YouTube Hacks That Will Help You Animate

YouTube is a fantastic resource to help you improve your animation. It is full of animation you can study, reference footage you can learn from and tutorials to help you with technique. Here are our tip for making sure that you get the most out of YouTube as the ultimate free animation resource.

1) Play YouTube one frame at a time

Use the full stop key/period key (.) to move through YouTube one frame at a time. Use the comma key (,) to move backwards one frame at a time.

2) Use keyboard shortcuts to skip through the video

Use the ‘Home’ key to move back to the the start of the YouTube video (and the ‘End’ key to skip to the end, although you’ll want to turn off auto-play if you want to avoid leaving the page)

Use the arrow keys to move forward five seconds (→) or back five seconds (←).

3) Change the speed that the video plays

Changing the speed of the video is a great way to watch reference footage more closely or to speed up a software tutorial in which the presenter speaks too slowly.

Use the ‘greater than’ (<) and ‘lesser than’ (>) keys plus ‘shift’ (⇧) to increase or decrease the speed of playback.

4) Play full screen

Playing footage full screen is the best way to see the full detail of the image on offer and now you know all of the shortcuts/hotkeys you don’t always need to view the YouTube timeline anyway!

Use the F key to make YouTube full screen and the ‘escape key’ to reduce it to normal size.

Using these shortcuts/hotkeys make the most of your YouTube reference material!

Try watching this classic Fleischer Brothers cartoon one frame at a time or this reference footage of birds taking flight using different playback speeds. Why not try out these reference techniques on your next animation?