October 18th, 2018. Program: Clip Studio Paint

I have made a decision, I'm not doing the whole song. It's taking too long so I'll be going to around 50 seconds.

So yeah back to work on the story board. Since I'm still working on the fight I've been using the onion skin function a lot. This allows me to see previously drawn frames in the timeline, it's super useful and helps me keep the actions consistent.

The timing is once again the hardest part, but I'm getting better at it with practice.

I had to readjust a majority of the frames by a few tenths of a second, just to fix a time discrepancy.

The main character fighting in the animation has a shadow manipulation ability, showing that in the story board is extremely difficult. It mostly looks like a bunch of random scribbles

I've actually gotten to 55 seconds, so that's where I'll stop. I'll start on the rough sketch portion next post.

October 17th, 2018. Program: Clip Studio Paint

Taking a small break from the song animation, today I watched a webinar by Brian Allen about the benefits of Clip Studio Paint. I wanted to use today's blog to go over what I learned from it and show some of my experiments with that knowledge.

#1 Custom Menu
The custom menu, also known as the quick access menu. It lets you add tools into a custom menu for quick and easy access. I've actually been using this for a while.



#2 Reference Layers
This is pretty self explanatory, they are layers that Clip Studio Paint will refer to when creating a selection. I still had no idea how to use this, this video taught me that to get it to work that I had to edit the tool settings so that it would only select referred layers and not editing layers. To make a layer a reference layer you just select the layer and click the light house button in the layer panel.




#3 Transparency Painting
I love drawing with transparency, it makes things a lot more simple for me. With it, instead of editing the size and softness of the eraser tool, I can continue to use the tool I'm already working with.

October 16th, 2018. Program: Clip Studio Paint

So once again working on the story board.

With this next part of the animation there is a one character vs grunt army fight scene so story boarding that has been a hassle. I've watched a couple of anime fight scenes as a reference.

 I'm trying to just roughly sketch the character's motion around the field and get a rough sense of their fight style. Keeping the fight in sync with the songs beats.

The grunts are kind of horrible I'll have to fix them later, give them more motion. Currently they're pretty much standing dummys with guns.

I really like how I've done the camera angle changes in the animation, I've been trying to use less panning shots and scene cuts. I want it to be like the church fight in the first kingsmen movie. Of course currently it's nowhere near smooth, that's the point of the story board animation though.

I'm at around 36 seconds now so that's where I'll have to stop for the day.

October 15th, 2018. Program: Clip Studio Paint

So today I'm starting a new animation project, this time I'll be doing an animation based on this song.

For a 2D animation first I'll have to draw the story board version, then a sketch, then I draw a refined sketch, after that I do a fine line animation, then a colored one, lastly I add shades and highlights. Today I'll work on the story board.

this part of the process is pretty easy, all I'm doing is sketching the important bits of the animation. Key backgrounds, character positions, and motions.

I had a bit of trouble getting some of the anatomy right, I just used the transform tools to fix that though.

Getting the animation synced was a pain too. Every time I created a new frame I had to perfectly time it to the song. I have to do it right now or else it will be harder later.

In one of the frames I decided to use the drawing this animation is based on, I wanted it to be on a photo graph. To do this I copied and pasted the photo, then used the mesh transformation tool to mold the photo on to the right spot



I'm at about 26 seconds into the animation, but I'm out of time for today so I'll just continue to work on it tomorrow.

October 12th, 2018. Program: Clip Studio Paint

So I just placed all the frames in the timeline, I'm going to work with a frame rate of 10fps. currently I have placed all the frames 5 spaces apart this obviously is to fast so I'll be editing that.

I really like how the timeline works with Clip Studio Paint. All you need to do is draw the frames, place them in an animation folder, and then move them around in the timeline so that the timing is right in the animation. It's simple, and while getting the timing can be difficult, all it really requires is a knowledge of motion and practice.

So I spaced apart the frames but found that this made the animation too slow. so I went to work with it again.

After working with it again I got this...

The run was still a bit too slow and the kick needs some work as well, so back to work again.





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After editing two more times this is what I got...

I'm really happy with this one, I edited the time line 2 more times, but also charged the placement of the landing to make it look more natural.

So after editing the timeline 6 times and the images themselves once, this is the final product.


Tomorrow I think I might use actual drawings to create an animation, instead of using 3D models.

October 11th, 2018. Program: Clip Studio Paint

So today I plan to work with the frames for the jump and kick part of the animation.

The process of this is easy, just move the model, then duplicate it, put it in the folder, then manipulate the duplicate to continue the motion. The actual hard part was A: getting the motion correct, and B: making sure I either reset the camera view after moving it or typing the camera coordinates back in.

Over all this was just really time consuming, but I did it, I finished the jump and kick frames.

Honestly the screen shot is hilarious, this is with all the frame layers actively visible lol.

Since all of the layers are finished, the next step is to put them in an animation folder. Then edit the frame location in the timeline to make it flow smoothly.

I shall do that tomorrow.

October 9th, 2018. Program: Clip Studio Paint

So this post I'll be creating another 3D model animation. First though, a note about the last animation, for you see... I was using the model position and scale editor wrong. So I have figured out that instead of using this to correct the placement of the model, like I did with the last animation. that instead I can use this to sync up the motion of a model, say for example, having a character run across the 3D space and do a jump kick all while trailing it with the view cam. Which is what I'll be trying to do today, should be fun, or annoying.

I needed to use a reference for this, just because of how complex the motion would end up being. Though i won't be mimicking the kick in the video completely.



I decided that this time I'll be creating the key and sub frames at the same time. It takes too long to do the key frames then create the sub frames like I did with the last animation.

It's turning out nicely I've finished the run frames, I'm out of time today so I'll do the key and sub frames for the jump and kick part tomorrow.