2D Animation Process

Notes from making the 2D Animation

Outlining: Sketch the basic outline, and make all the frames have equal roughness so they all look like sketches. I was going for drawings that looked alive, or "living doodles" as one of my characters calls them. So even where the characters aren't moving, I still had re-sketched the whole frame to have the outline itself be animated, not just the characters' body language.

Coloring: Color all of the frames and merge the layers as I go to keep the frames together. I could only have a few extra layers/frames, so I had to color the top components, like clothing and hair, merge that with the line work, color the skin, and finally, merge with the above layers to keep one frame together. Having clipped layers also helped with shading.

Transitions: For the transitions, duplicate the original heroes' animation three times for Sarah, Michael, and Kael. Delete all of the frames except for the first/last ones for each character. So for the example of transitioning from Sarah to Michael, delete all the frames except for Sarah’s last frame and Michael's first. Duplicate the first frame and erase everything except for a handful of tiny circles. Then, work backwards from Michael's first frame to erase around the growing circles and have Sarah showing underneath. I used opacity to work in reverse order to see what I should erase. This makes it look like Michael's painted drawing is spreading over Sarah's. Then with the use the two remaining frames, I have a transition that looks like paint dropping and spreading over the page (and then I did it four more times). This was easier for me to do than coloring and shading in a radial pattern.