A longtime friend of mine, who is celebrating his birthday this time, said he wanted to see my old Team Fortress 2-based original character art, so I’m redrawing a character I haven’t drawn in years.And... it’s not just a simple drawing — I’m separating each part into its own layer.I’m doing this in layers, numbering in the dozens, because I’m hoping that someday I’ll be able to use an animation program that can actually put a spine into a drawing.
At first, I used Adobe Animate to make moving GIFs. (3rd picture on this post)But while that program can use asset warping, it doesn’t have a function for rigging with a spine, so its limitations are significant and the work takes a very long time.Also, asset warping has bugs, and when I try to automate the body movement, parts of the drawing can disappear between frames. So after making it once, I have to keep fixing it little by little until the missing parts are gone.Because of that, the time spent warping assets and fixing bugs is much longer and more exhausting than the time spent actually finishing the drawing.
For that reason, I’m drawing in Clip Studio instead of Animate so I can use a different program.But the problem is that learning another program and getting used to it naturally can take a very long time.For now, I think I’ll finish this piece as a static image, and then slowly learn the program and try again when I have time.If I try it and it turns out to be so difficult that it really just isn’t feasible, I may have to give up on it...