Animation in Clip Studio

Make an Animated Sticker｜Messenger Apps/Live Streaming

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dokidokidrawing

Today's Tools for Animation!

Hello everyone! NihongoGamer and Hinoe from Doki Doki Drawing here! We know you love those animated emoji stickers you see in messenger apps like Line and Facebook Messenger but did you know you can make your own animated stickers really easily in Clip Studio Paint Pro? You can even use these animations for your YouTube videos or Twitch livestreams to really personalize your channel for a unique way to thank viewers for their generous donations and support! You only need two tools to make today’s animation.

The first tool is Clip Studio Paint. We are using Clip Studio Paint Pro which allows for up for 24 frames of animation which is plenty for most animated stickers. If you want to do longer animations you might want to have a look at Clip Studio Paint EX!

The second tool is a drawing tool. We’re using a Wacom Cintiq Pro 16 pen display which allows you to draw directly on the screen, but you can use anything you like. You can even draw some great animations using just the computer mouse especially if you make good use of Clip Studio Paint’s vector tools for drawing shapes.

Once you have your tools in place, we follow 10 straightforward steps to complete our animated sticker.

Step 1 - Decide what to draw

There are plenty of times when you might want to use a sticker instead of plain text. Many of them involve a short message like “Please Subscribe to My Channel” or “Thank You”. Today we’ve decided to animate our favorite piggy character from Doki Doki Drawing videos. We could have them say anything, but this time we’ve chosen “Long Time No See”. It’s a popular phrase in Japan too, “O Hisashiburi”.

Step 2 - Setup the Canvas in ClipStudio Paint Pro

Before you can draw, you need to set up a canvas! For convenience let’s click on “File-> New” then choose the Preset “Animated Sticker (APNG) x 1 (320 x 270px). You can change the size of the canvas as you like. We’re using this preset which keeps the image within the rules for many animated stickers on messenger apps.

You can choose the “Number of cels” in the animation. This time we’ve chosen “6” to start off but you can add or subtract frames later on if necessary.

Step 3 - Draw Final Pose of Animation

Hinoe’s advice is to start by drawing the final pose of animation first! Animated stickers are usually very short so the final pose is the image that is seen for the longest amount of time. For this pose, we’re drawing our piggy character looking over their shoulder to look at us.

Quick Tip: Drawing the character on one side will leave you enough space for adding a worded message! These stickers are great because they make it easy to communicate with friends without typing a message separately!

Step 4 - Add Words!

Once you’ve finished drawing the character, it’s time to add your message! You can leave it blank for a general use sticker, or maybe try something like “Sorry I’m Late!” or “Thanks for the Donation!”

Step 5 - Use Clip Studio Paint "Light Table”

Did you know Clip Studio Paint has a “Light Table” feature? It’s just like what professional animators used for traditional analog animation but with all the benefits of the digital era! To draw the next frame of animation (frame 1, the start of our animation), we’re going to turn on the light box. Click frame 1 in the layer palette, then click the check mark on frame 6 (the final pose of animation). Now click “Register selected Layer” in the Animation Cel window. This should allow us to see frame 6 underneath while we draw frame 1.

You can lower the opacity of frame 6 to something like 30%. This will make it easier to draw frame 1 over the top of it. Frame 1 will be our piggy character facing away from us.

Step 6 - Set up Light Table for “In-between”

Next we want to draw an “In-between”. It’s called this because it’s a frame that comes between 2 other frames. We want to draw frame 2 which comes between frame 1 and frame 6. Let’s set up the light table to show us frame 1 and frame 6. With frame 2 selected, add check marks for frame 1 and frame 6.

Just like step 5, click “register selected layer” to add frame 1 and frame 6 to the light table.

The light table in Clip Studio Paint is very powerful because it’s digital! Let’s change the colors of frame 1 and frame 6 so they’re easier to distinguish visually!

Now that the light table is set up for “in-betweening”, let’s draw frame 2. Our piggy character is going to move quickly from facing away from us to facing sideways. Let’s draw a side view!

Hinoe’s quick tip: Focus on keeping the volumes of shapes consistent. Changing shapes are harder to see, but a changing volume is very obvious to the viewer!

Step 7 - Draw the next In-between (Repeat as necessary)

Step 7 is the same as step 6. Draw in-betweens as you feel necessary. Make sure to check the movement of your animation. Make sure it looks like it’s moving since that’s the point of making an animated sticker! For our piggy character this will be the last frame we draw. Since the movement slows down when coming to the final pose, we draw an in-between pose that leans closer to the final pose.

This is frame 2 and frame 6 in the light table.

Here is the frame we draw in-between.

Step 8 - Test Animation and Adjust Timing

Looks like we didn’t need all 6 frames for animation. Let’s remove the unnecessary blank frames and also speed up the animation. To do this, we’re using “Animation -> Timeline -> Change frame rate…”

Let’s change it to 15 fps (frames per second).

Step 9 - Cleanup and Color!

Hinoe is very busy professional animator for Japanese Anime! NihongoGamer is going to finish the key drawings by doing the cleanup process for the line art and then adding some simple color!

Remember to keep the color palette simple. This reduces the file size and makes the animation immediate and easy to understand quickly! It’s a sticker for messenger apps after all so communication is a priority!

Step 10 - Export Animation

The animation is finished but we can’t use a Clip Studio image file in messenger apps or in live streams so let’s export the industry standard APNG file (Animated PNG). If you want your animation to have a transparent background, remember to remove the white background layer first!

From the file menu click “File -> Export animation -> Animated sticker (APNG)”

For this example we choose the default setting of 320 x 270 pixels. You can set the animation to loop multiple times but we’re sticking with "1 Time”.

And that’s it! Clip Studio Paint will create an animated PNG file for you and you can drop it into your videos, livestreams or submit it to a messenger application for use in chats!

That’s all for this animation! Remember to have fun! There is no limit to the number of things you can animate! It can get complicated, but if you focus on making sure it looks like it’s moving then you’ll be an animator in no time!

About Doki Doki Drawing

Doki Doki Drawing is a YouTube channel with hundreds of videos featuring tutorials, funny art challenges, and interviews with professional Japanese artists working in Manga and Anime production in Japan! Connect with Doki Doki Drawing by subscribing on YouTube or Following on Twitter!