u/RynnHamHam

First image is with shading (ignore the weird blue artifacts. This is a proof-of-concept animation so I didn't bother cleaning up some of the experimental coloring that broke through the selection due to being vector lines). I have the color shift below the shading layer (that also has the cerulean you see). Second image is without shading.

I'm trying to animate a fight scene in CSP (EX ver 5) and I'm wondering if there's a more efficient way to animate a shifting color (example on third image). My fight scene takes place in an alien factory processing a material that changes colors when melted down and I want it to provide a stylized yet diegetic lighting. So for example, when Curt here has his moment, the screen will pause on his blue color. When the green guy does a thing, it's green. Villain gets red. Etc. Scrolling through a color wheel with a fill bucket isn't the worst thing in the world, but I want to get it smoother beyond just manually adding more frames if possible. Or at least have some advice on doing it cleaner beyond just eyeballing it.

Last panel is part of the action scene so far to give a sense of the motion the scene will have.

I have a friend who is designing a 3d background in blender. So the idea is to put the 2d fight into an animated 3d background which means whatever technique we use needs to translate well into blender shaders because of course I had to think up this really cool but super difficult animation thing I want to implement in my opening fight scene. My ambition is like diarrhea. When I'm crying and think there can't possibly be more, my body somehow manifests it and I can't stop until it's all out.

I’m making an anime intro for my pilot and I’m trying to catalogue all the dos and donts that make an anime opening great (beyond the music)

Good-

-Subtle spoilers that you won’t notice on a first watch. Going off my opening, I have a funny scene that makes me snicker because (spoiling my webcomic) there’s a part where the big tall muscular barbarian alien grabs a klansman and rips him in half with his bare hands. In the anime opening I have a transition where it zooms in on the group of klansmen and then the screen rips in half to reveal Toan the Manguma. Other real anime examples would be like how Golden Wind has the characters that make it to the end on one side of the screen and the ones who die on the other. Of course in a first watch you wouldn’t really think much of the character arrangement but with context on a repeat viewing it hits different. Love stuff like that. Attack on Titan’s second opening had enough restraint to keep the Female Titan as just a brief silhouette at the very end of the opening which I like. They didn’t show too much and I respect that.

- At minimum one 11/10 standout shot that encapsulates what the audience has to look forward to. Prime thumbnail material. JJK’s 3rd opening having the fight going down the skyscraper is a good example.

- Some kind of unique identifying visual message. I love how ReZero’s first opening has the cool black/white shot of Subaru dying and then being brought back. It feels undeniably unique to that show. JJK’s classical painting motif with Aizo was a fun artistic direction. Naruto Shippuden’s 14th opening had the most creative art direction in my opinion with the hard red/black lighting and the almost spy movie sounding music.

Bad-

- Uninspired art direction/cinematography. I’m talking about the most generic tropes you see repeated that don’t feel like they have any actual rhyme or reason to be included (these can be done right when they have a sense of purpose but a lot of the time it feels like filler). I’m talking the generic desperate running shot, random somberness that feels tonally out of character, zoom in of a character raging, girl character laying down looking submissive and breedable for no reason, overuse of previous events flashing through a title sequence, weird action scene with poor cinematography/direction, ensemble cast shot with a majority of the characters having nothing to do with the arc presented, etc.

- Extremely blatant spoilers. Like when a death flag isn’t even a flag. Naruto Shippuden is infamous for this. They basically show which characters are dying in the arc the first episode of a new opening. Jojo had Trish’ stand shown in the second Golden Wind opening, and it kind of took the spectacle out of the proper reveal when it happened.

- Scenes are so generic you would not have a clue which arc it’s supposed to represent. So basically the opposite problem of the previous. Where the opening tells me nothing about the general idea of the story. Tokyo Ghoul’s second opening is a beautiful song and I love the visuals but it is absolutely an ending song. Naruto Shippuden again has a few (usually when they’re just dumping filler for the manga to make distance). They can be great songs, like I like Diver, but they just feel so empty. I like my openings to have some markers on where we are in the story. Have it tell me something new.

- Misrepresenting the show/tonally inconsistent. Like when an otherwise serious action show throws in a really goofy opening or none of the characters are in scenarios that would be accurate to the show.

List suggestions

Obviously there's writing the script and preparing a pitch bible, but what other things do you do to further your projects?

