Stylus Rumble shows two effortless ways to animate traditional animation cycles for wavy things and more.

If you’ve ever wondered how people animate those animations with waves in them or any other type of “special effect” in animation, one of the keys comes down to cycles. Having an effect loop is essential. The thing is that sometimes that is easier said than done. Or is it?

This new tutorial from Stylus Rumble (Tracey Strong) shows two ways that you can use to simplify things when it comes to making animated cycles. “It used to take me forever to loop up a cycle. Nobody told me there were ways to simplify it!” Strong says.

Tracy uses Toon Boom Harmony here, but ideally, you could use anything to follow the techniques. Great for 2DFX; you could easily take this and animate a fire cycle or smoke cycle with a lot less stress!