forward about Six frames so let's go down here to Where our timeline is and to zoom in Just scroll forward with the mouse wheel And then move our timeline over to the Left like that And let's move forward six frames so one Two three four five six and if we're Looking at the numbers here this will Bring us to the seventh frame where We'll start drawing our second extreme Pose where the character is starting To look To the other side now you'll see that as We start drawing our previous frame Remains visible at a lower opacity and This is blender's onion skinning in Action and it will really help us keep The mass and shape of the head Consistent as we have a direct reference To work from So let's go ahead and continue drawing Our second head here like so Just sketching it all out And figuring out where we want to place The eyes And our nose
Here And also our mouth So just bring in this darker sketch line Here Just to start solidifying it Into our Sketch like so Again just using the Eraser tool to Erase out any unwanted lines And then we'll want to move forward six More frames to move on to our next Extreme pose So that would be one two three four five Six on to the 13th frame now for our Last extreme pose here Our character Has finally reached his destination And he's looking To the right here Like so So again just drawing out And sketching out where the eyes and the Nose And the mouth is going to be Like that And you should notice how compared to The previous Sketch we are raising the position of The head slightly and that's going to Give us this nice Arc motion that we Were talking about earlier So just making sure that This head position is above the middle Extreme pose and the same goes for our
First Drawing here as well so our first and Our second poses will need to be Slightly above the second one Okay Erasing any unwanted lines Just making our Sketch as clear as possible And then once you're happy with that you Can see as we scrub Back and forth in our timeline we've got This Nice little Head turning animation here Ready to go so to preview this animation First we'll need to head over to the Bottom right here and we want to change The end frame to 13 so that it matches Our last frame of animation and then all We have to do is go back to the Beginning of our timeline here and then Press on the play preview button to see Our looping head turn animation Awesome so that's pretty good now let's Go ahead and add the in-between frames To smooth out the action so for our First in-between frame let's move the Timeline back into the beginning and we Want to move forward two frames from the First frame so one two to the third Frame and as we draw Are in between frames You'll see that this is where onion Skinning really starts to become useful
And that's because we can see both the Previous frame and the next frame Simultaneously as we draw our in between Frames so this will really help us Sort of navigate and draw out How to scale Our head So we want to draw it closer to our First frame As our next frame of Animation our next In between frame will be around here So Let's go ahead and draw out our nose And make these lines a little bit darker So we can see What this pose looks like So And then we want to move forwards two Frames again one two to the fifth frame Of animation and then we'll start Drawing our next in-between frame now as We draw our next frame here And the shape of our head keep in mind How we want to create that smooth sort Of Arc motion here so it's going to be Slightly below our previous frame of Animation and slightly above our next Frame of Animation there as well So just drawing in these guidelines And where the body is going to be again In between our previous frame and our Next frame of animation And then just solidifying Our head
Like so And then where the nose is going to be So this is going to be a foreshortened Nose so it's going to be not as long As our previous frame but not as short As our last frame of animation And our eyes are going to be In the middle of our head Like that Cool So as we scrub back and forth so you'll See now Our animation is starting To smooth out and take shape Cool so let's continue on so two more Frames From the next extreme so again we're Going to create one Frame of Animation here so it's going to Be the same height as our other in Between frames so let's go ahead and do That to continue that curve motion so Let's go ahead and draw out The shape of our character's head Just drawing out these guidelines here So we can see where we're going to place The eyes the nose And the mouth And then just Sketching out the body which is going to Be in between The first our previous and our next Frame And then just solidifying
The lines here Like that So you can see if you compare the Previous and the next frame how Our Pose is sort of fitting in between that Cool And now as we scrub Through all of these you can see how It's starting to look Like a smoother animation and in fact Because these two frames are quite close Together let's go ahead and move our Last frame of animation Closer so just two frames apart from That And then if we go ahead and click on the Play animation button You'll see that we've got this nice Smooth head to turn animation awesome so Now that we've reached the last extreme Pose we can leave it there however to Make things feel a little bit more Natural let's go ahead and add a cushion To the end of our animation so what we Have here is the head coming to a dead Stop but we want to add a bit more Animation so that it looks a little bit More natural so let's go ahead and first Increase our end frame to something like 20 just to give our animation some Breathing space to stop And then we're going to move forward two Frames again and we're going to start