Sometime this weekend I'm going to have a friend film me ragdolling my younger brother around so that I can use it as an animation ref of a tweaker attacking my MC for not giving him a hug. My brother is a twink so he's the perfect physique for being thrown around. Unfortunately, I'm a big boy and not a twig thin tweaker but I'm the only one among my friends who is both tall and confident in the ability to throw that styrofoam twink like an unwanted newborn, so I'll just have to use my imagination when rotoscoping the assault.

I have a friend currently working on a 3d background for a different fight scene, and I have a rough 3d model of some bleachers I need to add more detail to later.

I've spent a small fortune and a kidney on recording equipment and behind the scenes I'm trying to hire local VAs to support my local theater gremlins. They might afford a vending machine snack when this is over.

I've also commissioned two people for music for the pilot. One person doing the anime opening and the other doing the OST.

(For those following my project, sorry I don't have anything new to show. I've been working on a bunch of the more boring, ax-sharpening sides of things, which is why I'm posting this discussion topic, as well as trying to grind out pages of the webcomic to catch up with that)

A bit messy and I apologize for my chicken scratch. This is meant to be a basic storyboard.

For context- I plan on putting brief little bios when a character's name is displayed, so it'll show the characters' ages, grades, other info, like how May is special needs and has a learning disability.

The prior night, Ted attempted to spray paint an anti-racist message on the back of the high school but ran out of paint partway through his "white power is bad" message and was just left with "white power" before a security guard came by and he panicked and ran. So his "It could've been an accident" and guilty look on his face is because it was an accident and he's the one that did it.

More context- Danningville is the neighboring town which is an infamous sundown town, and Ted is from there and doesn't really like it.

I feel like I'm gaining a bunch of momentum on getting the pilot storyboarded. Far from done but I've knocked out a few scenes.

For context in my example: this won't be in my pilot but hypothetically if I can produce a season 1, the finale will be super action packed.

Aliens have revealed themselves to the public and are hosting a massive multicultural festival as sort of an introduction to the multiverse, as a portal will be built within that town. The US president who is a Latina woman is also attending the festival. The neighboring town is SUPER racist (as if the klan robes didn't give that away) and want to run the aliens out, and assassinate the sitting US president as they don't view her as legitimate and inviting the aliens in just added to their scorn. They all packed onto a bus and raided the festival and took multiple people hostage.

Zhaus (tall lizard alien) is the ambassador for the alien organization hosting the festival and attempts to negotiate with the klansmen, not being fully aware of who they are. They shoot him immediately meaning they can't be negotiated with, so Ian (Nudibranch sea slug alien) immediately warps Zhaus (which also heals) and then warps himself out of there, only to pop back in for a surprise attack.

During the beginning of the attack, an elite human (humans with powers) cast a massive force field protecting a majority of people from the klansmen, but many people were locked out and subsequently taken hostage or are in hiding. It was a sudden and desperate situation. But the personality of the Shieldsmith is super peppy and they view anyone who talks to them as a friend and another Nudibranch making an observation about the hostages was apparently enough of a motivational peptalk to cause their power to expand and now they can cast two shields at once. This completely put the klansmen at a disadvantage as they lost their bargaining chips.

Throughout the whole festival raid, you're supposed to get the impression that these guys are all morons and there's a pathetic futility to their actions, as the only reason they got as far as they did was through the sheer lucky coincidence of the most powerful character on the aliens' side being away. These are just sad/pathetic men causing a lot of pain for what would ultimately be for nothing. They were vastly overconfident and thought they could just waltz in with guns, shoot a few people, and get what they wanted with minimal casualties. A MASSIVE amount of them got maimed/torn in half/skin ripped off/shot/electrocuted and immolated/testicles ruptured/etc. They idiotically punched way above their weight and their ignorance and lack of research were their undoing.

In regard to the final panels, the Nudibranch that's aware the most powerful character is out, is restrained due to trying to fit into a mascot outfit he was too big for (Harlem has gigantism) and if he's able to warp to fetch the OP guy, this whole thing will be over in an instant, as the OP guy remote controls self-destructing nanobots that fly through the air and can blind and deafen multiple hostiles at once. But because he's stuck, he's unable to fetch him. A Nudibranch can only warp themselves if they can consume/invert their own body. They can also regenerate from any damage which is why he recommends to the kid that he cuts his head off.

