Saying that people of color cannot show any visible blushing is a big fat myth that only proves how little people actually know about skin tones.
I have seen a lot of skin-tone palettes that includes dark skin, but it is very rarely put in use as examples. And many times I’ve found them to only appear monochrome, while darker skin tones are just as rich in tone variation as fair skin.
And just to be extra nice, I even added the basic colors I used in these two examples. A big protip is to start with the darkest tone as a base and then work to light tones. Use the highlights sparingly, they should not be large but more like small spots. Dark skin is more “reflective”, meaning small highlights pop out more than on lighter skin tones.
I made this set mainly for all the anime artists out there who probably would love to color more poc characters but don’t really know if it’d work out as kawaii as their usual stuff.
News flash: it’s drop-dead super kawaii in all skin tones<3
This is specifically for how I make “Stay.” which I use Photoshop + Premier for reasons. This doesn’t mean this is the ONLY method on how to make this, or any animation! I can use Flash as well, but for this project I really wanted a specific look that I don’t know how to achieve in Flash. Basically, use a program that you know can cater to the look you want to achieve, and figure out how to make that happen.
LAYERS refer to your layers panel, and that is where you are drawing your stuff. FRAMES refers to the animation/timeline window, where certain LAYERS can appear for a duration of time. You are not drawing anything here…because you can’t.
I animate with 0.1 seconds, and I export at 12fps. This is wholly up to you, though.
1) My document size is 5000x2813 at 300dpi, because I’m paranoid about losing quality ahhh ha haaa. My final short is only 1280x720. See? Paranoid.
2) To animate in Photoshop, treat the “layers” as if they were sheets of paper, and the “frames” are the ones that will be viewed. You can choose which layers to appear and what not. It can record if you shift an image up, down, left, right, but it will not remember if in one frame you rotate it 90 degress, because that alters the pixel data directly. Instead, you should copy that layer, and rotate it there. Here’s an example
There’s a magic plug-in that makes animating in Photoshop like animating in Flash, what with onion skinning and stuff, but my lazy-ass hasn’t installed it yet so I will show you how I do things my barbaric way.
3) Lower the opacity of the previous and next frame. This is called Onion Skinning, and is the same thing as if you were drawing animation on a lightbox.
4)
I render my frames basically the same way I do most of my art. I paint a base layer, then I use clipping masks to color/detail it. Once again, this depends on your own taste: our styles may be different, so you need to figure out how to draw your own frames efficiently. Don’t make one frame 500000 layers, though, you’ll only want to kill yourself! Keep it simple.
OKAY NEXT PART
5)
Doing the background. Yeah. …..yeah. So now it looks like THIS
I think I’m done, so its time to export the frames!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Though if you want to know how I make these GIFs:
6) Go to Image > Image Size, and make it smaller. (mine are at 400px). GIFS should always be small. Then go to File > Save for Web and Devices
Make sure its set to “GIF.” I usually to “selective” to make it smaller, if its a very short animation, “perceptual” is the best quality setting. Play with the settings and you’ll get a feel for it yourself. When you’re done, hit SAVE (done doesn’t do that), aaaaaaand you got yourself a little GIF to show off.
(don’t forget to go back in your history and change the image size back!!!! Don’t accidentally save it as the small size, I’ve done it once and I cried for a long time.)
NOW FOR EXPORTING
7) Go to File > Export > Render to Video.
MAKE SURE THE SIZE IS AT DOCUMENT SIZE. I think the default Frame Rate is 15, but I change it to 12. When you’re done, hit “render.”
8) Now that you got yourself a folder of your done images, open up your video program and import it in!
WHOOOOA WAIT, my thing was only 21-ish frames! That’s more than 21! That’s just how Photoshop will export it. If I have a frame that was held for 1 second, it will export that frame multiple times to that it will equal 1 second. You can just delete/later the frames here. (which I do, because my animation came out longer than expected.)
In Premier, I like to make a new Sequence and put those files in, then put that sequence into my main movie file. Then I do some video-y things.
Lookit that.
OKAY when its the way I want, I go to File > Export > Media, make sure the settings are what I want, then hit export. And voila! A movie file that hopefully exported right. Then I watch it 10 times for a quality check so I can go back and fix something, or I’m actually done.
Here’s the final thing:
(uh wow Youtube way to make a creepy preview image)
And that’s how I make a scene in “Stay!” Hope this helps.
Art blog and whatever inspires me. That kinda jazz, yknow.
