Not good but getting better

Animation in CSP can be a bit confusing (and daunting) since it’s nothing like Animate CC, Photoshop or ToonBoom. It’s pretty much has it’s own interface and quirks so it’s gonna take a while before you get use to it and start customizing it to your liking.

I don’t really know much about tutorials since I’ve learned everything on my own as well as finding very few books explaining CSP animation. Unfortunately, those books are only in Japanese and my skills aren’t at a level where I could fully translate everything. Though, I’m sure you can easily find some tutorials by a simple Google search.

Since you asked, I’ll just show you how I go about animating in CSP and set up my files such (if that’s okay and helps you).

Document Setup

So, when you open CSP you go to the Animation section and plug-in what dimensions and resolution you want. I normally use 1920x1080 (that’s standard for most video and TV) with 1200dpi. You don’t have these specific numbers though.

Once the document is set and ready you have your canvas and all that jazz. This is my workspace setup for both illustration and animation. 

Red - Canvas

Pink - Timeline

Blue - Color Set

Green - Auto Actions

Orange - Layers

Color sets and auto actions are great to cut down on time for coloring and clean-up. However, I’m still learning Auto Actions myself so I can’t give a full explanation on how to use them. But really, you don’t really need Auto Actions unless you’re doing some serious clean-up and color work. Color Sets can be downloaded ) for free through CLIP Assets. If you search animation on Assets, it should pop up with no issue. 

CSP actually updated today, so, the timeline tool bar has changed quite a bit.

Red (from left to right) - New Animation Folder, New Animation Cel, Specify Cel, Delete Specified Cel

Blue - Onion Skin (allows you to see previous and next frame simultaneously while animating)

Green (from left to right) - Edit Timeline, New Timeline

Pink - Brand new Camera feature (I’m learning this one too)

Making Cels in Layers Window

When you create an animation folder (through the Timeline tool bar), you can also add cels by pressing the new layer icon (highlighted in red above). Make sure you’ve selected the animation folder beforehand or else it won’t some up on the timeline.

Animating on the Timeline

One long rectangular box on the timeline represents 1 frame of animation. So, 2 boxes equals 2 frames of animation, 3 boxes equal 3 frames, etc, etc. Personally, I always make my key animation frames on 4s (4 frames) since it just has a steady movement. Once I finish the key frame animation, that’s when I start messing around with the timing like above.

Blue - 3s

Green - 4s

Pink - 2s

Red - 1s

This part comes with a lot of tests, meaning I export a ton of gifs to see which timing I like best. Once you get the hang of it, it’ll start to feel like secondhand nature.

Layering Key Frame Animation

I love layers. I love to abuse layers so much. It’s just much easier to organize everything when using layers. In fact, the technique is regularly used in anime to cut production cost and time. You ever wonder how anime characters can talk but only their jaw moves while everything stays? Layers. There’s one layer where they only animate the jaw moving while there’s a secondary layer that’s essentially a still image. For this section, we’ll use my She-Ra animation as reference.

If you look at the upper left corner, you’ll see a bunch a circles with scribbles like A1, A2, B5, C3, etc written. These are different layers I made for the animation. A is drawn in black for She-Ra’s body, B is drawn in yellow for her hair and C is drawn in red for the lighting effect of her sword (another Japanese animation technique). By working in layers, I can make edits faster and easier. Also, this method is really helpful for overlapping action (i.e. She-Ra’s hair). It would be such a pain to have it all on one layer and trying to avoid finished line work (or worse having to redo it all). Below is how this animation is layer:

Red - A (Body)

Blue - B (Hair)

Green - C (Lighting Effect)

Pink - Blue shadow (this is a guide for if I ever wanted to bring this piece into color)

Another application of this layered animation is my recent Owl House piece below. 

Within the animation folder, you can create a sub folder that can contain multiple layers at once. The cool thing about this is that the sub folder ends up acting like an animation key frame. Take note below how the sub folder has layers that break up the characters into its essential parts (C folder was Eda so it was one for her body, one for hair, one for earrings and one for her skirt). Again, super helpful when you have stationary animation (like a lip sync or eye blink). Or, for looped animations like this where you can reuse frames. 

