#im very fortunate to have programs that make animatic-making a little easier

[rileyclaw]

Hii! First off i just want to I'm such a big fan of your art and animatics! Your art is just so expressive and unique its addicting to look at 💞💞

I was wondering if you could go over how your process or tutorial in making an animatic? Whenever I try to start to make one, I get jumbled up and end up ditching it lol

I'm sorry if you get this question a lot 😭

So sorry it took me so long to answer this- I was in a Busy time (diseaseridden with covid and being punched by finals) when I got the ask and wanted to answer it with some stuff Im using for my next TOH animatic!!

I'll say one thing first: I get jumbled up and ditch so many animatics. For every one animatic I release, there are three to five more I have that have NEVER seen the light of day (yet). And that's okay!! It's fun just to make them for me, and I hope it is for you too!! Animatics are scary because if you're working on it alone, it can be really hard to be your own cheerleader to keep up the mojo to keep going. So that makes it really special when there is that project that makes it to the finish line- cuz you can look at it and go "holy crap I made this. holy crap i MADE that look how SICK that is dude!! all that work and look at the turnout!!"

The following stuffh is just my personal process and is by no means representative of a professional animation pipeline, but this works for me as a Lonely Artist! It all begins with the idea - whether it's a song, or just a story you wanna tell. In the case of the one I'm gonna demo here with , I wanted to animate Hunter's first day as Del's apprentice!

The first thing I did was write a script. Not fancy or AO3-quality, but enough that I understand the pacing and the visuals of each shot. I usually just put this in a doc or put it in a script format, if I feel fancy.

Then, I take that script and find music that I think would fit for it- and remix it (if needed) to fit the pacing/mood/etc! This is what this new animatic looked like before I began ANY artwork- this is a me thing because I'm super inspired by audio as opposed to visuals first. But you might be different- this is just how I like working personally!

Then begins the research! I find references for characters, background layouts, and create a style guide for the animatic that tells me how thick lines will be for characters, backgrounds, if there'll be tons of value or no. I make a turnaround for each character so I can refer to them because Im gonna be drawing them over and over a LOT and want to be consistent! Luckily TOH has no shortage of references, so I based my work off them.

THEN, I can begin drawing. I'm a little,,, (a lot) ADHD and may not always do this process, but if you're new to animatics or daunted by the task at hand, make beat boards of the entire project.

This is just a page of rough thumbnails that get your visual idea down - look how rough and quick these are!! I try not to spend over a minute on each beat board if I dont have to, unless it's a particularly complex shot.

When it gets to the stage where you're ready to begin the actual scenes, I personally tend to do backgrounds first because I like to set characters into backgrounds - and for every animatic, I have the Awkward Blue Sketch Stage which is basically my beat boards timed out as an animatic.

I used Storyboard Pro for this (Toonboom, not free ): icky), but the process can be replicated across most art platforms in whichever way you feel most comfy with! This is so I can time the drawings before I devote time cleaning them up-- which can make for some Pretty Funny looking little guys but theyre important!! trust!!

Once a big sequence of shots is cleaned up (I usually do 40-60 second chunks at a time), I export the .mov and send it to my editing program (which in this case is still Premiere Pro) - and then repeat this process again and again until.. it's done??

Here's like a TL;DR list of basically everything I said summed up:

• Make a loose script or bulletin of the idea! Do your research!

• Depending on what kind of animatic you're making, time it to music!

• Make a beat board of very loose gestures for your shots, and time them - then move on to refinement & cleanup!

• Combine all shots, refine music cues and timings, add any last needed VFX, and export!

There's no secret recipe or anything, it's just learning a pipeline that best suits you, whether it is for something professional or something you want to make for fun because you just love to make!!

#riley talks #long post #SORRY ITS LONG but i couldnt just put a bulletin list like “this is the ONLY method that works” bc thats not true!!! #everyone works diferently especially artists #and this is just my specific method of working #im very fortunate to have programs that make animatic-making a little easier #so i hope whoever wishes to make one in the future finds something that works well for them!! i have a blast making storyboards/animatics!! #text post #ask #tutorial #idk how to tag this lol