The main character, the red head in the black mask, is unknowingly the host to a demonic parasite the aliens are trying to hunt down. Nobody knows he's carrying the parasite and the parasite wants to keep it that way which is why he's not letting Ted use his powers whilst Zhaus is present. He just creates a keratin plate over Ted's neck so his throat can't be slit by the guy taking him hostage.

Also I'm very aware I gotta make the dialogue less wordy.

Anyway enough about my project. Post about what you're looking forward to making!

My pilot is just going to adapt the first 5 chapters of my comic, but I plan on including a post-credits scene that shows off my marketable plushie character beyond his minor role in the opening fight.

I hope this gets across that he's an adorable giant cinnamon roll (Harlem has gigantism so he is way larger than his Nudibranch brethren. Others are people sized, he's a sasquatch) as well as show off their uncanny way of warping themself.

His species are named Nudibranchs because they were mistaken for anthropomorphic sea slugs, but they're not related at all. The name just stuck. They are immortal, will regenerate any wound, can teleport between dimensions, can teleport anything they eat between dimensions, and also heal anyone they warp. They come in all kinds of colors and patterns and will have various frill/antennae setups (Harlem is just bald and only has the neck frill).

Colorful on the outside, gray and goreless on the inside.

This is another progress post for the assembly scene I'm working on for my pilot.

I'm working on this scene to procrastinate having to work on other scenes because I've tricked myself into thinking that 50 students having 5 second animations are somehow less work than just animating 3 characters in one scene.

Jokes and cognitive dissonance aside, I'm mainly focusing on this scene as it's the perfect test to really get a taste for the art style in all sorts of color combinations. Because up until this point, I only had the one test animation with my MC and barely any shading. I'm also ripping the bandaid off in trial/erroring implementing 3d blender in with the animation. I have a friend who is designing a rather complicated 3d environment for another scene (that's probably going to be a couple minutes total with the most complicated moving parts only getting a few seconds of screentime. And then it'll NEVER be seen again. God I like to emotionally sound myself with a salt laced rod). I'd hate for him to finish and then just be sitting there looking at it going "Now what?" not knowing what to do with it. I also need to refresh my knowledge on blender shaders because I'm trying to go for a 2d feeling environment. I love Gumball but I'm not trying to mimic it for this show.

I need to fix one of the characters as he looks a little rough. Everyone was made in the same CSP canvas size which meant I had to draw some characters smaller and now I'm seeing the consequences of that. So I'll have to touch him up when I'm done.

Also circling back to my friend working on a 3d background, the opening fight scene for the pilot takes place in an alien factory that's processing a made up material called Ellydeium (LEDium) which will constantly shift colors as it glows, like a gaming PC. We're planning on having the dramatic/stylized character lighting be diegetic so bad guy dominates the screen when it's coincidentally glowing red, then when guy with blue color scheme if on screen, it'll shift to his colors, and green guy gets green, etc. Anyway it's going to be an absolute waste to have this made only to use it once, so if my friend who is making it doesn't have any objections, if one of you guys want the blend files to use in the background of your own animations, dm me and I'll share what I can.

Currently there's nothing to really show as my friend has only made a few pumping pistons and a conveyor belt that delivers a row of Suzannes to a smasher. And a big Willy Wonka tube. Nothing's textured yet. We still need to make the actual textures and to include the PC gaming color shift in the lighting. I also need to figure out how to implement the color shift on the 2d animation in a way that's natural and doesn't have the level of tedium that'll make me get on my knees and give a revolver fellatio.

Not even done with the first row yet but I am still having fun. Making sure to pace myself and take breaks between npcs. Also did a few touch ups on other things to make things less monotonous (bleachers have a texture now. Still a work in progress).

Open to critiques and tips. I think I have the camera at just the right angle that the characters appear to be sitting and not floating gifs in front of the bleacher seats. Still need to work on the lighting.

For the rest of the row (look to the ref in the back), guy on far left will be an easy blink only extra. Blonde girl will flinch. Man-spreader will walk up and just abruptly jump into his seat which will be why the blonde girl flinches.

I don't think my father ever truly loved me. I believe he put in a genuine effort to try but ultimately couldn't because he can't even love himself.

I color with a mix of handdrawn scribbles for a top layer of coloring and I have a folder that consists of a scribble of the same color at 70% opacity on top of a flat fill of 30% and then I clip each individual color to an invisible mask layer below. This gives a mix of a standard hand drawn scribble and a Chowder style static texture. For the goth kid, since there's so much black on black, I changed the line thickness and orientation of the scribbles to give some semblance of distinction.

