Sporty Ninja Skills Nine Minute Ninja

Time to get my ninja on... and my clothes.

Ya!

WHOOSH

SWOOSH

CLANG

WHOOSH

THUD

-Oh, hey, Gavin. What have you got?

-Oh, your magazine, Chicken Weekly.

It must've been delivered to me by mistake.

You've not got my magazine at all, have you?

No, unfortunately,

Annoying Best Mates Monthly hasn't been delivered yet.

-Ha-ha, good one. Cheers, Rick. See you later.

-See you later.

Art Ninja.

Gavin's full of hot air, so let's make this awesome cel animation.

What I'm going to use is just a sheet of cardboard,

and I'm going to draw a border around it,

which is about the width of a ruler.

Right, I'm going to cut out the middle bit,

so I'm left with a frame.

Be careful with scissors. They can be sharp.

Now, you're going to need two of these,

-so I've just ninja'd myself another one.

-Ya!

Now, grab yourself some clingfilm and a glue-stick,

and give the frame a generous portion of glue.

Looks like enough.

OK, now the tricky bit.

Roll it out over your frame.

OK. Now, cos we used loads of glue,

it means we can stretch it out across this frame

without it suddenly sticking completely.

Look at that. Nice and taut.

Now, we want to put another good portion of glue

on the other side of the frame.

SWOOSH

Now, sandwich the clingfilm between film between the two frames,

like that.

Just stretch it around like this,

just to make sure it's nice and tight.

And there we are, your first frame...

ready for drawing on.

Now, this isn't a canvas, this is a cel.

It's what animators used to draw on.

Now, rather than drawing straight onto it,

I've drawn a little image, first, as a guide,

so that I don't muck it up and have to make my cel again.

Now, I'm just going to trace the guide on to the cel.

'I'm using a permanent marker to do this.'

A lot of seagulls in Bristol.

Great. Now I can paint it.

I'm putting yellow paper under the cel so that when I paint it,

I can see it more easily.

There we are.

SQUELCH

What I'm using here is acrylic paint,

which is pretty happy to put on anything.

SWOOSH

The great thing about this,

using cel, is that you could layer up a picture

and create a foreground and a background,

and if you were animating,

it meant you didn't have to redraw everything over and over again,

so what I've done here is drawn a lovely foreground.

So, this is a box made up of two of the frames -

one at the front and one at the back - and I wrapped

a piece of cardboard around three of the sides, but left one of them open

because that's where we're going to slide in our other cels.

And if we just slide my frame inside...

Look at that.

So, hot-air balloon, over the lovely rolling hills,

but it feels like it's in a bit of a void. It needs some background.

And I've painted some white clouds on a blue piece of paper,

and I've put sticky tacks on the corner,

and so when I stick it to the back,

if I ever want to change the weather, I can.

And there we are. Look how beautiful that is. Gives it real depth.

Now, this piece of art has a trick up its sleeve.

So, I've drawn some other frames.

We can see here how they work, sort of, one after the other,

so I'm just going to grab my tablet.

I've got on it some animation software.

Right, so my first frame is in place.

I'll just go for a frame.

-CAMERA CLICKS

-Nice.

Swap out my frame to the next one.

CAMERA CLICKS

So, on each of these frames, the bird,

he's moved just a tiny amount towards the balloon.

Oh, now he's bumped into it.

CAMERA CLICKS

Cool. Let's have a little look at it.

The air balloon cel picture - why don't you try it yourself?

SQUELCH

BOING

Oh, erm...

I'm a clay ninja,

and that's because I know this awesome technique that will

put bounce into any animation, and it's called -

dun-duh-duh-dun -

squash and stretch.

Here's how to work it in three ninja moves.

Ninja move number one...

It's time to do the squash.

Now, I'm going to be doing this with some clay and some wire.

-So, I just put the ball up here.

-CAMERA CLICKS

And then, make it go down towards the table.

'For each photo, paint out the wire

'using free online photo-manipulation software.'

And then, when it gets close to the table,

when it actually touches it, it needs to squash out to

absorb the impact, so it gets really squashed like that.

And the first movement should be a really big jump,

so it should go from round to quite squashed,

because it feels more impactful, like it had more velocity.

-There we go.

-CAMERA CLICKS

This is obviously the first part of squash and stretch -

so the squash. And then, squash it a little bit more.

-CAMERA CLICKS

-And each time you squash it in this

part of the animation, squash it a little bit less each time.

So, the first one is a big impact, and then a little bit more,

a little bit more. So it's kind of easing into it.

Ninja move number two...

Now we need to do the stretch part.

First of all, the ball needs to return to normal ball shape,

so just roll it into a ball.

Here we go.

-CAMERA CLICKS

-And then it starts to go long,

like a sausage,

and that's because we are trying to give the idea that it's

bouncing back away from the impact it just had.

-CAMERA CLICKS

-Bit more of a sausage.

And this first bounce has been quite aggressive.

It's a big squash and a big stretch,

because it's fallen from the highest point.

-There we go.

-CAMERA CLICKS

And as it raises up,

it slowly starts to form back into its normal ball shape,

so less of a stretch now.

-There we go.

-CAMERA CLICKS

And then, when it gets to the highest point,

back perfectly into a ball.

CAMERA CLICKS

Ninja move number three...

So, now we need to use our squash and stretch skills to move the ball.

If we're going to have a ball bounce

and then slowly come to a stop,

we need to decrease the amount of squash and stretch on each bounce.

This makes the whole thing look more real.

Let's take a look at the ball in action.

BOING

Hey, you, there.

Odd socks suck but they don't have to any more,

because you can turn them into the Sock Ninja.

'Here's how you make it.' Ugh.

'Stuff cotton wool in an old sock, and use hairbands or elastic bands

'to keep it in a mega-head for your Sock Ninja.

'Cut at the heel of your sock. Keep that. You'll need it later.

'Make some slices for the body and the arms,

'and use a needle and thread to sew them,

'stuffing with cotton wool as you go.

'Secure the hands with bands.

'Hello, there.

'Cut, sew, and stuff the other half of the sock to make legs,

'and then sew them on.

'Very springy.

'Using felt, cut out shapes to add detail,

'and use glue to attach them to your ninja.

'Stick on eyes,

'headband,

'ears,

'mouth and sash...

'to complete the full ninja effect.'

The Sock Ninja makes a great toy.

Now you no longer have to throw your odd socks -

unless you're using them as a ball, of course.

Ha-ha! That looks fun. Where can I get one?

WHOOSH AND THUD

Those 3-D tellies are good, these days.

Now, go to the website and get your ninja on.

Art Ninja!