#nik.help

– gifset examples: spotify series – cutout tutorial – fonts: Poppins Bold (Google), Circular Std Black (azfonts.net) – tip: play with your export settings for the cleanest result. exporting gifs with large areas of solid colors can sometimes produce a noticeable pixelated effect (see example below; left). while I normally export using adaptive-diffusion, sometimes selective-diffusion works better. try out different combos until you get something smooth!

STEP 1 copy and paste the group titled "palette squares" to your gif (make sure it's the top layer)

STEP 2 open the group and select Square 1

STEP 3 click on the Fill swatch (there are 2 locations in the tool bars):

then click the rainbow gradient swatch in the corner to open Color Picker:

STEP 4 drag the eyedropper icon anywhere on your canvas and click to choose the exact color you want

STEP 5 repeat for all the squares!

choose scenes where the focal point (megumi's face) can be made to stand out. for that, i'll look for scenes against very dark backgrounds or solid backgrounds that can be darkened. when you set a gif to screen (the blend mode used for blended gifs), the light areas of that gif will stand out the most against the dark areas of the gifs underneath

choose scenes with minimal pulsing/harsh/fast movements but with fluid, soft movement (for anime since this style of animation has a lower fps). scenes with enough movement that aren't too jarring can be hard to find in shonen since there's so much action, but some of the best scenes are those "hero pose" moments where their hair blows in the wind lol (one of my fav scenes to gif is gojo in at shibuya station after choso first tries to hit him with his ct bc his blowing hair is animated so gracefully sldkfjs). in this case, i have todo's torn shirt breezing in front of megumi's face. i knew it would be a great shot to blend with bc i could darken the purple of the shirt and any gif layered above those spots would stand out against it

use layer masks and adjustment layers to "erase" distracting parts of the gif. as you can see in the video, i've erased huge chunks of some of my gifs. i often also use levels with a layer mask to darken select parts of my gif (even reducing the white point as shown in the base gif) + hue/sat to darken specific colors in a gif.

so one of my best tips for coloring is to focus on scene selection, masking, and darkening!

i know it's not a full blending tutorial, but i hope there's something here that can help you. i've also talked about parts of my blending process in these asks:

[one]

[two]

[three] (i've been told tip 2 has been super helpful for ppl)

[four]

if you're interested in reading other inquiries, i have a specific tag #nik.help and all my tutorials are tagged #resource* :)

perla

intro

magic retro

kiss kiss

california

carolina signature

bebas neue

abril fatface

holyfat

i tell you all my secrets

caldas life

sunroll

ADDITIONAL RESOURCES: – My basic gif-making tutorial – My color manipulation tutorial via usergif – Anime gif sharpening tutorial by aq2003 – How to load and use actions

I should preface that I always gif footage that's 1080p or 4K. For JJK, it's always 1080p!

MY SHARPENING SETTINGS: Firstly, shoutout to the tutorial above by aq2003 where I learned the minimum and surface blur filter trick! My sharpening actions use some of these tips mixed with my usual sharpening (with some slight modifications)! Here are my settings (click for higher quality):

Also, I will very rarely increase the first sharpening radius to 0.4. I've only had to do that, like, twice when giffing anime.

Here's how I used these actions in the Nanami gif:

I typically only use Anime (Sharpen) since my usual anime gifs are small 268px wide gifs. But occasionally, depending on the scene and gif size, I'll duplicate the gif and use Sharpen + Thicker Lines set at an opacity between 40-60% if I want the black outlines to look smoother. I only use Sharpen + Thicker Lines at 100% opacity for chibi scenes (like the Yuji gif in the preview gif above) where the outlines are already very thick.

The differences between my actions and the tutorial I linked by aq2003 are my sharpening settings and that all of my filters' blending modes are Normal (whereas they used Darken on their sharpening filter).

MY COLORING AND DARKEN ACTION: I'm not going to go too deep into coloring since my basic gif-making tutorial covers my usual steps, as does my color manipulation tutorial. My goals for anime gifs are to accurately represent character skin tones (especially taking care to NOT whitewash or color-wash, especially pink-wash, their skin tones since many anime characters are characters of color) and to feature vibrant backgrounds/accent colors.

Two of the first adjustment layers I do for almost every anime gif are Levels (to darken) and Selective Color (to lower the white levels). I only do this for very bright anime scenes, which are many of the scenes I've giffed in my experience. Please note that my darken action won't suit every scene without tinkering with them yourself, and it definitely shouldn't be used on already dark scenes. You'll either need to lower the opacity of the layers or play with the sliders yourself.

For example, the Nanami gif was VERY bright (almost over exposed) and uses my darken action as is:

The Choso gif is also very bright AND washed-out; it needed both darkening and color correcting:

Notice the color sliders are also adjusted in Selective Color, Whites. This was to bring color back to Choso's skin which had been washed out due to the fluorescent lights in the Shibuya train station.

Here are some additional color-correcting adjustments I made before continuing on with my usual coloring process:

(Note that there were several more adjustment layers after these before I landed on my final Choso gif in the preview.)

The Yuji gif is already at a good level and didn't need darkening, and I actually even brightened it a bit and increased the blacks:

That's as much as I'll explain about the basics of my anime colorings! Everything after these darkening steps follows my usual routine as laid out in my basic gif-making tutorial, even for dark scenes.

Traveling_Typewriter

1942 report

Sacred Bridge

Wednesday Logo (I duplicated the S and made a lil triangle for the apostrophe)

Astigma

Intro

Lust Script

Marola

doctor punk

California sun

IM FELL DW Pica

Shrikhand

Neon Bines

NEON LED Light

Lakestreet

Wild Growth

Vintages

Silvus

Cache

(btw I'm using timeline and keyframes, but this could easily be done frame by frame)

STEP 1: Arrange all your text

here's another ask I answered on usergif for how to turn any font into its outline which is what I did here!

STEP 2: Put all the outlined text (or whatever text you want to disappear and reappear) in a group by selecting all the layers and using the shortcut Command+G

STEP 3: Put a layer mask on the group and use the rectangular marquee tool to make a box over the text you want to disappear:

use the paint bucket tool to fill that area on the layer mask with black:

the outlined text should be hidden now

p.s. be sure to UNLINK the layer mask so you can move it with the keyframes (click the chain so it disappears):

STEP 4: put down 4 keyframes on the "layer mask position" line

(1) text group isn't visible (2) text appears (3) text still visible (4) text disappears:

I placed my keyframes with some buffer space at the beginning and end so the animation wouldn't start right away:

if you're wondering, you need the 3rd keyframe so the text doesn't start disappearing at keyframe 2

STEP 5: select keyframe 2 (it'll be yellow) and move the playhead (red vertical line) over that spot. select your layer mask and move it down until your text is revealed

STEP 6: right-click keyframe 2 and select copy. then select keyframe 3, right-click it, and select paste. keyframe 3 should now have the same layer mask position as 2!

STEP 7: double-check that keyframe 4 has the same position as keyframe 1 (if something went wonky, just copy-paste 1's position onto 4)

and that's it! hope this helps :)