Hi, my name is Michelle. I've been animating for just over a year now and in terms of style, I've
played it pretty safe. First a line layer, then some color, and when I have time, shadows and highlights.
But, for a while, I've wanted to experiment with animation that looks more abstract and painterly,
brushwork and all intact. I've always wondered: what would these drawings look like in motion?
Well, this is what I came up with. Today, we're going to break down this simple walk cycle and
talk about my animation workflow. Before we go on I should mention, this video was
sponsored by Clip Studio Paint. The version I'm using, Clip Studio Paint Ex is a quality
software for making illustrations, comics, and animations. It's also incredibly affordable.
Rest assured, although sponsored, all opinions are genuine and they are mine. To get a sense of what
textures were available to me, I began by playing around with brushes. These are some I like from
their default collection, and I gotta say if you're into creating manga or comics, the hatching textures
are a lot of fun. Something I've learned is that medium changes your approach. I knew that if I
started with a thin brush, I would be more inclined to draw realistically rather than abstractly. So,
I started thick. This got me thinking more about shape language and the play between
positive and negative space. In the end, I narrowed it down to these two drawings.
I liked this one because it makes good use of the watercolor brushes and has a brooding, mysterious
quality, but, I held back because it felt a little flat - I didn't know how easily this would translate
into dynamic animation. On the other hand, this drawing feels more dimensional has good flow,
but it doesn't have the same emotional impact as the other. So, I did one final pass where I
combined my favorite parts about each drawing. I thought this middle ground option looked pretty
good and went with it. Now, I want this animation to be texture heavy, but that's a lot of manual labor
considering that I have to paint every frame. So, when designing this I tried to simplify where I
could, removing detail that weighed down instead of enhanced my character. What helped me decide
where to place each stroke was thinking about contrast, because contrast creates visual interest.
It can be nice to have thick strokes balanced with thin strokes, hard edges with soft edges, opaque
masses with transparent washes, and of course, dark balanced with light. Let's start animating.
A lot of painting programs don't have the most easy-to-use animation tools. Likewise, 2D animation
software doesn't always come with the cool brushes you want, especially those that have a sensitivity
on par with painting programs. This is what I like about Clip Studio Paint. You can animate
efficiently while having the functionality of a sophisticated painting software - I said painting
software a lot in that one sentence. Just make sure you set your shortcuts. More than anything, I want
to take advantage of this program's capabilities and preserve the drawing's inky quality.
At the same time, I can see how the structure of the body can easily get lost amidst the soft edges.
To start, I'm breaking down my illustration to search for the figure's underlying
anatomical structure. I'll need to lay down a solid base before I do anything fancy with paint.
There's a basic formula for creating a walk. It's important to learn, but stopping there won't help
you create a believable, entertaining performance. In order to do so, ask yourself: who is your
character? Think about their physical traits. Are they healthy or injured? But don't stop yet. What
kind of personality do they have? What are they feeling in the moment? In nature, no two people are
alike, so no two people walk alike. Here are some variables to consider. Tempo. Is your character
relaxed, or in a hurry? Body parts. Now there's a lot you can manipulate. The lean of the torso,
how close the arms are to the body, how much they swing, the length of strides, the tilt of the pelvis,
shoulders, and head. I want to lean more into the mysterious vibe my drawing gives off, so I'm going
to have him walk confidently but with his head lowered so that the hat partially covers his eyes.
Last thing before I settle down - I want to see how far I can exaggerate his actions.
I'd like this look more serious than cartoony, so I'm sticking with the original.
I continued to build on my rough pass, though I'm still focusing more on the acting and feeling
rather than accuracy - that can be fixed easily later on. One thing I'm doing ever so slightly
to help convey weight is to offset the timing of different limbs. Specifically, notice how the
head comes down at a different time than the shoulders. This is another variable to consider.
Also notice that the angle of the shoulders is opposite to the angle of the hips.
This is your body trying to stabilize itself. This is the stage where I revise my drawings
and fix any volumetric inaccuracies. A lot of flipping back and forth, checking proportions.
I'm working on a walk as viewed from the front, and because of the angle, the figure mostly stays
confined to a certain area. I don't have much space to use to communicate movement. This means I need
to pay extra attention to how I sculpt these limbs so that it's clear they're moving back
and forth. What can be helpful is paying attention to if your line is concave, or convex. For instance,
as the torso twists back, we see less of the arm. The line, rounded outwards, helps conceal it. As
it twists forward, we see more of the arm and the line, rounded inwards, helps reveal it. This simple
shifting from concave to convex helps create the illusion that your flat drawings have dimension.
If I've done a good job with my tie downs, inbetweens should be fairly straightforward.
Essentially, I'm creating drawings in between the ones I already have,
smoothing out the action, using the blessed onion skin tool to make my life easier. Basically, it
shows the previous and next drawings in your animation. Once I'm satisfied with how the body
looks, I'll move on to adding elements that follow its movement, namely, clothing. As my character walks,
the wind is going to ruffle different areas to different degrees. Pants that were built to fit are
going to catch slightly in the wind meanwhile the tie hangs loose and is free to roam. When animating
things that are difficult to predict, i don't try to plan key poses like i did with the walk.
Instead, I animate straight ahead, or in other words, chronologically. This involves feeling out
the action and using what you know about physics. If I respect myself, I'm not going to paint all of
this on one layer, because that would be massively time consuming. The lost edges here require a lot
of blending, and I don't want to blend into the wrong place than have to redo a finished area.
So, I'm going to analyze which components I want to remain separate from each other.
Let's go through each of the layers. I have one layer for solid lines where no blending occurs,
another for the dark mass of the body where blending will occur, I will separate the cape
from the body mainly because I don't want the blending to interfere with the hands or pants;
one layer will be reserved for the specific brush I used to introduce
mid-tones, and last, a layer for the rake brush I used, the cherry-on-top detail. This stage took me
a full day. Overall, I gotta say, my experience using Clip Studio Paint to animate has been pleasantly
smooth. As someone who has used dedicated 2D animation software such as TVPaint and
Toon Boom Harmony, this was really easy to learn because of all the similarities in the interface.
The translucency of the watercolor reminds me of smoke, and I want to build on this effect.
So, I'm going to create a background that will hopefully, immerse the viewer a little
more. The default brushes on Clip Studio Paint are pretty nice, but there are a few textures
from Photoshop I miss using. Thankfully, that's not a problem - I can import Photoshop brushes.
I'm keeping my background as simple as possible - I don't want it to distract from my character.
So, I'm making sure he resides in the area of greatest contrast to draw the eye. Once I have
my background, I'm going to export and bring my files into After Effects to, well, play with effects.
Again, here's my final thing. Let's break it down from bottom up. There's a lot you can do in this
program, and I encourage you to play around with the settings especially the Effects tab.
You'll find some pretty wacky things like fractal noise. Looks kind of bad on its own, but it reminded
me of water and I thought it would be cool to use on my inky background. Of course, I don't want it
to be this obvious, so I'm concealing it behind a semi-transparent copy of the original background.
To give a sense that my character is moving forwards, I'm going to add vertical columns
to each side and make an endless hallway effect. Essentially, this involves turning shape layers
into 3D layers, and using a camera to pan through the 3D space. I'll link a tutorial
in the description. The smoke at the bottom was made easily using particle playground. I'm just
keying the opacity to different amounts over time so that it looks like he's walking through pockets
of smoke. And last, as a final touch, I added a paper texture image, its blending mode set to multiply.
Well, that's it for me. Thank you for making it this far, and I hope that this could help
you get a sense of what my process is like. Take care, and happy animating :)