So I’ve finally started working on phase one of my animatic, and this is basically where everything begins to come to life. It’s still very rough, but honestly, this stage is one of the most important parts because it sets the mood and direction of the whole film.
I realized that my first phase of the animatic is actually all about line art, not full visuals yet. At this stage, I’m only focusing on drawing the outlines of my characters, and honestly, this is where the foundation of everything starts.
In this phase, I kept things super simple—no colors, no shading, just clean outlines. The goal here isn’t to make the drawing look “finished,” but to figure out the structure of the character. Things like the shape of the face, the flow of the hair, and the overall expression are way more important at this point.
For example, in the first frame, I worked on a close-up of my character with her eyes closed and a soft smile. Even with just lines, I tried to bring out a calm and gentle emotion. I focused a lot on the curves of the hair and the face because those small details really affect how the character feels to the audience.
I also paid attention to line flow. Instead of making stiff or rough strokes, I tried to keep the lines smooth and natural, especially in the hair. Since I’m not using color yet, the line work itself has to carry the personality of the character.
Another important thing in this phase is fixing mistakes early. It’s much easier to adjust proportions, facial features, or angles when everything is still just outlines. Once color and shading come in later, it becomes harder to change things. So this phase really helps me experiment and improve the design before moving forward.
I used Clip Studio Paint for this, mainly because I’m comfortable with it and it makes it easy to sketch and refine lines using layers. I usually start with rough strokes and then go over them to create cleaner outlines.
Overall, the line art phase might look simple, but it’s actually one of the most important steps in the whole animation process. It’s where the character truly starts to take shape. Once I’m happy with these outlines, I can move on to adding colors and details in the next phase.
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