#2D Animation Process

[dezpaddesigns]

2D Animation Process | Dezpad Designs

Do you want to learn about the 2D animation process? Learn the techniques used to bring characters and stories to life through traditional hand-drawn or digital animation, from initial concept to final rendering. This step-by-step resource covers every aspect of the creative process, from storyboarding and character design to keyframing and final rendering, to help hone your skills and elevate your 2D animation projects to new levels of creativity and expression. Provides valuable tips and techniques. For more information visit our website: https://dezpad.com/2022/10/07/what-is-2d-animation-step-by-step-guide-for-2d-animation-process

[heartorbit]

find another role, carry on the show

[vrihedd]

Animation breakdown ✨

Painted in Photoshop, rigged and animated in Spine2D, composed in After Effects.

[debbie-sketch]

Hi everyone! This time I wanted to show you my tiny animation based on the mural by Rufino Tamayo "Dualidad". I also share some of the process that goes in the creation of the idea. 

[bootsy-owo]

Poseidon under the sunset

Epic the musical animation for compositing and animation practice :3 full clean, colo and compositing process by me and also thank you a lot to @neal_illustrator on instagram for letting me use their design of Poseidon their animatics are the coolest ToT !!!!

(link to their youtube channel) https://www.youtube.com/@nealillustrator

[nickelwick]

Stop what you're doing right now and watch this. Right. Now.

[michaeladrianwright]

Knight Process

[gingerjangle]

the task was "30 sec - 1 min animation of a childhood memory" lmaoooo, we only had like 4 or 3 days to work on it so took it as an opportunity to expiriment a bit in after effects,,, kinda getting the hang of ngl

last one was a quick styleframe

[gifartistscollective]

April GIF Theme: Mirror

The April 2025 GIF Theme is here! You have until the evening of April 30th to submit your ‘Mirror’ themed GIF. Your only limits are Tumblr’s GIF file size limit, and the theme.

Once you’ve made your GIF, post it to your blog and send the link to us via our submission box. We’ll reblog it to keep a collection of all the GIFs that have been made.

Good luck and have fun!

- pi-slices

[omeletcat]

Autumn Idle animation!!!!!!!!! Autumn is my gargoyle oc!! She's a librarian in the ancient library!! a giant labyrinth inside a mountain, many says it goes all the way down to the core of the planet. Filled with artifacts and books filled with ancient knowledge!

[jabibi-the-beef]

protect that smile

[leebrontide]

Working on tweaking the designs for the key cast for animation project #2. It's meant to be like an anime opener, so I've been cribbing heavily from The Apothecary Diaries.

It's an interesting creative challenge because the thing about anime is it tends to heavily simplify the features that carry a lot of racial information. But Brittle Idols, that the opener is based off of, is set in the US and really needs to not just be "the same basic design in different colors" or the like...incredibly racist designs you sometimes get in anime. (Not JUST in anime but some of the designs...yikes.)

Like, here's some examples of my more default animation style from the Secondhand Origin Stories "trailer" from book 1 in the same series. Please ignore the incredible crunchiness of the GIFs.

Like it's hardly shocking from these that I grew up on anime. But you can also see I'm not trying to do anime in these like on the drawing's above. I'm just more comfortable with a little more realism.

I'm not fully content with the top designs anyways but also...I have no way of actually animating them.

I use modified 3d head models to help me get the consistency in my characters because I am a total amateur who doesn't know what they're doing.

But I don't have the 3D modeling chops to make models more like the upper designs. I've already pushed the limits of the Clip Studio head customizer. And I hate working with more open and flexible 3D modeling that isn't just tweaking a face. It feels like when I tried to take Japanese right after Spanish- like learning Spanish was actually impairing my learning Japanese because I kept mixing them up in my head. Like what I know about 2D art is an active detriment.

If you know a program that would let me specifically customize a face and then export it into 3D in CSP, please let me know. I really like the general direction the top designs are taking, but I don't have the chops to manipulate them in 3D WHILE managing facial expressions, lighting, etc. I'm a lot more comfortable with a more realistic design.

But the top designs are cute. In order we have: Jamie, Issac, Yael, Opal, Zipporah, and Enoch. You can see Jamie, Issac, Yael and Opal in the GIFs.

Oh, ALSO, if you have good refs for 2D animation of ANY kind that handles lighting dark skin really well please tell me about it. Every time I try it the results look really busy.

[royalbluecomics]

another animation i did of my comic character

[vrihedd]

Animation breakdown ✨ Used software: Blender, Photoshop, Spine, After Effects.

[debbie-sketch]

Inside My Animation Short Film: My Favorite Scene Explained

Please subscribe and like if you enjoyed the video it would mean the world to me! See ya until the next one! ♡

[lovewritteninthestrands]

thought i’d make a post showing/teaching my animation process for my most recent finished project!!! animation is really fun, it’s my absolute favorite form of art in the world and i love sharing how i approach it! without further ado, let’s get into it!

1. roughs

the goal here is to establish the big things in the animation. what are the main movements? what is the timing? what’s the general layout of the space the animation is occurring in? in my roughs, i like to use multiple colors to keep things separate and clear. you should also not be focusing on the details either!!! you are trying to get the most basic, fundamental forms down and moving before adding ANY detail. trust me, no artist on earth can crank out a finished animation without first taking this messy, less-than-pretty step.

2. tie downs

at this point, once the movement is down, you can start adding more details and clarifying things. in the tie down stage, you’re refining things— medium details, faces, character clothing, etc. you’re not trying to make it super clean. THIS IS SO IMPORTANT DO NOT TRY TO MAKE A CLEAN ANIMATION STRAIGHT OFF OF THE ROUGHS YOU WILL MAKE MISTAKES THAT ARE INSANELY ANNOYING TO FIX THAT LATE IN THE PROCESS!!! worry about perfect cleanliness in the next step!

3. final lines/cleanup

NOW i start worrying about how clean i want it to be. this stage sucks i am not going to lie. it is tedious and slow and agonizing because every single line has to move in a way that makes sense. DO NOT JUST INK OVER THE TIE DOWNS. if you do that it will look terrible and wobbly. you have to make sure everything is on model, that forms and lines move in a way that makes sense, and that there is no jitter or “sticking” (happens when lines are drawn over lines from the previous frame, which makes the line appear to “stick” in place). additionally, you’ll notice the red lines— these are color separation lines that will not be visible in the final animation. i use these for sappha’s stripes and hair highlights, as well as her two-tone irises. while not visible here, there is also a separate animation layer for final shadows.

4. coloring

and then comes color!! I do my cleanup and coloring in clip studio paint. If you’ve done everything correctly and there’s no gaps between lines, CSP’s fill tool will allow you to pretty quickly and easily fill your cleaned up animation. for this animation, i also threw together a shitty messy background in about 20 minutes and then gaussian blurred it (im not good at painting lol).

5. compositing

once the coloring is done, i move into my fully legal copy of After Effects, and begin compositing. this entails taking the animation elements (cels, backgrounds, etc) and combining them, color grading them, and adding effects like blurs, gradients, and light bleed. your two most important effects in AE are fast box blur and gradient ramp— honestly, you don’t need much more than those two to make a well-composited animation (besides some color stuff like gamma/pedestal/gain). once that’s done, i export it as an MP4 and a PNG sequence, import the sequence into CSP or Toonsquid (my favorite animation app for the ipad), and then use that to export a gif of my final animation!

and that concludes the most basic rundown i can give without writing wayyy too much. if you’ve got any specific questions, please hit up my inbox, i love talking about art and animation with people interested in learning!