Hello~ I’m Mayu, I thought I’d go through my process on how I animate an expression change on Clip Studio Paint. Note that I AM NOT A PROFESSIONAL!!! I am merely a student trying to learn how to animate, so if I use the wrong terms for things or sound like I have no idea what I’m talking about, please forgive me! TT
Setup
Canvas Size
Before you get started on your animation, you’ll have to think about what you want your animation to be. Is it a short looping GIF or an animated scene featuring your OC that tells a story?
From there, you can think about what size you want to make your animation based on what you want it to be.
Text:
Common Aspect Ratios for Animation
16:9 (1920x1080)
Compatible with devices such as phones, laptops and TVs, this is the most popular aspect ratio for animation.
Vertical social medias like Instagram reels and TikTok videos recommend a 9:16 aspect ratio.
1:1 (literally anything as long as both numbers are the same)
Since it’s an equal ratio, this choice is popular for social media posts and profile pictures, though it’s more limited when it comes to things like storytelling.
Setting up your workspace
I’ll be using a 1:1 ratio canvas for this tutorial. To make a new canvas, simply hit Command N or manually go to File > New and select Animation.
Since CSP PRO is only limited to 24 frames per animation, I’ll have my animation settings set to 24 frames. Despite being limited to only a one second GIF, it’ll be enough for a simple looping expression change.
Ensure that you can see the timeline of your animation by going to Window > Timeline and enabling it.
Optional steps
Thumbnail preview
You can choose to see the content of individual cels by left-clicking your animation folder and selecting “Thumbnail Size”. With the setting on, you can choose to preview the cel’s contents through the timeline.
Color-coding Animation Folders
With Clip Studio, you have the ability to color-code animation folders. For example, the way I like to set my animations up is by color-coding the sketch, line art, color and shading animation folders in order to more visually separate them because I have bad eyes. ^q^
Anatomy of Clip Studio Paint's Timeline
The most important tools of the timeline for this tutorial are:
1. Loop (at the end of your animation, starts playback from the first frame)
2. New animation folder (AKA your animation layers. any animated part would go in an animation folder.)
3. New animation cel (creates a new frame for your animation in whichever animation folder is selected)
4. Onion skin (allows you to see the frames before and after your working frame)
Animating your character!
Brainstorming...
Think about your character. What sort of expressions do they make? Do they laugh with their eyes, wear their heart on their sleeve, or are they more stoic and emotionless? If so, do they do any little gestures to express themself? How do they laugh or react to good/bad news? Do they blink slowly or quickly?
I like to write these down so I have a more solid idea of what I want my animation to be.
For this example, I’ll be using my character Hae-min.
I’ve established that I want his movements to be elegant yet playful.
Planning it out
(Very) Roughs
To start off, I like sketching the two expressions about an equal length on the timeline, using the onion skin as reference to plan out the movement. I like drawing in red to make it easier to see the rough sketch under the cleaner sketch, which will come later.
Smoothing the roughs (a little)
To better grasp an idea of the movement, I click the spot in the middle of the two frames’ durations and click the Add animation cel button to create an inbetween frame.
With onion skin on, you should be able to see the frame before and frame after.
For the second inbetween, if you are unable to see the frame at the start of the loop, what you can do temporarily is right-click on the last frame of the animation and select “1”— this will put the frame named “1” at the END of your animation (and these frames will remain the same, so if you make an edit on the “1” at the start, it will carry over to the “1” at the end!)
Adjusting timing
If things don’t look right in regards to timing (for example, I don’t think the frame with the tongue out stays for long enough), you can simply click and drag frames to adjust their timing.
Cleaning up the sketch
Using this sketch, I’ll make another animation folder on top and color code it, then reduce the opacity of the rough sketch layer. I’d recommend starting by roughly cleaning up your keyframes (Frames 1 and 2, or the frames in which your character makes a major movement change or expression change) before cleaning up the inbetween frames.
In terms of physics, since Hae-min is leaning towards the left in a playful manner, his hair and head wings will follow his movement.
Because he is moving to the left and since his head is the center of gravity, his hair will follow through in a delayed fashion, and there will be a slight overshoot once he reaches the left.
I have animated the movement to better explain.
After cleaning up the roughs with basic notes on how I want the movement to go, this was my final result. You can hide or delete the red sketch layer after this.
Clean up
Lining
We’ll start by making our rough sketch layer into a different color so it’s easier to see visually. You can do this by clicking on the ANIMATION FOLDER layer and hitting the “Layer color” button under Layer Property. Lower the opacity, and you’re ready to line.
For lining, I like to make the lineart with vector layers because the quality of the lines doesn’t change with transformations and they’re easier to clean up due to the vector eraser. For someone like me with very unstable hands, it’s very useful.