Camera

So as I’ve stated before, this camera feature is new so I don’t have much information or notes on it yet. To create a camera in CSP you go to the Animation tab > New Animation Folder > 2D Camera Layer.

To enable the camera function, you need to select the animation folders that you’re going to use and press this icon (highlighted in red) on the Timeline toolbar. 

Once that’s done, those animation folders will have a lock icon appear next to them (highlighted in blue). Make sure to put the desired animation folders into the Camera folder (highlighted in red) or else the effect won’t show up. Here’s the same She-Ra animation but with the camera effect applied:

thanks. i feel like i do it differently every time, but i made a little tutorial here that hopefully gives you a good idea of how it usually goes

do you have a specific structure when drawing hands cause i s2g you draw the most realest hands out there (ps. your art is amazeballs)

I focus on the basic shapes first, and I find sharp lines best for this (don’t be afraid to exaggerate), like so:

There’s three main groups: the flexors and extensors each take one half of the forearm, and the ridge muscles sit on top like a little tiara. Each group has it’s own unique form. Learning their anatomy will help you design awesomely dynamic arms.

Let’s try to make forearms manageable to draw. This is a body part most artists don’t quite understand. It can be real intimidating if you don’t know the muscles.

The arm has a simple chain design and the forms interlock down the arm.

To avoid the snowman effect, use straight, angular lines and look for asymmetries. Compare the apex of both sides of the forearm to understand the curvature better. Notice that the flexors reach lower on the wrist than the extensors and ridge muscles.

Look for this kind of thing when you’re drawing the gesture of the muscle groups. A wave rhythm where the curve on one side leads into the next curve on the other side.

Trakoclock asked:

Hey, if you don’t mind sharing, I’ve always wondered how you got that soft celling look on your characters in your comic. Any tips? I’m currently working on my own comic and I kind of want to go for a less harsh form of cell shading. Thanks!

We live in a pretty great digital age and we have access to a ton of amazing tools that artists in past generations couldn’t even dream of, but a lot of people look at a cool trick and only learn half of the process of using it.

Here’s the missing part of this tutorial:

How do you populate your backgrounds?

Well, here’s the answer:

If the focus is the environment, you must show a person in relation to that environment.

The examples above are great because they show how to use the software itself, but each one just kind of “plops” the character in front of their finished product with no regard of the person’s relation to their environment.

How do you fix this?

Well, here’s the simplest solution:

This is a popular trick used by professional storyboard and comic artists alike when they’re quickly planning compositions. It’s simple and it requires you to do some planning before you sit down to crank out that polished, final version of your work, but it will be the difference between a background and an environment.

From Blacksad (artist: Juanjo Guarnido)

From Hellboy (Mike Mignola)

Even if your draftsmanship isn’t that great (like mine), people can be more immersed in the story you tell if you just make it feel like there is a world that exists completely separate from the one in which they currently reside – not just making a backdrop the characters stand in front of.

I’m a 3d artist and have been exploring the possibilities of using 3d as reference for 2d poses. I want to add a couple of tips and things!

Sketchup is very useful for environment references, and I assume it’s reasonably easy to learn. If you’re interested in going above and beyond, I highly recommend learning a proper 3d modeling program to help with art, especially because you can very easily populate a scene or location with characters!

Using 3ds Max I can pretty quickly construct an environment for reference. But going beyond that, I can also pose a pretty simple ‘CAT’ armature (known in 3d as a rig) straight into the scene, which can be totally customized, from various limbs, tails, wings, whatever, to proportions, and also can be modeled onto and expanded upon (for an example, you could 3d sculpt a head reference for your character and then attach it to the CAT rig, so you have a reference for complex face angles!)

The armature can also be posed incredibly easily. I know programs exist for stuff like this - Manga Studio, Design Doll - but posing characters in these programs is always an exercise in frustration and very fiddly imo. A simple 3d rig is impossibly easy to pose.

By creating an environment and dropping my character rig into it, I have an excellent point of reference when it comes to drawing the scene!

Not only that, but I can also view the scene from whatever angle I could ever want or need, including the character and their pose/position relative to the environment.

We can even quickly and easily expand this scene to include more characters!