How to Make an Animation Emoji?
A Poem I’ve written to start with for readers
送给读者的一首情诗
Far Away | 远方
作者：BubbleSwan | 楠 ，《梦与月》
I go toward the sun in a way to enlighten me.
我追寻着太阳，一路向前，寻求它那一星半点儿的指引
I go with the wind for the breeze would take me away.
我追随着风儿，一路摇曳，渴求那阵阵微风带我飘向远方
I go for the sea, even the huge wave would against me.
我追逐着大海，一路颠簸，哪怕是巨浪与我针锋相对
I am a human, or I’m not.
我已不能自己，而我又是谁
A lost soul has come a long way.
仅存的灵魂，一路走来，迷蒙模糊
I seek for the sea.
海洋，我寻寻觅觅
For beyond the world, there’s the sunset.
因为我知道，世界的彼岸，有着那落日
I trace the words of love letters in bottles.
瓶中信，我感受着字里行间的爱意
For beyond the sea, you were there.
因为我知道，海洋的彼岸，有着你
And you are far away, away from the sun, away from the sea.
你在远方，一个远离太阳，远离大海的地方
Between the horizon, I failed to find the sign of you though.
天与海之间，我却寻觅不到你
My LOVE, because you had already been everywhere…
我亲爱的，原来你早已是无处不在……
He who is reading my article now, at this moment, my poem and the painting may open the unspoken feelings of himself. MAY is the dawning of love for the spring.
此时此刻，我这首诗与我这幅画，或许能让正在阅读的你，打开那些未曾诉说的情愫。5月，一个情窦初开的春天。
Pen in my hand, I stopped writing. Instead, I took a deep breath, then slowly breathed out. The night crept in and started to devour rooms one by one. “If there were memories of roses in the time, then music will be the whispering love words of the flowers”, I thought, wiping my harmonica, “And, I’ve lost the track of time.” By night, I played the French love song “Ne Me Quitte Pas (Don’t leave me)”, and turned it into the blues tunes, as if the roses were telling their hidden feelings that had never been burst into bloom before.
停笔，我深吸了一个口气，缓慢的吐出。望着黑夜慢慢吞噬整个儿房间。“若时间里有着玫瑰的回忆，音乐就是那呢喃的花语。”我擦拭着口琴，心想：“而我早已忘记了时间。”借着黑夜，我吹起了布鲁斯口琴，让这首法国情歌《Ne Me Quitte Pas（不要离我而去）》化为蓝调，吐露玫瑰不曾绽放过的幽情。
“Click the Music and Listen to Your Own Words of Flowers”
“点击音乐，倾听你专属的花语”
When the last note skipped off into the night, my poetry, my painting, and my music might boost your feelings. That kind of sentimental feeling was more than a thousand words. Apart from these expressions, in the internet world, we had emoticons as well. Probably, from the other side of the phone, you were sharing your emotions and conveying your young love via emojis.
当最后一个音符跳跃着消失在了黑夜，我的诗歌、绘画和音乐或许能让你感同身受。彼时这种情感交流胜过千言万语，除了这些表达方式，在互联网的世界中，我们还有表情符号。或许在手机那一端的你，正通过表情包分享着情感，传达着青涩的爱意。
In Shanghai, we are still in the epidemic prevention lockdown, being forced to “BE SEALED” at home, we got all kinds of emotions coming together, including boredom, happiness, craziness, unease, and pain. While emoticons interpreted those various feelings in a great and fun way. Every day, we picked up our phones and surfed in the digital world, chatting with each other with emojis and stickers. At that time, their responses were as if they were close to you, sharing their thoughts and revealing their emotions. Sometimes, even for shyness, who might have no idea what to say with hesitation, an emoji could break the ice and bring the closeness between them. Perhaps this was one of the reasons why emojis enjoyed great popularity around the world.
