I started in Illustrator on the iPad, creating a bird character in simple shapes with freeform gradients. I used a radial repeat for the tail feathers and grid repeat for the sky.

I hid all background layers in Illustrator on the iPad to prepare for exporting.

Then I exported from Illustrator on the iPad as a PSD file at 150ppi. In the pop-up menu I chose Fresco to open it in Fresco.

This is what the file looks like in Fresco. All groups are preserved, like they were in Illustrator, but the artwork is now in pixels. I then had to ungroup the layers, merge a few things, separate a few things and create a final layer structure that I could animate.

I then began animating the bird. I hadn't planned this out and I'm still getting the hang of Fresco animation. I'm using only 6 keyframes because I had to have each leg on a separate layer in order to be able to select them with the transform tool, so I could rotate, reposition etc. 

Each component- body, leg, leg, wing, tail, are separate tracks (layers) each with 6 frames. There is no path animation here, only keyframes. It took an evening on the couch with a movie on in the background for me to do all the repetitive tasks. It was only after the final movie was finished and uploaded that I realized I forgot to finish the little curl of plumage on her head! (sigh)

I exported the final art as an MP4. It also works as an animated gif, but I planned to post it as an MP4. To make the clip loop, I needed to move to Rush to make it a longer movie (it's under 1 sec long now).

In Rush on my iPad I added the MP4 clip from my camera roll to the timeline over and over again, until the movie was the length I wanted.

I changed the speed on the last 2 clips to make the bird run in slow motion, then I added a still image at the end.

I added a looping sound clip from the library included in Rush. It was challenging to cut the clip precisely so that the sound would loop seamlessly. This is something that is easier to do in a sound editing workstation, but difficult on the iPad. But still, a really fun experiment in trying to do everything start to finish on the iPad!

Hope you enjoy,

Laura