Hello everyone!
I recently made a riso animation. I think riso is a very interesting way to create animation because it takes much longer than normal animation. Today, many processes in art are aimed at being fast and efficient, but printing methods take all that away. This way the focus is much more on the process and it makes it possible to make happy little mistakes. I think the focus on making something handmade is very important.
Riso animation needs a few extra steps to get that really nice, really grainy riso texture. I tried to recreate it digitally, but it's super hard to get the texture to move the way it does when you actually print it. It's probably not the most economical or efficient method, but it is a lot of fun.
Step one for creating a riso print animation is knowing how to animate. I first designed the tomato with vector shapes and then animated it with keyframes in After Effects. I made it with vector shapes because that's how I do most of my work. But any kind of frame-by-frame animation will work! If you know how to animate, you know how to do this step!
I did have to do an extra step to create the keyframe animation frame by frame so I could print all the frames. So I exported the animation as a frame by frame gif. There's an After Effects setting called "JPEG Sequence" that allows you to export your animation frame by frame.
So after all that you now have a bunch of images, way too many to print! So I go into the file folder and delete around every 2nd or 3rd image, until there are about 25-30 frames left (depending on your image). I upload these images to Photoshop by going to 'file -> scripts -> load to stack'.
And then just place all your layers in order of each other, which is a lot of tedious manual dragging. What helps is creating a layout in Photoshop (go to view -> guide -> new guide layout. Set the margins and gutter to 0 and choose how many rows you want). Save this layout for later!
You can probably skip these steps if you're designing the animation frame by frame from scratch, but I really like the extra bounce and transparency effects that After Effects gives me. It just gives me a little more control and a direct preview of what my animation will look like. But if you're a pro at frame by frame animation, go for it!
After the last step you will have the file that you can print. From this point on you should know how to work with a Riso printer and how to separate color channels in Photoshop. I could dedicate a whole blog post to that too, since it's a lot of technical talk. But if you know how to riso print: divide your file into as many colors as you want and start printing them.
Once you've printed your layers, you'll be left with this:
Do you see where this is going? Now just put it back together! It's really quite a process of breaking down an animation and then building it back up again. I put it back in the Photoshop layout I made earlier, although it may not fit at all anymore due to printing and scanning. If not, you still have to manually center the frames in the boxes of your layout by cutting and sliding them. But if it does fit, a print will look something like the one below:
Now grab the slice tool. You can find this in the Photoshop sidebar (if you don't see it, right-click on it). With the slice tool selected, click on the 'Slice From Guides' bar you see at the top. It will now automatically create slices based on the previous layout you created.
Now go to file -> export -> save for web (legacy). This allows you to save images for 'the web', but you can also export all your slices separately. Choose a clear folder and export your images. It automatically creates a sequence.
Now you can assemble the riso print animation again! This can be done in Photoshop, After Effects or another editing program. I do this in Photoshop and create a layered timeline there. You can easily put all your images back into a file by going to 'file -> scripts -> load to stack', as before. Load all these images into your timeline. Make sure you set the timeline to 'frame animation' and go to 'make frames from layers.' This way, all your layers are directly in your timeline. The last step is a bit of manual sliding, so that the layers are perfectly on top of each other.
So it is a lot of work for a small result. I think it's great fun to see the result and a nice way to use the Riso printer in a new technique.
Using these very manual ways to create an animation really brings an animation to life. You can also use lino printing to animate, like a friend of mine did, or etching!
Important note: As you continue creating riso print animations, see if you can make it your own! There are also other people using this technique, so try to do a little research to see what is possible.
If you don't know how to riso print, it's super fun to do and very easy. I recommend it.
If you use this little guide to cool animations, subscribe to my blog. I will post many more things here soon, also about starting your own freelance business, illustrations, workshops, and especially about riso printing.
Comments