Course description

Love drawing and want to see your drawings move? This course teaches hand-drawn 2D animation from the very first flipbook to a short finished scene. You can follow it on paper, with a light source and a peg strip made from card, or in any drawing app that has layers, a timeline and onion skinning. No animation experience is needed.

You begin with how frames and frame rates work and make a flipbook. Then you set up your paper desk or your drawing app and animate the classic bouncing ball, learning timing, spacing, arcs, and squash and stretch. You work through the principles of animation, plan movement with keys, breakdowns, in-betweens, timing charts and exposure sheets, and draw a walk cycle and a simple run. Later sections cover designing a character, expressions, blinks and simple lip sync, effects such as water, smoke and fire, backgrounds and camera moves, storyboards, animatics, clean-up, colour, and exporting video and looping gifs.

There are 10 sections and 50 written lessons. Each lesson has a worked example, common slips, questions people often ask and a short exercise to try, and each section ends with a short quiz. You follow Majella, who works at a garden centre near Stroud and has drawn birds for years but never animated, as she learns from January to July 2026, mistakes included. In the final section she animates Nubbin, a small round wren, getting a surprise from a raindrop, and you plan and animate a short scene of your own. Every section has a practice pack with exercise sheets, answer keys and cheat sheets, plus printable frame templates, flipbook pages, spacing and timing chart sheets, exposure sheet templates, bouncing ball and walk cycle reference sheets, model and expression sheets, a mouth shapes chart, storyboard templates and the final project files.

What you'll learn

• How animation works: frames and frame rates, ones, twos and holds, your first flipbook, and looking after your hands, eyes and time.
• Tools and setting up: a paper desk with a light source and a card peg strip, drawing app layers, the timeline and onion skinning, canvas sizes, file habits and your first rough playback.
• The bouncing ball: timing and spacing, arcs and keys, spacing charts, squash and stretch, weight, and a bouncing ball loop.
• The principles of animation, part one: pose to pose and straight ahead, anticipation, follow-through, arcs, slow in and slow out, exaggeration and secondary action.
• Principles, part two, and planning frames: staging, appeal, keys, breakdowns and in-betweens, timing charts and exposure sheets.
• Walk cycles and simple runs: the four main poses of a walk, a side-view walk cycle, timing and character, a simple run, and walking across the frame.
• Characters, faces and lip sync: designing a simple character, model sheets and turnarounds, expressions and blinks, mouth shapes and breaking down dialogue.
• Effects, backgrounds and camera moves: water drops and splashes, smoke and fire, backgrounds and layout, pans and zooms, and depth with layers.
• Storyboards, finishing and sharing: storyboards and animatics, clean-up and line work, flat colour and shadows, exporting video and looping gifs, and sharing safely.
• Final project: a character reacts: planning, timing, animating, cleaning up, colouring and exporting a short scene of your own, with a full worked example.

Who it's for

UK adults who draw for fun or for work and want to animate characters, looping gifs and short films. Some drawing experience helps, but the exercises use simple shapes, and no animation experience is needed.

What this course is, and isn't

This is a practical beginner course in drawn, frame-by-frame animation. It doesn't name or recommend any drawing app, device or shop: it describes each feature by what it does, so you can use whatever you already have, or paper. It doesn't cover 3D animation or puppet-style rigs. Tips on breaks, posture, flashing images and copyright are general information only. Majella, Nubbin and every other person and character in the course are fictional, and every drawing in it was made for the course.

What will I learn?

• Explain how frames, frame rates, ones, twos and holds turn drawings into movement
• Set up a paper desk with a light source and a card peg strip, or a drawing app with layers, a timeline and onion skinning
• Animate a bouncing ball with clear timing, spacing, arcs, and squash and stretch that keeps its volume
• Use the principles of animation, such as anticipation, follow-through, slow in and slow out, staging and appeal
• Plan movement with keys, breakdowns, in-betweens, timing charts and exposure sheets
• Draw a side-view walk cycle and a simple run, and give a walk some character
• Design a simple character with a model sheet, expressions, blinks and mouth shapes for lip sync
• Animate simple water, smoke and fire, and use backgrounds, pans and layers for depth
• Plan a short film with a storyboard and an animatic, then clean up, colour and export it
• Animate a short scene of a character reacting, from storyboard to finished video, and share it safely

Frequently asked questions