Here’s how to put vector layers in an animation folder:
Make a new animation folder
Delete the first frame from the Layer panel.
Click the “New Vector Layer” button.
Your first frame should now be a vector layer, and this should apply to any new layers (cels) you create in the animation folder!
I use the default G-Pen to line, but you can use whatever you want. Personally, I tend to raise the stability to around 75 or higher, but that’s just my preference.
The holy vector eraser
Turning this setting on under the Snap Eraser will allow you to erase intersecting lines.
The light table
If you’re having trouble with proportions when lining your animation, you can use the Light table to place a reference of already drawn frames so it’s easier to keep things consistent while drawing.
Opening Window > Animation cels will bring up this window:
1: Enables the light table.
2: Switches your current tool to the Light table tool.
3: Shows the cel-specific light table.
4: Shows the general canvas light table.
5: The layer being edited/drawn on.
6: Cel-specific light table
7: General light table
8: Allows you to change the color of your light table reference images.
To place a reference from another frame into the light table, all you have to do is drag and drop the reference frame into either the cel-specific light table or the general light table. Then, you can scale and transform the light table cel to your liking, and it won’t affect the original frame where the reference was from.
And here are the finished lines.
Inbetweening
Inbetweening follows somewhat of the same process, using the light table and G-pen as well as the vector eraser to add physics to the elements in the animation, such as hair, antennae and adding some fluidity to the expression change.
I like to add an inbetween frame in the middle of two frames on the timeline and use the onion skin as well as light table as reference to make the animation smoother. Vector layers makes this process a lot easier, as I can adjust things to my liking after they’re drawn without having to worry about the line quality becoming more blurry.
Since the head is tilting to the left, the first inbetween frame will be of Hae-min’s head angling slightly upwards and to the left.
Another helpful thing with vector layers is being given the ability to copy and paste elements from a previous cel onto the current one. For instance, I want to make Hae-min’s body/hand the same as Frame 1’s in this inbetween frame.
I would go to Frame 1, select the lines of Hae-min’s torso by holding down COMMAND on Mac (I don’t know what the equivalent is on Windows sorry!) and dragging over the body, OR clicking on the Operation: Object sub tool and dragging over the body, then manually going to Edit > Copy as hitting command will remove the selection.
Here’s the animation with the finished inbetween. Neat, right?
But it could be smoother! So using the same steps as before, I’ll make another inbetween in the middle of keyframes 2 and 3, and another in between keyframe 3 and Frame 1 at the end to make the transition smoother.
Since Frame 2A is right after the change in expression, it’ll be the overshoot frame— the frame where the movement snaps forward a little to add more emphasis on the change in movement!
Once again, while I’m inbetweening, I’ll keep the frames before and after in mind, playing the animation every now and then to make sure everything is looking smooth.
And here are the finished lines. Time to color!
Coloring and shading
Coloring is fairly simple.
1. Create a new animation folder and drag it underneath your lines folder. (you can rename or color code it, I do that just to make it easier on my eyes)
2. I like to pull up the reference on the side using the Window > Subview window so I can easily color pick from his ref sheet.
3. Set the line folder as a reference.
4. I like to use the fill bucket to color, using the Refer to other layers bucket and setting the Area scaling to 1 or 2! Also, the tolerance is set fairly high to avoid gaps.
If there’s weird parts like this, just fill them in using a hard pen.
Since Hae-min has line patterns on his wings, I like to do that on a separate layer.
Simply make a new Animation folder and bring it below your lineart, but above your base color. You can clip animation folders to each other, so simply clip the pattern layer to the color layer, and you won’t have to worry about the pattern going out of the solid color.
Shading and environment
I want this to be set in a nice cozy scene, that looks comfortable and friendly much like Hae-min’s personality, so I’ll just set a simple light blue-deep blue gradient in a (NOT ANIMATION) layer for the background and use the G-pen to block out some white clouds.
To set a filter or effect over Hae-min without affecting the background, I can put every animation folder inside a regular folder, and clip a layer effect to that.
In this example, I clipped a blue Multiply effect to Hae-min. Here’s the finished effect:
Cel shading (a little advanced)
I could stop there, and oftentimes I might if I don’t have time to shade, but for this tutorial I’ll go through how I cel shade my animations. The steps go something like:
1. Turn off the multiply layer on top
2. Make a new animation folder and clip it to the “color” layer, on top of the pattern
3. Set the animation folder’s layer effect to “Multiply”
4. Cel shade the first frame and, using the light source from that first frame as reference, go through the animation and add shading to the rest of the frames.
Since the lighting is coming from the top, that’s what I’ll use as reference to shade the rest of the animation.
Here’s the finished animation with shading!
and the finished animation with the multiply layer!!
hopefully this walkthrough was helpful in some way and thank you for reading through to the end!!! <3
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