在上海的我们仍处于封控阶段，被迫“封印”在家中，是无聊、开心、疯狂，还是难受，亦或痛苦，种种的情绪相拥而来，表情符号便能把各种各样的感觉很好地加以诠释。每一天，我们都会拿起手机在数字世界里畅游，看到对方回复的表情，仿佛TA就在一旁，分享着TA的想法，流露出TA的情感。有时，又因害羞，犹犹豫豫，不知说什么，一个表情便能破冰，拉近彼此的距离。或许这也是为何表情符号如此受欢迎的原因之一吧。
From static stickers to motion emojis, the dynamic ones surely make the emoticons more vivid and visualized. Let’s enjoy a short fun video below, to watch how A’Wang spent his Day at home during the epidemic lockdown:
表情符号除了静态，还有动态，而动态则赋予表情更为生动化和形象化。正如下面这个小短片，一起先看下封印家中的“阿旺”是怎么度过他的一天吧：
Click here to watch: WeChat Sticker Official Trailer | The Daily life of A’Wang – Episode III
【 微信表情包：阿旺的日常3-宅家篇（官宣） 】
The short video was created by one of my newly designed motion stickers. To match my scripts, a few stickers were selected. For the limitation of the 240×240 pixel uploading standard, it’s a pity that the video was not made in the HD version. My previous WeChat stickers package, or “The Daily life of A’Wang – Episode I” and “The Daily life of A’Wang – Episode II” were both created into static images. To fulfill my friends’ requests, I kicked it up a notch by designing a new prototype and making animation. Having been racking my brains for almost 3 months, from static image design to animated one, from creation to post-animation production, The Daily life of A’Wang – Episode III was completed.
我撰写了小剧本，将制作好的其中几个动态表情串联起来，赋予场景创作了该短片。由于240×240像素的表情标准限制，为此视频的清晰度有所影响。前两期，我的作品《阿旺的日常1》和《阿旺的日常2》均为静态版，在朋友们的呼吁下，我也开始了第三弹表情包的设计与制作，并进行了突破，由静态转为动态。从创作到后期动画制作，花费了我差不多3个月的时间完成。
To make a static image into animation was a killer. However, the animation-making principle seems not that difficult. Take our ancient trotting horse lamp. There is a series of paper cutting on the axle, the shadow of the paper cut projected on the screen of the lamp. As the candlelight generated the heat, the lamp starts rotating. Meanwhile, when you look at the paper-cut patterns, it looks like they are moving. Let’s trace back to the Silent Era for cartoons for example. At an early stage, it was completely made by hand drawing and was painted into various split footage and a number of drawbacks. Then one of the ancient methods was painting images onto plates of glass such as zoopraxiscope, which was pretty expensive and labor-intensive to paint the figures. With the rising of technology, computers have to make frame-by-frame animations easier. Animation is created by lots of digital drawing figures on the keyframes and then was lined up on a timeline to perform a series of motion actions. After the change of the computer era, CGI and motion capture technology has further improved the level of animation production.
第三弹表情包的难点在于静态转动态的制作，原理类似我们古代走马灯上的剪纸图案，随着烛光的热量带动灯转动，投射到灯周围的剪纸也跟着转动，视觉上便产生动感。追溯到早期的无声动画片，完全由手绘完成各类分镜头绘画创作，其中一个古老的方式将一个个动作分解并绘制到类似活动幻灯机的玻璃上，手绘非常的耗费人力，价格也高昂。随着科技的进步，计算机减轻了动画制作的痛苦，带来了逐帧动画，通过关键帧中分解动画动作帧，再将每个时间轴相互串联起来，成为一个完整的动画形式。之后时代的变迁，CGI和动作捕捉技术又进一步提升了动画制作的水准。
To meet the fast communication with the cute motion pictures on the internet-surfing, animated stickers and emoji could be created into 10 or 20-second-action, and then be exported to GIF format. At present, the emoticons still rely on the GIF format, which can be said that there is no GIF, and there may be no emoticons as well. Released in 1987, the Graphics Interchange Format, or GIF is a bitmap image format that has come into widespread usage on the World Wide Web for its unique features of presenting color images and simple animations as one. Like JPG, PNG, and other image formats, GIF wide support, and portability between applications and operating systems, which, it’s part of the internet. However, the GIF creator, Stephen E. Wilhite, passed away at the age of 74 from COVID-19 on the 23rd of this year, online media reported. Rest in Peace. Let’s take our hat off to the great scientist, may he would continue to create a unique digital art world in heaven.