My post makes it sound sarcastic but I'm actually excited to work on this since I know it'll be worth the effort. Really want my pilot to show off all the colorful extras from my webcomic.

My friend and I are working on 3d backgrounds to use in some of the shots. We're going to apply a bunch of shaders to make it appear 2d so we're not going full Gumball with the environments. I plan on screwing with the bleachers a bit to make them look less straight/even and more hand drawn. So I'm gonna warp things to be a tad imperfect as that's the style I'm going for.

I know the gif compression lowers the quality a tad, but I think since the scene will be zoomed out quite a bit, I don't have to worry about everything being crisp HD. I just gotta learn more about Blender lighting since the default seems to desaturate everything.

I don't know why that one blink animation I gave to a nameless extra looks so smooth. Screw it, her name is Brianna now since that sounds like a name someone who blinks smoothly would have. Contact someone you know named Brianna and tell them they're good at blinking.

The super obscure Markiplier reference (I originally made the comic in 2018. Let me know if you get the ref) needs work. I forgot to actually make her blink when she turns her head. She's an extra but I'm calling her McKenzie.

Any tips or tricks for making this smoother would be appreciated. Also feel free to dm me if you're interested in being cheap and exploitative labor.

I had to spend a small fortune and my left testicle to upgrade CSP to export gifs with transparency. "But it'll be worth the price!" I tell myself as I tuck myself into my newspaper blanky and cardboard mattress.

I haven't touched blender in a minute so I'm a little rusty so there's likely some basic beginner things still hibernating in my memory, but I'm having trouble getting this gif to appear on a simple plane. Instead I'm getting the menacing magenta rectangle. My memory on how to handle the alpha stuff is in dire need of a refresher.

I'm on vanilla 4.0. I know it's probably something simple but it's tough trying to navigate a sea of blender tutorials that are almost what you're looking for but not quite.

For context I'm making a set of bleachers and my plan is to fill it with about forty students (a majority of them just blinking because I'm not crazy enough to do all that) that are 2d animated in Clip Studio Paint. I just spent a small fortune and my left testicle to upgrade to the 5.0 CSP so that I could export transparent gifs to begin with.

Ypath (get it? Split path? HAHAHAHA)- Ypath spend their days under the tutelage of Discipath. They train to focus their psychic energy into a powerful energy blade. The greater they can maintain the blade through training, the greater their psychic energy grows. But impatient Ypath may go down a dark and self-destructive road to reach power quicker.

Discipath- Discipath have mastered their psychic prowess. They are capable of producing a clean blade of pure psychic energy. Their restraint, patience, and discipline are what allowed them to master such power.

Retchipath- Impatient Ypath that forsake their teachings become Retchipath. They gained powerful destructive energy by embracing the feral darkness from within, but that darkness has taken hold of them and is a double-edged sword. The blade of dark energy they manifest is unstable and causes them harm.

Hi, I'm currently adapting my first five chapters of my webcomic into an animated pilot and am looking for people with a passion for that craft.

I can pay in a pizza party and a crisp high five.

Because it's an adaptation of my comic, the story/episode is already 90% planned. Just having to decide on some tweaks to improve the pacing, remove early installment weirdness/better establish some characters, rewrite dialogue to flow better as the original comic was written in 2018 when I was still a teenager, etc.

I have an okay amount already boarded but definitely need some more hands on the project if I want to get things done before I get my first gray hair. I figured going local seemed like an interesting shot as we can meet in person and I'd love to make friends with the same hobbies.

I use Clip Studio Paint EX. I have an established art style that looks unique and is not hair pulling frustrating to get animated (speaking relatively for animation standards). I'm still an amateur at this craft but I'm learning at a rapid pace and take criticism well. Over two weeks ago, I was told I was doing my animation cell folders all wrong and inefficiently and now I feel like Rock Lee with the weights off since being corrected. I'm impressed I managed to square hole it decently well, but the proper way is proper for a reason and I'm glad someone spoke up about what I was doing wrong. So, if you know more than me, don't hesitate to tell me. I can take criticism and am easy to work with on that front.

I learned how to do static textures (if you watched Chowder as a kid you'll get what I mean) and I combine that with hand drawn scribbles to make a unique/popping art style. I think it has a lot of potential to standout and I'm proud of it as it feels like my signature and I'm happy I learned how to get my comic art style to look good in 2D animation.

