R-Type missiles (progress shot) (Patreon)

More R-Type remastered animation. This time I'm incorporating a 3D ship & environment with hand drawn missiles, background and shading.

You can see in the first shot how messy the missiles start off, but end up looking quite nice at the end (it's all about the movement with missiles, so really you just have to draw curved lines then add the missiles in later). Missile smoke trails can get pretty complicated so I draw them in different colours just so I can see what I'm doing and then make them all the same colour when I "ink" over them.

In anime, this kind of thing is known as the "Itano Circus", after action choreography animator Ichiro Itano and his famous method of animating crazy missile sequences: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BzXfVgYCxWI

Also, here are some references I used. Sorry the Quo Vadis ones are low quality, but it was a Sega Saturn game and, in a cruel twist of fate, one of the greatest examples of detailed animation is confined to super-compressed ancient cutscenes forever!