动态表情包为满足网络的快速传播特性，允许制作10到20几秒的连贯动态并生成GIF，一个表情就这样完成了。目前表情包的呈现依赖于GIF格式，可以说没有GIF，或许也就没有表情包。GIF（Graphics Interchange Format）诞生于1987年，是一种公用的位图图像文件格式标准，以彩色图像和简单动画呈现，和JPG、PNG一样，是互联网中非常受欢迎的图片格式之一，应用于各大应用和操作系统中，是互联网的一部分。但令人惋惜的是，据外媒报道，GIF之父，即发明者Stephen E. Wilhite（斯蒂芬·威尔海特）因感染新冠于2022年3月初逝世，享年74岁。再此，愿逝者安息，愿这位伟大的科学家能在天堂继续创作与众不同的数字艺术世界。
As for sticker animation, it has various ways and tools to create it into motion. A type of frame-by-frame animation is an old-school method to do the trick. Traditional and effective, which means that all the actions are created by hand drawing, then be exported to GIF with the help of Microsoft PPT, Flash, Photoshop, etc. And, the animation can be done by professional software, including After Effect, OpenToonz, etc., as well. These animation or movie maker software could make the action look to be more smooth and more natural via skeleton feature, rendering, and 3D function. However, mastering that software is really complicated, which needs to boil the ocean to study and practice more often.
那么对于表情包的动画制作来说，工具和方式有多种多样，常见的方式为逐帧动画，即一个动作一个动作完全手绘静态图，再通过Microsoft PPT、Flash、Photoshop等软件合成后导出GIF动图格式。除此之外，也可运用例如AE、OpenToonz等专业动画、影视后期等软件，运用骨骼功能让神态、动作更为自然，加之贴图渲染和视角修正来完成，不过这些软件颇为深奥，想要达到好的效果，则需要更为深入的研究与实践。
For my stickers, I used the frame-by-frame animation through Illustrator and Photoshop mostly, and the support of PPT in a few actions. It’s a “No Pain, No Gain” situation because it was similar to cartoon making, which took lots of preparations, including scriptwriting, character design, split footage drawing, and funny or cute action selection that might likely be used by end-users. Then, a static emotion prototype was created before the frame-by-frame drawing of split footage for this static prototype. Take blinking action. The action was completed by two key actions that were followed by two static drawings, one for eyes opening and one for eyes closing. After putting the two static images together in order, setting the time axis to 2-3 frames, and hitting the PLAY button, a blinking action was all set.
在这儿，我主要以逐帧动画为主，使用了Illustrator和Photoshop，以及PPT少量为辅完成。但类似拍摄动画片一样，前期需要准备很多，即角本撰写、角色设计、分镜头绘画、创作角本的绘制，一个角色匹配哪个动态、哪一个场景是大家使用频率高的，且具有一定的有趣性，足以吸引人去使用它。随后，着手绘制静态原型场景设计，过渡到某一动态的分镜头逐帧动态绘画。以简单的眨眼为例，一睁一闭总共可分为2个动作，于是，绘制出2个动态，即睁眼和闭眼，在将两个静态图按顺序放一起，设置时间轴为2-3帧，便可组成连贯性的一组眨眼动画形式了。
To make the expression and movement in a more natural way, the relation between perspective and proportion of each movement needed to be considered. The whole act of Walking, for example, could be done with 10 keyframes from standing to the foot landing. While you were taking a walk, not only were your foot moving, your entire body was moving, including arm swings, shoulder shifting left to right, hip moving left to right as well. The more perspective and movement proportional relation you kept in mind, the movement you created would be looked more smoothly and coordinately. And that’s also one of the difficulties in making the character act more natural. It’s possible to complete the act of walking with 20 action keyframes or more. That’s why making animation really felt like testing your patience, which’s very challenging.
