Animation Study - Layer Setups + More Eyes (F2F Ease Experiments)

Attempts to find a colored standard for colored animations is coming along nicely, now getting closed to using a somewhat simpler version of the full standard illustration styles.

That said, some compromises will be made in order to keep this from being too complicated/loaded with budget issues. (Outlined in Tech Overview) 

Experimenting with eyes, hair strands and bouncing balls to focus more on the technical polish while keeping animations viable yet approachable. Which is why those are more often when I begin animating again. 

About the biggest change now would be that the setup is now using After Effects as part of the process for the bigger and more complex animations. I will soon create a Dropbox specifically for videos to go along with that in the near future.

Technical Overview / Changes:

• This Piece: Experimenting with other ways to draw eyes besides the 4-frame quick methods. I plan to have different ease methods for eyes for characterization and expressive purposes.

• Four layer system is now used for the complete set; Any number of layers as needed will be used for the reference/sketch layers.

• Though this sample is rendered with Clip Studio Paint, finalized animations proper will be likely rendered over with After Effects.

• Binary brushes will be used on a upscaled canvas, at least twice as big, replacing the old anti-aliased brush. This allows room for error and smoothing out when brought over to post-processing via PNG sequence, as well as provide ease of use to construct lines quick and change solid colors instantly without any significant drop in quality.

• Revised: Dedicated color hold (Lineart color) animation layers replaced with global single colored color holds as a standard. Old standard color holding will be used for close-up shots in which color holds hold a more important role.

• Revised: Removed dedicated glow layers and F/X replaced it with simple overlay solid colors for ease of use. This includes backlights, colored glows, and basic effects. Can be rendered separately from the other layers and keyed back into After Effects for more advanced composition effects, allowing for more control in effects as a result.

• After Effects integration is officially live.

That should do it for the rest of the technical stuff. I know some of you really want me to do more complete animations, so I wanted to keep you all updated on the fact that I am going to be trying my best to make it happen!