Adobe Character Animator Course for Beginners

What you'll learn

Learn character animation in Adobe Character Animator! Adobe Character Animator is one of eight Adobe Creative Cloud short courses we offer in Sydney.

Adobe has taken figure character animation to the next level with the introduction of Adobe Character Animator. Learn how to create realistic character animations using just a computer's webcam and microphone. Adobe Character Animator CC lets you animate using your face and voice, making performance capture animation fun and accessible. Learn how to record your voice and facial movements using advanced new facial tracking technology in this Adobe Character Animator course.

Before Adobe Character Animator, you could apply limited behaviours to simple images of people or cartoon characters or other still images you wanted to animate in Adobe After Effects. Now Adobe Character Animator breaks out into a new world of animation where you can apply trigger-based, drag and face motion tracking so that your animation moves as you do. You can include live lip-sync and other kinds of triggers to motivate your animations. Adobe Character Animator also links with Adobe Illustrator, Photoshop, After Effects and Premiere Pro for a seamless workflow.

If you're looking to make short video animations, motion comics, short animated films, commercials, or live and interactive characters, this Adobe Character Animator course will explain the process of creating character animations in a clear and accessible way.

Learning outcomes

By the end of this online Adobe Character Animator course, you should be able to:

• Understand the fundamentals of animation
• Plan a character-based animation
• Create a character-based animation
• Create their own motion capture puppets
• Set physics on their animated puppets
• Record voiceover or sync pre-existing dialogue to their puppet's mouths
• Incorporate their Character Animator puppets into Adobe After Effects

Course content

What will be covered in this online Adobe Character Animator course?

• Fundamentals of animation
• How Character Animator implements the fundamentals
• Creating artworks that work well with Character Animator for cartoons and backgrounds
• Starting a Character Animator project
• Workspaces and Character Animator interface
• Importing cartoons and backgrounds
• Basic creation of bodies, faces – eyes, eyebrows and mouth
• Face animation using a webcam & lip-syncing
• Using the keyboard and pointing systems to control cartoons
• Record and refine, the live-action performance of your animation
• Assemble cartoons into scenes and export scenes
• Linking Character Animator to other applications

Intended audience

Who is this Adobe Character Animator course for?

Graphic designers, video editors and visual artists may benefit the most from this Adobe Animate course, as well as anyone with an interest in animation.

Basic competency with computers is assumed before enrolling, and proficiency in other Adobe software is helpful but not essential for successful completion of this course.

Course venue

Rozelle Campus

2A Gordon Street, Rozelle NSW 2039 (corner of Gordon St & Victoria Rd in the grounds of St. Joseph's Church)

Course materials

To participate in this class students will need access to a computer or laptop with internet access and will need to install the Adobe Character Animator software (one-month free trial available).

What to bring to class (in-person classes only):

• Notepad and paper or a tablet
• A USB for taking home final work or course notes & files

Additional information

Please note the following:

This Adobe Character Animator course runs in our computer lab, fitted with 27-inch Apple computers as well as Dell computers running the Windows operating system. Adobe products function the in the same way on both Windows and Apple computers, except for minor differences with keyboard usage and where files are located within the computer.