为了让表情和动作更为自然，需要考虑每一个动态的肢体透视和比例关系，例如走路，从站立起始到脚落地，中间一般可分为10个动作，除了脚的变化外，还得考虑整个身体的动态与透视比例，从手臂甩动、肩膀左右移动，到臀部动态透视等，这样整体视觉才能平衡与协调。这也是其中的一个难点，分解出的静态图越多，其动作连贯性就越自然，为此一个走路动态可能会分解出20甚至更多个动作关键帧。动画制作感觉就是一直在耐心的边缘试探着，很受挑战。
Taking an emoji for the wind blowing scenery. This one is pretty easy to understand, I guess. The motion picture above is the scene of my dog A’Wang enjoying the cool air from the electric fan, comfortable and joyful. In the dictionary of emoji and stickers, the wind blowing scenery has many meanings which could light the atmosphere of chatting. In different contexts, it could be read as speechless, the Cat Caught the Tongue Situation, real messy, wild playing, craziness, ecstasy, etc. However, in my emoji, I took“Happiness comes the way the wind blows.” In this limited and framed space, only two key elements I chose, or an electric fan and the dog. Since the dog played the main role in the scenery, I kept the camera right on the character and showed a small part of the fan in the invisible camera lens. Then I started drawing. I drew some floating ribbons on the electric fan to display the airflow. According to my dog’s reaction in the real life, I imitated and exaggerated the wind blowing scenery in a cartoonish way, such as his mouth was open wide and his tongue was out, as well as, his eyes were closed while his ears were all back of his head for the blowing wind. After that, I draw the series of static pictures for continuous shooting footage required by the frame-by-frame animation. And I make static ones as keyframes in sequence on the time axis. Finally, a motion picture was created.
以一个吹风动态为例，选择这个表情主要相对简单，也容易理解。上方动图是我家狗子吹风纳凉的场景，安逸又享受。在表情包的字典里，吹风有着烘托聊天气氛的意义，在不同的语境下，有着无语、风中凌乱、欲言又止、玩疯、狂喜等含义。在我的场景里，我将其做了重构，呈现狗子吹风的欢快之感。在有限的空间内，我选取了2种关键元素，电风扇和狗子。机位正视角度，镜头内只呈现小部分电风扇，使其主视觉聚焦在狗子上。随后着手绘画场景，为了呈现风吹动的气流，我在电风扇上画了一些飘动的丝带。根据现实生活，模仿狗子吹风的动态，并加以卡通式的夸张手法，嘴巴放大，舌头吐出，耳朵被风吹得往后飘扬，闭着眼享受刮风的乐趣。最后绘制逐帧动画所需的连续分镜头静态图，加以重合，按顺序作为关键帧放入时间轴合成。一个动态的表情包就出炉了。
The third emoji pack is the same as the previous two, which were created with 24 motion stickers. Every emojis were carefully designed and created by me. For tough movements such as the state of feeling sleepy, the sadness, surprised expression, the touch of hugging, etc., I even rehearsed by myself as an actor to study the relationship between perspective and proportion further. Then, I copied my movements and expressions from it, drew each action scene, and constantly adjusted the keyframes and times in the timeline to let my character’s movements be looked more natural and visualized.
和前两部作品一样，依旧创作了24个表情，每个动态表情我都精心设计与绘制，难度大的动作，我会自我演练，从透视和动态关系中加以研究，并运用到角色上。如打瞌睡的状态、难受的情绪、惊讶的神情、抱抱的感觉等等，随后把各个动作场景绘画而出，并不断在时间轴中调试与增减合适的时间与帧数，使其更加自然和形象化。
Thank you for your continued support and encouragement. I share my piece of art creations with anyone who would love them. Feel free to collect the “The Daily life of A’Wang – Episode III” on your phone emoji and sticker gallery via WeChat app.
感谢大家一如既往的支持与鼓励，现已上架微信表情商店，我将精心制作的动态表情包送于你们，期望喜欢，欢迎把“阿旺”带回家，送出你的“520”吧。
How to claim the full package of my emojis for free?
如何免费认领全套表情包？
Scan the QR code below to open the sticker page, then click “ADD” via WeChat app.
扫码识别下方二维码，点击“添加”获取
Love my original creation of arts, feel free to click “Like the Author” to sponsor me. Maybe Episode IV will be triggered. From now on, let’s pray together and fight against the COVID-19, hoping all will be well soon. Keep at it, we still need it.
喜欢原创，也欢迎大家赞赏，投个币，或许第四弹将悄然启动。也让我们共同祈祷，携手抗疫，祝一切安好快到来，继续坚守，加油！！！
Poetry/Artworks/Photos/Interview/Writings/Art Edited & Translated by BubbleSwan
诗歌/概念艺术/表情包/动画制作/视频/摄影/撰写/美编/翻译：©BubbleSwan
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