Drawing our next frame of Animation Which is going to be very similar to or Very similar in space to our previous Animation And this is going to act as our cushion So it's going to be slightly slightly Forwards or slightly more to The West But Still very close to What our First or our previous frame of Animation Was so it's just going to be some slight Movement here To signify that our character is coming To a stop So let's erase that there like so And then let's move forwards two more Frames again and we're going to do Exactly the same thing so we're going to Draw out Our head Again Oh it's a little bit too Far forward we don't want it to move too Much otherwise that's going to continue That's going to look like the animation Is continuing To move forward so it's just going to be A very very slight movement Forwards Very very slight and subtle movement For our character So the nose is going to be just a little
Bit Further forwards like that And same with The body just literally just millimeters Away from the previous frame of Animation and then let's go back to our Last extreme here we want to select our Keyframe press Ctrl C to copy it And then let's move back to our cushion Here and we're going to move forwards Two more frames one two to frame 17 and Press Ctrl V to paste it So we want to make sure that the Keyframe is copied Because Ctrl C to copy that And then on frame 17 Ctrl V to paste That in Cool And that hopefully will give the Appearance of the head bouncing back to Its last frame let's increase the end Frames here to 30 to give our animation A little bit more breathing space and Then press the play animation button To see what it looks like Excellent So now that we have our action down we Can clean it up our drawing by using a Dark line to make it look even better Now to do this first let's go ahead and Pause our animation And we want to lower the opacity of our Sketch our pencil sketch here by going In to the object data properties here on
The right And then select the opacity here and We're going to load the opacity to Something like 0.3 Like so Then let's go back to object mode Click on the add button here and then Select the grease pencil tool and select Blank and this will add a new grease Pencil tool in our scene scene Collection double click on that and Let's change this name to dark Lines Then we want to go to the material Properties here and we want to add a Material for our line so let's click on The add material slot to click on new And we can also rename this lines Make sure that stroke is selected the Base color is set to Black And then we want to go back to the draw Mode Select our pen tool And then up here we want to select our Ink pen into the pencil Set the strength to 1. and make sure That the stroke again Is set to smooth set to two iterations Sets to three and subdivisions set to Three and that will smooth out our Drawing Let's go back to the first frame of Animation And if you want we can just go back to
Our previous uh animation here make sure That it's selected and this will be Indicated by the pen pencil tool the Pencil icon here and we can uncheck the Onion skinning to reduce any sort of Confusion as we draw over our poses so Let's go ahead and select our dark lines Again again selected by this pencil Pencil icon And then all we have to do Is Trace over Our previous sketch And this will help clean up the Animation And make it look even better So just cleaning up our sketch Like so And then we want to move forward two Frames here And then we can do the same Just Tracing over our previous Sketch And again if we want we can remove onion Skinning Drawing over the nose And making our sketch Or animation look Even nicer now as we Trace over our Sketches another thing that we can do To make our animation look a little bit More interesting Is to add a blink animation For our character
So let's go ahead and do that now so We're going to just draw out these Eyelids here As our character's eyes begin to close So this is the starting Of the blink animation And then over to the next frame so two Frames forwards Let's Trace over our character's head Once again And this will be the middle of our blink Animation so The eyelids should be a little bit Further down As our character's eyes Begin to close even further And then the last frame Of Animation here This is where our character's eyes will Be closed completely so let's first draw Our character's head And then here are eyelids are going to Be fully shut Like so So that will make our animation a little Bit more interesting Move forward two frames again And then our character's eyes Would have opened fully To create a blink animation So we can preview that Once we've finished All of our drawings So again just drawing out our cushion
Here now So this is going to be just slightly Further in front of the previous drawing Or the previous pose And the same For our next cushion It's Ctrl Z to undo that So we can be a little bit more accurate Here with our lines Just making it a little bit more further Forwards To the left Then previous And then the same thing again we want to Select The keyframe for our last extreme press Ctrl C to copy that and then on the last Keyframe which is going to be 17. let's press Ctrl V to paste that in So make sure that the keyframe has been Selected And then paste that in like that Awesome Now all we have to do is hide our sketch Grease pencil here And then press the play button To see what our animation looks like and You can see here we've got this nice Little blink animation in between as Well excellent So there you have it how to animate a Heads turning animation in blender in This course you've learned what frames Make up the headstone animation how to
Draw them frame by frame and how to use The grease pencil tool so if you liked This video and would like to see more go Ahead and hit the like button and Subscribe if you haven't already and Don't forget to hit the Bell icon to be Notified of any new and inspiring videos Stay tuned for some future blender Videos and don't forget to check out the Rest of the envato touch plus channel to Learn After Effects Photoshop and much Much more Foreign
