How to animate in Clip Studio PAINT

Animate Illuminated Scenes in Clip Studio PAINT

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KevinFarias

Hello! In this article called Animate Illuminated Scenes in Clip Studio PAINT, I will teach you how to create scenes full of lights, ideal for end-of-year festivities.

What we will do:

We will start with this animation:

What we will achieve:

So I invite you to add lights to our animation using the tools available in Clip Studio PAINT.

Animate Illuminated Scenes in Clip Studio PAINT (TUTORIAL)

Remember to activate the subtitles in your language, you'll surely find them :)

What did you think of the video? We saw step-by-step how to add lights and create a luminous environment in our animation.

Step-by-step process:

Now we will see the entire process through images, so you'll understand it even better.

1. Creating the Animation Project

Go to File - New. In the project, choose the last option, the Animation option.

Size: 3840 x 2160.

600 dpi (You can set this however you want)

In the Timeline: Frames per second at 8 and Duration at 12 frames.

Once all this is ready, click OK.

2. Timeline

Go to Window - Timeline.

Now it is visible so we can use it.

3. Save the Project

Go to File - Save as.

Change the name and always make sure that in Type: CLIP STUDIO FORMAT is activated.

And choose the folder where you want to save your project.

4. Animation Folder with Layer Folder

Before starting with the firework animation, we will delete the animation folder that is created by default. In the layer panel, select: Delete layer.

And create a new animation folder from the timeline.

Change its name and inside this animation folder, create a new layer folder.

And inside this layer folder, create 2 new raster layers, named Base and FXs.

In the timeline, on frame 1 of this animation folder, activate: Assign cel to frame. Choose the only cel we have created and click OK.

And we are ready to start animating our firework.

5. Firework Animation

Truthfully, this animation will be quite simple, very similar to an explosion. I will make this animation as simple as possible so that you can also do it.

In frame 1, we will draw this:

Once we have drawn the first drawing, we advance to frame 2 and create a new animation cel.

And as you can see, the new animation cel has been created in the layer panel with the same layers as before, even with the same names. That's the magic of creating an animation cel as a layer folder.

It will save us a lot of time!

Now we make the second drawing of the animation, without forgetting to activate the onion skin, to see the previous drawing and guide us.

Next, we will make the drawing for frame 3, following the trajectory of the initial movement.

In frame 4, we will only draw a circle, because the firework has reached its peak and is preparing to explode. It will be the simplest drawing we will make.

In frame 5, we draw the shape where it already begins to explode.

In frame 6, the explosion begins to expand little by little.

In frame 7, the firework begins to explode with more force.

In frame 8, we begin to draw a speed line resulting from the firework explosion.

In frame 9, the firework begins to expand after exploding.

In frame 10, we draw some lines as the firework has exploded.

In frame 11, we draw only a few dots, creating the trail left by the firework after the explosion.

And finally, in frame 12, we create a new cel, but it will be an empty cel.

6. Preview of the Firework Animation

This is the result we achieved by making a very simple animation.

7. Firework Effects

Activate the Airbrush tool.

In Sub Tool: Soft.

We will select the FXs layer we created earlier, and we will blur the outer part of the firework, in each of the animation drawings.

8. Firework Animation with Effects

Applying the above, we can achieve the following result:

9. Fireworks

As you can see, with the same method we can vary the drawings and achieve different results.

10. Integrate Fireworks into a Scene

To use fireworks in a scene is quite simple; we have the firework project, we select the one we want to use, we will start with the one I showed earlier.

Go to Edit - Copy

And go to the other project, to the animation where we will integrate the firework.

And go to Edit - Paste

With the Move Layer tool, we can select the firework animation and move it within the scene.

Initially, it won't look very good because we made the animation black, but in Clip Studio PAINT we have a very useful tool, which we will use next.

Select the firework animation and activate: Change Layer Color.

By default, it will paint the animation blue, but if we click on: Layer color, we can change the color.

And for this first firework, we will choose a light color, it can be white or yellow.

And we can make it look like this:

Now we are going to use the second firework; we return to the firework animation project, select the animation, and copy it.

And paste it into the animation scene. Don't forget to activate: Enable layer color.

And change the color to a lighter blue.

Finally, we will use the last animation, select it, and copy it.

And go to the animation scene. Paste it and activate: Change Layer Color.

This time we will choose a red color.

And for now, we achieve the following animation:

11. Animation Timing

Now we are going to move the firework animations so that they appear at different times during the animation. We can do this by taking the animation in the timeline and moving them to different positions.

We achieved something much more natural and less mechanical.

12. Duplicates of Fireworks

Create a new layer folder above the firework animations.

Take the 3 animations and incorporate them into this new layer folder created.

Select this folder and right-click: Duplicate Layer. Duplicate this folder.

And we have duplicated the fireworks; now we have 6 in total.

Now we will select each of the firework animations and edit them, both their size and their position in the timeline.

We will start with the red one.

Then the blue one.

And we finish with the yellow one.

Achieving the following result:

13. Color with Gradients

Another way we can color our fireworks is through gradients, which I will show you next.

We start by creating a new raster layer above the first folder that contains the original fireworks.

Change its name to Color and activate: Clip to layer below. This way, everything we do on this layer will only affect the folder with the original fireworks.

Select the Gradient tool.

Select the Sky Gradient, to achieve a blue color.

And we create a new layer above the folder of duplicated fireworks and apply a more intense color, yellow and red. Achieving a great contrast between the fireworks.

14. Animated Ambient Lights

Now we are going to create some light flares throughout the scene, so that we can achieve an impact to best integrate the firework lights.

We will start by creating a new animation folder in the timeline.

Then, in the layer panel, we will create a new layer folder inside this new animation folder.

It automatically acquires the name: 1

Now we will use the same gradients created earlier, for this, right-click and activate: Duplicate layer.

We have both gradients inside this new animation.

Activate Assign Cel to Frame on frame 1 of this animation, to make the gradients visible.

And we will change the blend mode of this new animation folder to: Overlay

Achieving that the first frame looks like this; in my case, I deactivated the blue gradient, leaving only the red one.

Now I'm going to duplicate the animation cel containing the gradients; in the layer panel, right-click: Duplicate layer.

In this second cel, I will make both gradients visible, the blue one and the yellow one.

And in the timeline, go to frame 2 and activate: Specify cels.

And select Animation Cel number 2.

And I will duplicate both cels again, but for the new ones, I will lower the opacity to 50%. I will add them every 1 frame in the timeline, achieving a simple animation that will still have an impact due to the light changes produced.

The result is the following:

15. Animated Lights on Characters

Finally, and to better integrate the characters into the animation, we will perform a simple light animation on both characters; you will see that the animation will look even better.

We will start by creating a new animation folder from the timeline.

This new animation folder will be called Lights. Next, we will create a New Animation cel.

Choose the Pen tool and change the color to a lighter tone.

And paint certain areas of our characters.

Now select the animation folder in the layer panel and change the blend mode to: Overlay.

Achieving a much better integration.

And we animate certain areas of the characters' bodies where light from the fireworks is projected. Once we make an animation of 3 or 4 drawings, we will duplicate that animation in the timeline to extend it.

It is important that this simple light animation is an animated cycle.

We keep copying and pasting this animation until all the timeline space is filled.

And that's it, we have finished with all the details of our animation.

Achieving this simple but great result: