Almost Done Key Animation for "Nightclub" (Patreon)

Another quick update - getting close to finishing animation on this big Nightclub episode! There maybe 5 or 6 shots left to do of the main characters' key animation, although still plenty of background animation to do (silhouetted crowd loops and specific reusable extras) and lots of lighting effects like you can see in the images above. There are a few ways to do lighting for 2D animation in comp, but I'm not crazy about the way they tend to flatten out the characters. Just like line boil or any other kind of effect, I just think it looks better to properly draw it as part of the animation, so it follows the shapes of the characters' bodies and just feels more cohesive and organic. Similarly, rather than colouring the characters with their default palettes all the way through and then drastically tweaking everything later in AE, I prefer planning out the palettes for different lighting conditions ahead of time and just directly filling them with the actual colours I want.

Hand-drawn light/shadow passes always look cool, but they're really time-consuming, so I use them sparingly. For this episode, I felt some flashing and highlights were important to really sell the intense club atmosphere, but I don't want it to be too distracting (or dangerous for any viewers with epilepsy) so I'm having the drawn highlights flash on periodically for about 6 frames at a time, which is usually 2-3 drawings. It cuts down on the extra work of a full hand-drawn shadow pass but it still suggests the same thing.