Inflatable Ninja Skills Nine Minute Ninja

Time to get my ninja on.

And my clothes.

Who is it?

Ricky, it's Sarah, are you OK? We're all really worried about you.

Ricky's not here right now. Your call is important to us.

If you'd like to leave a message after the beep,

he'll get back to you.

Ricky, don't be weird, a door can't have an answerphone.

RICKY BEEPS LIKE AN ANSWERPHONE

OK, if you're going to play that game,

I'm gutted you missed my birthday and just give me a call

when you're there. Bye.

I had to take a rain check from Sarah's birthday,

but I have a party hat for whatever the weather.

So I've got a nice bit of corrugated cardboard here.

How big do I need it to be?

OK, about there.

Just going to sticky tape that together.

Now, cos it is corrugated cardboard, it's got all these

lines that I can make creases along. It gets it much more circular.

There we are.

I'm going to cut some slits into the top,

about 2.5 centimetres deep, all the way around.

There we are. And then, we are just going to fold these out.

And these are going to create a nice surface area

to glue our next section onto.

Speaking of which, I've got some balloons here

and I am going to blow them up into various sizes.

A little bit smaller. I'm using white balloons for a reason,

as they are going to make up the structure of a cloud.

Cool. Now I'm just going to sticky tape these balloons together.

I'm going to roll the tape round back on itself.

I'm going to try and make them form a nice kind of cloud shape.

Which is easy, because clouds are so random.

I'm using eight balloons,

which I would say is the minimum amount for a cloud.

There we are. That is pretty cloudy already, isn't it?

Now I need to attach it to my hat.

Last one.

There we go. Pretty good start.

Now I'm going to give it a layer of papier-mache

and some cotton wool at the same time.

I've got a bowl here to hold it still

cos otherwise it gets a bit messy, so if you are doing

this at home, I do recommend putting some newspaper down.

I've got some papier-mache mixture here,

which is two parts glue and one part water.

I'm just going to start layering it onto the balloons.

I'm using kitchen towel because it is white, it's quite light

and we are not going to be painting these balloons

so we want it to stay as white as possible.

You could use tissue or white paper.

So, on top of all this kitchen towel,

I'm also going to be putting some cotton wool.

I'm just going to break it up like this into nice bits.

OK, it's looking pretty good. Now I just need to do the crown part.

Just go round into the inside as well.

Make it nice and soft for my head.

And some more cotton wool.

Looking pretty good, good coverage.

Now, the next stage is to wait for it to dry

and I forecast that will take about a second, because I'm a ninja.

It has dried nice and rigid, it looks like a lovely,

fluffy white cloud.

But we all know weather is a little more dynamic than that

so I have cut out some weather symbols here and I'm going to

attach them with Velcro, which you can get from the supermarket.

So, I'm going to put a lightning bolt up here.

Let's have the other end coming out maybe there.

And unfortunately, it does always rain,

let's put a bit of rain down there.

And just for my own sanity, hopefully, the sun will come out.

There we go. Time to try it on.

Ah, yeah!

My hair always goes frizzy when it rains.

The Whatever-The-Weather hat.

Try making it to brighten up a grey day.

Here is a real quick art tip -

how to make a character look soaking wet.

So I'm going to start by drawing my character.

And here. Put a T-shirt on him.

A pair of shorts.

Now, I'm going to make him look really miserable

cos he's soaking wet.

And on his hair, I'm going to draw a waggly line to make it look like

it's all stuck to his head and soaked.

Above him, draw a rain cloud...

..with some drops of water coming out of it.

Some of them, I'm going to draw closer to him

to give the impression that he is dripping wet.

Now, I'm going to add some lines to the top of his T-shirt.

This could be where the water has kind of soaked in

and then underneath him, I'm going to draw a puddle.

Now, add a couple of lines here

and there, cos water is quite reflective.

A few more drops.

There we go.

Quick art tip.

Don't be wet, have a go at it yourself.

I'm going to show you a trick that will get your animations

running rings around the rest.

I'm going to teach you the secret of the memo-note free-runner.

Things you'll need are - a pen, a book of memo notes, a camera

and a computer, or if you've got a tablet

with one of those animation apps, that's pretty good too.

Here is how to work it in three ninja moves.

Ninja move number one.

I'm going to put a memo note straight onto the wall.

I'm going to be really careful not to draw on the wall

and I'm going to sketch the first frame of my character.

So, head, nice, big, round body, and then when you are going

to draw a person running, I always start sort of mid-run.

When you run, you run in alternates like this.

So I'm going to have a leg forward

and a leg back and then if the right leg is forward,

I am going to put the left arm forward and the right arm back.

So that is the first frame and that's kind of a good guide.

Then I'm going to put another memo note over it.

I can see the frame from before,

that can be my guide for the next drawing.

And it looks like his foot's about to land on the floor

and it will probably land about there

so that is going to be my starting point here.

Now we will draw a nice head, round belly,

and the way it would have landed, it's got a slight bend in the knee

now and his other leg probably would have brought forward.

Arm goes down, other arm goes down as well.

Another note on top

and you already see he is starting to move across the wall.

I've got this foot on the floor and this means I'm going to keep

this foot where it is. This is a really important point

because if you made a run cycle and a person puts a foot down

but keeps moving, it just looks ridiculous, like he is

sliding across the floor and unless he is on ice, which this guy is not,

it doesn't work.

I'm taking a photograph

after each drawn memo note to create my animation.

Ninja move number two.

So once you've drawn your character and you've drawn your running frames

and you get back to a frame where it's kind of where he started

so the same leg's forward, the same leg's back.

It's at this point you can do a little bit of a sneaky cheat

and that is reaching to the back and bringing that frame forward

to put over the front, because now we are into an animation loop.

An animation loop is a loop of frames, it finishes where it

begins, which means you can continually re-use them.

And this is good because you can make your character run for ever.

Ninja move number three.

Now your character can run, you can

control the distance at which they travel. Basically, their speed.

So look here, if I want to make him faster and bound further away,

I can just push the memo note further away

until you can nearly see the other frame, but not quite.

That is going to work really well.

So use your three ninja moves, use your imagination

and get your memo-note free-runner running around your room.

Ready? Steady. Go.

Now go to the website and get your ninja on.

Art ninja!