Today I am going to introduce you to a couple of free plugins that will streamline your workflow when animating in Photoshop. Yes, in case you didn't know, in Photoshop we can animate. Do not think that we can animate as if it were After Effects because it is not like that. It is a more traditional type of animation, frame by frame, with which we can animate illustrations or make a gif with photographs or illustrations.
The plugins that I'm going to talk about today are animDessin2 y AnimCouleur CC, both free plugins as I mentioned before. These plugins are more focused if what you want to animate are illustrations drawn in Photoshop.
animDessin2
This panel designed for Photoshop CC, allows you to draw your animations frame by frame, simplifying the process. You too allows you to test the animation and program the duration of each keyframe.
If you've ever wanted to do traditional 2D animation in Photoshop, you'll be interested to know that the free Photoshop plug-in AnimDessin2 v2.0 will help you do just that. It brings a simpler and more traditional animation workflow. The developer of this plugin, Stephane Baril, designed the plugin interface to mimic the workflows of traditional animators like Disney animator Glen Keane.
In AnimDessin2, indicators work similar to the sheets of paper used by animators traditional like Keane, placing one sheet on top of the other. Working with the timeline and panel provided by this plug-in eliminates the need to continually interact with Photoshop's Layers window and places the controls closer to your canvas.
Design controls designed by Stephane Baril include a "+1" button that allows you to quickly add a new frame to your timeline or a "+2" for multiple frames. These button options allow you to quickly add frames when deciding if you want to speed up or extend your animation by adding one, two or more frames for each movement. Another cool feature of the plugin is how easy it makes cleaning up initial sketches in a sequence. It works by allowing you to add another layer of frames for your sequence on top of the existing one. In this way, you can reduce the opacity of the sequence with the sketch and redraw the entire sequence again. Essentially, this feature allows you to transform your entire sequence of the sketch or idea into onion skin, so that you can draw the animation by viewing the sketch and what happens in the previous frame.
AnimDessin2 has some limitations such as not being able to select individual artwork on the canvas. Instead, you must hold down Command (on Mac) or Control (on Windows) to select individual frames. However, for a free plugin such as AnimDessin2, it is a great option for beginners who want to use Photoshop in a more intuitive and traditional way when animating. Check out AnimDessin2's Baril demo below:
AnimCouleur CC
This panel is available for Photoshop CC versions. It simplifies the process of coloring the illustrations frame by frame. Here is a video in English that explains how this plugin works.
This plugin was also developed by Stephane Baril. This plugin includes a wide variety of buttons For example, create a new empty video layer, select the color with which you are going to fill the selected area, buttons to contract or extend the selection 1 px, fill the selection with the background color, delete the selection.
Apart also includes buttons that perform several functions at the same time, as for example it has buttons that allow you to expand the selection 1 or 2 pixels, while filling the selection with the background color and at the same time take you to the next frame, or for example another button that allows you to duplicate a frame and the time select your content.
As you may have seen, this pair of plugins greatly streamline the work of animating in photoshop and I hope they are very useful for you.