I have a few scenes already partially blocked/boarded out. Mostly action and the buildup to the action. I have a majority of an animated opening boarded as well and I already have someone commissioned making the song. So I am all in on this. This isn't some cart before the horse spur of the moment proposal that'll get abandoned the moment the initial excitement wears off. I've been working on/planning this for a few months now. So, know that I am determined to see this through to the end.

In terms of content being animated, definitely adult animation. Blood/language/various content warnings. The villains are predators and klansmen (although they won't be present in the pilot). Definitely some rent lowering edge with the dark humor but I have a set of rules when it comes to edgy humor to avoid punching down and to not devolve into pizza cutter humor. Nothing sexual in the pilot. I'm not asking people to animate a hentai.

The story is sci-fi dramedy. So you have a bunch of homeless teens living in a world where aliens just revealed themselves to the public and the MC has unknowingly become a host to an evil parasite that's desperately trying to hide from the aliens. It is ultimately a story about embracing change/progress and to not be satisfied/content with living in ignorance.

Because the art style is so scribbly and the charm comes in being imperfect, I'm not expecting everything to be entirely on model. So cleanup should relatively be easy. I just need things to be legible on screen and for proportions to stay semi-consistent. So the odd line overshooting or eye looking a smidge wonky is okay and actually encouraged.

Should go without saying, anyone who works on this will be properly credited.

I'm not quite at a stage to start voice recording yet, but just posting a list to give an idea of what kind of voice work we will need in the future. Since the setting is Northern California, a standard PNW accent would work for most characters.

If you're interested in working on this animated pilot feel free to comment below or DM me. I have a full pitch/production presentation that goes into more detail.

I got the lead up to the tweeker fight boarded today (and partially last night). This is meant to be the climax of my pilot. So I'm going to put a lot of effort into the action. I plan on keeping things 90% faithful to the webcomic, but I want to definitely expand on some parts to make them more entertaining (opening the pilot with an action scene that was previous off-panel and tweaking how Ted is introduced to shave off some early installment weirdness and to make his character more entertaining). I've been learning a TON as I go. Recently learned that I've been organizing my animation folders all wrong in CSP and doing it the correct way has made things so much easier. I feel like Rock Lee taking the training weights off. I've been doing things the hard way this whole time. Damn I feel like I have some LIFE in me now.

Also previously I mentioned having reservations on how I'm going to shade things, since I didn't think my pointillism brush would look good in motion. But honestly, my little example, despite being hastily made, doesn't look bad. I definitely need to work on shading but the issue I was concerned about seems more like a me problem than a problem with the brush so I think I can keep the shading looking like my comic. I just have to git gud.

Context for the scene; the town the characters live in has a huge drug problem. Ted and Tif are walking home from school and the tweeker, not being of sound mind, thinks Tif is someone named Tammy and tries to hug her. Obviously, a creepy stranger approaching a teenage girl to hug is a red flag so Ted, being the protective guard dog that he is, intercepts and gets between them and even pushes the tweeker. But the guy doesn't like that and attacks Ted.

My next step is how to learn dynamic camera angles in motion and to master the art of impact frames because Ted is going to get his ass beat.

Anyway I'm super hyped about this. 34 seconds doesn't sound like a lot, and in a big picture way it isn't, but a lot of work goes into every frame of these types of projects. So far every step of the way has been spiritually rewarding.

At what step of progress does Glitch discover me and gives me massive bags of money and resources and allows me to make whatever I want with zero compromise or oversight?

I haven’t had too much free time to really block out more scenes of my pilot these past two weeks so comment below and brag about what you’re working on. What you already have done. What you have planned. Characters. Stuff like that.

In my pilot, which is adapting my webcomic, I’m adding to the introductory scene of the main character. For backstory, Ted is a dumbass who is anti-bigotry but was raised by Qanon nutjobs. So he tries his best to be an ally but sort of Michael Scott’s it because he wasn’t raised with any real social awareness or understanding of history. So I’m adding this scene to his introduction I’m referring to as his “botched allyship” to better establish that he means well but is an idiot who doesn’t think things through. His intentions are pure, but he doesn’t account for what would happen if he runs out of spray paint partway through tagging “White Power Is Bad” on the side of his school and how that can look. His ignorance is an important narrative device I’m excited to dive into since it also plays to the fact that he is not consciously aware he houses a demonic parasite in him.

