Animate ANY Character Turnaround/Rotation in 2D (And Improve Your Drawing Skills)

Exclusive videos on the 12 Principles of Animation and other Tutorials

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In this video I will show you how to animate an accurate character rotation. This exercise can teach you how to draw better by practicing one of its most important principles: Solid Drawing. Even if you're not an animator, animating a turn-around animation while trying to be faithful to the original character design forces you to feel its volume and can help you absorb the original artist’s style!

For this I’ll be animating turns of Gwen Stacy from Into the SpiderVerse, and Akko Kagari from Little Witch Academia.
Remember to use the hashtag #MercuRotation in any social media when posting your own results. Best of luck!

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Manu Mercurial @ Lightbox Expo 2021:

Manu Mercurial @ Lightbox Expo 2022:

Character Model Sheet Databases

PureRef Reference Board (Free)

00:00 Solid Drawing
00:31 First Steps
01:27 Base Sphere Guide
02:07 Importing Your References
02:30 Tracing
04:03 Adding Ellipses
05:12 Fixing Proportions in Keyframes
06:40 Symmetric vs Asymmetric Features
07:23 Inbetweens
08:58 Coloring
10:41 Shadows
11:13 Shading
12:03 Best Reference Sources
12:32 Final Animation
12:48 Outro

Remember: "Every line you draw, you are one line closer to your dream!"
Thanks for watching!

[ManuMercurial]

How Pro Animators Draw in ANY Style:

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Thanks for being here!

[michaeloffner]

It's kinda funny, before I even really understood what solid drawing was and the 12 principles, I actually did an exercise like this because I was frustrated with not knowing how my character looked at every angle, so I just drew them at every angle and then realized I had technically animated them.

It's amazing how much you can learn from this exercise!

[shadowdemonaer]

Haven't gotten far in, but this isn't my first video I watched talking about tracing for animation purposes. The pros actually do this to make sure everything is very consistent and to save time. All pros do it. They Rotoscope. They straight up trace. They use references. Only time it isn't fine is if you trace someone's art and they are a small indie artist who relies on commissions, and you're stealing bread from their table. tracing it for theft reasons is bad, but tracing official art to learn it and also to animate still images properly is completely fine. A person would absolutely be tracing their own work and also making reusable bases if they wanted to speed up animation. Always work smarter, not harder.

[nanilogy]

I swear you are one of the best animation/art YouTubers with the best tutorials. You have tutorials for things I need but can't find on youtube. You deserve this 👑

[MadCreativity]

This is literally one of the most impressive things I've ever seen. When you first showed the rotating drawing, I assumed you had used a 3D model as a base and rendered on top of it.
But no.
You manually placed all of the curved guidelines and rendered on top. This is really well done.

[JoyceW-Art]

Honestly I've been wanting to do more animation to practice and improve on my illustration, so this video came at a great time!

[mielthesquid]

vectors and digital art as a whole makes drawing a lot easier

[monicamarinhoart]

This is by far the best turnaround tutorial I've seen up to date. Thank you so much for sharing! 😍

[tendollah]

I would like to mention that having a top down view rotate also makes a good reference for planning each angle

[EinfachKrogy]

I don't know what to say... I always searched for someone who can make detailed tutorials and explanations for animating. And since I found you I like it really really much. My motivation to animate and improve it increased a lot! Thank you for those very detailed and good Videos and I hope for more in the Future <3

[bk-entertainz]

FUNFACT:I'm a HUGE fan of MLWA, So I'm happy you used Akko as an example/model :DD

[brittnbee]

You make me SO excited to try new things, I gotta go draw right NOW 🏃🏿‍♀️💨

[HoshiNoAxo]

GWEN AND AKKO
TWO CHARACTERS FROM MY FAVORITE MEDIA

[laoukhtdusang]

I am genuinely saying this from my heart, thank you thank you!!!Thank you, for the first I understood thanks to the way you break down in a very easy manner the process of animation! You saved me a lot of time❤❤❤

[-sg]

I wish that I found this video earlier. I’ve been struggling with animation thank you for tutorial 😭 🙏

[batimius]

At the beginning, when I saw Gwen and Akko rotating, I thought they were 3D models, and that you were going to use them as reference for the drawing. After finishing the video, I am absolutely amazed by how well you have animated to the point where the 2D animation **actually** looks and feels 3D. Although I personally do not know how to draw, I do tend to try to pay attention to the little details of animations, and it is usually easy to distinguish 2D and 3D animation, especially when both are blended together (after all, making an object consistent is no easy task when it spans over multiple frames and is not allowed to deform), so the fact that my brain registered the two drawings as 3D models speaks volume. Amazing job!

[xanecosmo]

3D Artists: "mmmm yes, rotation"

[njnjhjh]

fun, Gwen and Akko are characters I like very much

[EspadaLelouch]

This is one of the coolest art tutorials I've ever seen

[flavafee]

i watched this whole thing in one go and was mesmerized! an S-tier tutorial. i love how you specify what each step is intended to feel like--it helps clarify that it's not the action itself that's important, but the learning behind it! thanks for sharing