edit: part II over here!

This ones for you animators and animatresses,

as promised in my latest animation, here’s that photoshop write-up. I thought it would just be one long post, but it ended up being a 5,000 word essay. Just wayyyy too long, so it's going to be broken up into several distinct sections: important people, getting started, my workflow, what I like & what I don’t like, and why it works for me. I'm also uploading a .zip file with all sorts of goodies for you guys. It's got a few of my PSD files, along with my current set of actions (which I'll explain in my next post). 

them files

Part I: people to follow & tutorials to check out

In this first post, I want to direct you to some amazing animators that you should be following and watching. They are all amazing indie-animators (and one studio) that are producing great content, and you should be watching it all happen.

• Alex Grigg - director of Phantom Limb, animator on The Cat Piano, and many cool things
• Charles Huettner - director of The Jump, Hallucinator, and oh god so many good things watch them all
• Caleb Wood - director of Rat Trap (can only be seen as part of LNWC), Totem, and a bucket of other treats
• Eamon O'Neill - director of I'M FINE THANKS, LEFT, and ohsuchcoolthings
• Mechanical Apple - studio behind Bronte, Sometimes the Stars, and Winter Fox. One of its heads directed The Cat Piano.

Most of the pieces mentioned here were made in Photoshop, the others are just awesome in general. They really showcase the varied potential of using photoshop as an animation tool. These are all guys/studios that you should follow the vimeos/tumblrs/etc. of, cause everything they put out is amazing. The first three also happen to be some of the best resources for learning how to use Photoshop for animation. Here are the tutorials they have made, which I’m going to refer to later in these posts:

Alex Grigg - the most comprehensive overview of the three, he’s made three in-depth looks at the program and his process. It’s a good few hours of tutorial, but it’s honestly the best look you’ll find on the internet. If you only have one takeaway from this post, make it watching his second tutorial. It's seriously that good.

• tutorial one
• tutorial two 
• his process (Phantom Limb) - includes some of his own PSD files for you to work with

Charles Huettner and Caleb Wood - these two made a two-in-one tutorial on animation in photoshop. It’s only 16 minutes total, so it’s a bit easier to swallow than Alex’s vids.

• here that is

With all that out of the way, it’s finally time to get set up using Photoshop as a tool for animation... Next time. Cause I think all this is enough to get you on the right track. Don't want to overload you. I'll make another post in a few days that goes into detail on what actions are, how they can shape photoshop into whatever kind of tool you'd like it to be, and what my own actions do.

Those files, once more:
http://www.newgrounds.com/dump/item/b0bcc23b80a3ac72e049528dbf143629

should be fun,
dylan