Animation Workflow: Ink Brush Style

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 ta

lk 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 go

tta 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  waterco

lor 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 w

ith 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 short

cuts. 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 tors

o, 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 conc

ave, 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, smoothi

ng 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 thin

gs 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 goi

ng 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-to

p 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 mo

re. 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 :)