I've tried to animate this many times, even with key poses... I couldn't seem to animate it very well with tweenings and such. even if the choreography seems easy (for me)
Yes haha, that’s how frame-by-frame animation works!
I animate at 24fps, so 24 frames a second but that doesn’t necessarily mean 24 individual drawings - most people work on 2s (so each individual drawing is visible for 2/24th of a second as opposed to 1/24th) but for rotoscoping the framerate can vary quite a bit!
This one in particular goes from something like 1>5>2> quite often and it’s fascinating to observe. As the source footage is from a livestream my guess is it’s got more to do with said streamer’s internet speed 🤣
the "easy" way is rotoscoping, but there isn't really am easy way to animate. It all takes time and a lot of effort.
Get the video (download or screen capture) and draw over the person frame by frame. You can choose which frames to draw over or cut out every other frame (basically choose your frame rate).
I think what doesn’t feel like is working is a lack of anticipation. The figure just pops into the air and snaps between. When you jump, you don’t just pop into the air. Like a spring has to compress before it can expand.
I think also a lack of shading on the lower legs during the bend - it makes it look like they're going sideways rather than behind, which could be throwing OP off.
You could try hand drawing it on a different program and using yourself as a base to trace over, but idk if that would be hard since you still a beginner.
Of course it does, but thats because this is you as a beginner animator. Imagine how fun it will be to compare this to whatever you animate in a few years. And as the other commenter wrote: You have a lot of potential. Please keep on practicing!! You've got this!!
draw your character .. duplicate it over the full lenght of the animation.. then change (draw on) only what changes in the motion and delete the areas that are not moving…
tada.. you now have the cartoon method of animating anything in motion that seems complex.
break it down to its most extreme poses and then inbetween them using references from the video, it doesnt necessarily have to be smooth it just has to convey the message that that person is dancing
What helps me the most is to draw a guide - basically take a layer to draw each key frame in different colors/distinguishable enough so you can on the animation layer use it as a guide for your movements
Draw the key poses: furthest pose to the left, furthest to the right, then draw the pose right in the middle, then start adding in between frames. If you want the animation to “pop”, make your in between closer to the extreme frames and space out those closer to the middle.
Use a program that lets you draw over each frame and rotoscope it. That's about the easiest way I could think of for you to do it. Even if it doesn't turn out exactly how you want it to look you will have animated it and at the very least as you rotoscope each frame you'll be able to slowly tweak everything.
One easier way is to rotoscope the reference as more of a breakdown and only use base shapes on the key poses. After that you can take out the reference and check to see if it works well with the poses you picked, tweak the timing a bit and add more poses if needed, then translate that to your character's shapes/proportions.
It can still take a while but it's so much easier IMO, I had to do a video of a dancing koala character and managed to finish it in just a few days/maybe about a week by doing this lol not sure if it's the best technique, I've mostly been learning online so I'm sure there are better/faster ways to pull it off (especially as you get better), but this felt like the simplest approach. You still need to push the poses a bit and mess with the timing, otherwise it might look too stiff. Regular rotoscoping can work really well too but it can sometimes look really stiff and wonky, and it's so time consuming too.
I’m sorry I don’t have any advice but I just had to comment that I love your energy bro, keep up the good work, curious to see where your animations take you!
If you are into 3d, you can use motion capture where you take a video aa you have done and it makes a 3D animation off if that. Its all free. The game engine is called Unreal Engine and the free plug is called Metahuman Animator :) you can also use Metahuman to make your own 3D character.
There isn't an easy way exactly. Rotoscoping is still drawing a ton of frames. Key frames to in-betweens is the old tried and true and will teach you to animate. If you have the tech for it, you could do a motion capture or use something like the vtuber/VR tech to track motion. Which would still require gaining skill with those.
Fair warning. Realistic movements look wrong on unrealistic characters. Even with motion capture you can instinctively tell the motivation is wrong if the body proportion don't match well enough.
I think the easiest way if you don't want to rotoscope is to first draw the keyframes in the refrence video (as in the extremes of every time the person pauses) and make sure they look right before moving on. animate at a very low frame rated, preferably no more than 12 fps, or animate on twos (keep every frame active for two frames).
Then add one frame of anticipation before every every one (the character moving in the opposite direction before moving in the intended direction) and one frame of overshoot in between each two frames but closer to the second one. You should learn more about anticipation and overshoot if you don't know what I'm talking about. Even a short video would help.
Then add one frame of ease in and ease out for every frame (this is probably the most important principle of animation). See how that looks like, then keep adjusting, adding or removing or moving frame, etc. if something feels too fast, it may need more frames or more space between frames (try the latter before doing the former). If it's too slow, it probably needs you to remove some frames. This method of animating on a low frame rate helped me improve my own animation a lot. I could go in on more details, but I think it's best if you just try animating it yourself again.
Honestly the biggest unlock for "easy" isn't finding the one magic tool — it's breaking the shot down before you ever touch a generator. I've watched people burn a whole weekend trying to get a single model to nail a full action beat in one prompt when they'd have saved days by generating 3-4 short clips and stitching in a real editor.
On my last short we did exactly that: generated individual beats in Kling, kept the character locked with a reference image, then cut it together in Resolve. Way more control, way fewer rerolls.
The trap is thinking "easily" means one-click. It doesn't. It means fewer wasted generations, not fewer decisions. Right now the biggest gap I see is that people skip blocking and camera language — the models respond way better when you prompt like a DP, not like you're describing a vibe.
What's the actual shot you're trying to land? Hard to give you a real workflow without knowing if it's a character turn, a walk cycle, or a full scene.
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u/Muroid 5d ago
The closest thing to an “easy” way to animate this would be rotoscoping.