#animatic pointers

this is probably gonna be a bit long so just a heads up i guess?? also please note im not a student for anything in art and am not a professional i’m just giving out my opinions on this and things based on my own experience.

do thumbnailing 

you don’t always have to start it with the actual frame and the drawing for thumbnailing doesn’t have to be good. this is just to let you have a feel of what you want for the final frame. it also doesn’t have to be digital you can just doodle it in some paper you found lying about. this is also good for parts of your animatics where there’s lots of movement(like dancing!) 

thumbnailing is also good for parts where you have multiple ideas! doodle all your possible ideas and see which one is best for that scene

perspective/angled shots

these are super cool and can help with the atmosphere of the scene! for example:

they also just look really nice and interesting and fun

landscapes and backgrounds

you can’t always have just a bunch of people gathered around all in one frame, you gotta show the setting of the whole thing

this also allows for your characters to move around more! don’t always make them flat like this though(this doesn’t mean you can’t do this, just don’t do it all the time)

grab a ruler or if you don’t have one like me, zoom out completely and try to make straight lines(they don’t rlly have to be perfectly straight though! but don’t make them too slanted either)

and if you have sai, free deform it and set the perspective to 100% and then just mess around with it!

also remember to add buildings/furniture/etc if needed!!

do dynamic poses

these help the facial expressions of the character! a lot of people seem to just concentrate on just the face for emotion but body language is also important!

you can throw in some perspective into this as well!

make a LOT of frames

as mentioned above, movement is very exciting!! and you can show movement with those frames. it doesn’t even have to be a lot of movement like one second they were there and now they’re in an entirely different spot, subtle movement is also very good! 

try not to reuse the same frame too much! it might end up looking very awkward 

also try not to just erase and add things to the body of a character as if it were some kind of paper doll stuck to a wall like this:

it’ll end up looking very stiff and awkward. instead, just redraw the character completely! make them move around a bit

you don’t always have to make things super clean

you don’t have to do clean lineart, just doodle a frame and make it easy to read for everyone on what’s happening. especially because drawing hundreds of frames is already so time consuming and not to mention stressful. do yourself a favor and not tire yourself out more than you should.