Animated Illustrations
Jamie Bartlett · Graphic designer and left-handed letterer
A 44-minute Photoshop crash course in three animation methods that gives working techniques, but the pace and depth suit an intermediate more than a true beginner.
Three methods, one small project
Animated Illustrations is built around a single class project, an everyday object illustration brought to life, and it uses that one project to demonstrate three separate animation techniques inside Photoshop: tweening with duplicated layers, Puppet Warp, and frame-by-frame redrawing. That structure is the course's biggest strength. Rather than teaching animation as one abstract skill, it treats each method as a distinct tool suited to a distinct kind of motion, and shows all three on real artwork, a cat with a swinging tail, a houseplant and curtain moved by wind, and a chimney with rising smoke.
The tweening lesson opens with layer prep that matters more than it first appears. Before any animation happens, the instructor walks through separating a cat illustration into only the layers that need to move independently, the tail and the eyes, while merging everything else flat. That habit, decide what needs its own layer before you draw, is the kind of practical judgment call that saves hours of rework later, and it is taught through a real editing decision rather than a rule stated in the abstract.
Puppet Warp is where the course does its best teaching. The plant and curtain animation is not just a demonstration of pinning a mesh and dragging it around. When the first pass on the curtain looks unnatural, the lesson walks back through it, explaining that in real cloth the middle of the fabric would lead the motion and the bottom would trail behind, then rebuilding the frames with that principle in mind. That kind of visible correction, showing a wrong answer and then explaining why it is wrong, is more useful than a clean first take would have been.
Where it runs thin
Frame-by-frame animation gets the least screen time of the three methods, covering little more than redrawing smoke puffs and swapping between two tire positions on a van graphic. It is a valid technique, but the lesson treats it as a quick coda rather than giving it the same depth as tweening or Puppet Warp, so viewers looking specifically for classic frame-by-frame work may come away wanting more.
The export lessons are compact but genuinely useful, covering GIF settings like color count and file size limits for Skillshare, and the specific step of duplicating frames to stretch a short loop past Instagram's 10-second minimum for video. The bonus lesson on compositing a GIF into a photographed notebook page, using a Darker Color blend mode and a masked saturation adjustment to make the digital drawing look hand-inked, is a nice extra that rewards finishing the class.
The course's real limitation is pacing for its audience. It moves through keyboard shortcuts, layer selections, and tool menus quickly, assuming the viewer already has Photoshop fluency, which sits at odds with Skillshare's own "for anyone" framing. Anyone without prior Photoshop experience will likely need to pause constantly or rewatch sections. For an intermediate user who already knows their way around layers and selections, though, the 44 minutes deliver three genuinely different, genuinely useful animation techniques with no filler.
The standout
The Puppet Warp walkthrough on the curtain, where the instructor corrects a first pass by adding overlap so the middle of the fabric leads the motion before the bottom follows, teaches a real principle of natural movement rather than just a tool click-through.
What you will learn
- How to prep and separate PSD layers before animating (splitting eyes, tail, and moving parts onto their own layers)
- Frame-based tweening and manual duplication in Photoshop's Timeline panel for position and rotation animation
- Using the Puppet Warp tool with pinned mesh points to animate flexible elements like flowers and curtains realistically
- Frame-by-frame animation by redrawing elements (like smoke or spinning wheels) across multiple layers
- Exporting finished animations as an optimized GIF and as a 1080x1080 video for Instagram
- Compositing a GIF into a photographed notebook using blend modes and adjustment layers for a hand-drawn effect
Best for: Illustrators and designers who already know their way around Photoshop's layers and tools and want to add motion to static artwork.
Skip it if: Total Photoshop beginners, since the class assumes fluency with layer management, selections, and masks and never slows down to explain them.