I forgot to download a shot onto my phone. But he does pull out a pencil and vainly tries to finish his message only for the pencil to break immediately and that’s when the security guard arrives.

Anyway just to establish that we’re on the same page when it comes to what I define as tasteful dark/edgy humor and tasteless pizza cutter humor, my personal rules are the following-

- When making an edgy joke about race/sexuality/etc. the butt of the joke has to be on the bigot/ignoramus OR has to be so benign that only the most terminally online would find a reason to get offended. Basically avoid punching down.

- The edgier it is the more obvious/communicated the satire has to be. Want to reduce the risk of attracting a crowd that would unironically agree with the stuff you’re satirizing. (I mean it’s kind of unavoidable at times since you have people that watch The Boys and not realize they’re the bad guys but you get what I mean)

- There has to actually be a joke in the edgy stuff. Pizza cutter jokes are pointless and just lazy shock value. There has to be something more at least woven in there. The joke I’m animating isn’t “haha white power funny” it’s “oh god this dumbass ran out of paint and now he looks like a turbo racist spreading hate speech when he was going for the opposite”

One scene I’m excited to make that I haven’t blocked out yet is the action scene near the end against a random tweeker. It’s meant to show that the town they live in has a drug problem as well as a funny way for the tweeker to notice Ted using his powers without realizing and screaming “YOU HAVE TEETH IN YOUR EYES!!” With Ted being none the wiser to the truth of that statement because the guy who assaulted him is already blitzed out of his mind.

Compared to the comic, I definitely want to extend the action. I want to put an unreasonable amount of effort into the tweeker fight because it would be really funny to give the guy who aggressively wants a hug, season finale levels of gravitas. I think that’ll be something that sticks with people. I plan on adding this really nasty fighting move where they’re fighting on a sidewalk in the suburbs and to their left parallel to the sidewalk is a little stone wall two units high that separates the sidewalk from the elevated fence. Have the tweeker grab Ted and then throw him onto the corner with enough momentum he rolls along the edge and then have the tweeker jump onto him and perform a human kick flip with Ted’s ribs making full crunchy contact with the concrete. Would be brutal. Would be a defining shot. Wish I came up with it when I made it the first time around.

Enough about my project. What about you?

What is the opposite of a 9/11? Because that’s how I’m feeling right now!! The little test animation in the front isn’t much but it proves I can make my scribbly art style work!

Here’s how I did the coloring-

There are hand drawn scribbles per frame, a lot of work but gives a sense of flow and purpose.

Below that is a “Chowder” texture that’s merely clipped to the layer below and that bottom layer is like an automatic mask. So although the character moves, the texture stays static. The texture is 2 layers. The scribble is a simple scribble at 70% the opacity compared to the top drawn scribble which is 100%. The fill layer below is the same color just at 30%. There’s a white under layer to the whole thing. Applying the layer mask in this way is surprisingly painless. Still time consuming and tedious but what part of animation isn’t?

Still need to figure out shading. Not quite sure the pointillism brush I use for the webcomic is gonna be consistent so I’ll have to trial and error that. Worst case scenario; I’m forced to heavily simplify the shading and go the Invincible minimalist route.

Hot damn it looks exactly like I pictured in my head. That is a rare thing to nail first try. And as I’m typing this I’m noticing one error in the animation so scratch that reverse 9/11 it is a full 9/11 now.

Anyway to make sure I’m not huffing my own paint, does the style look appealing to you in motion? My one worry would be people getting motion sickness from the textures, since even Chowder doesn’t do that for every texture, but to me it looks fine. I’ve recreated the scribbles Chowder texture in blender before and in 3d it can be a bit disorienting. I think the hand drawn scribbles on top help break it up whilst blending it in so maybe that’s why it’s easier on my eyes.

All the latter images past the animation is for reference to how my art looks hand drawn and digitized.

I’m currently adapting the first five chapters of my webcomic, Evil Eye, into a pilot. I’m keeping it fairly faithful, but I originally wrote this comic when I was 18 and drew it on paper first. So now that I’m 27 I can see many areas I can improve on which especially applies to the beginning. I also have a few tweeks planned to avoid some early installment weirdness.

1. Open with the previously off-panel fight. This will have more of an actiony hook. And it doesn’t just start with people in a suburb, winded, and shouting exposition.

2. Introduce my protagonist in a funnier way that’s more in line with how his character is established later in the comics. In the original comic, he’s introduced with him just trying to avoid a trespassing fine for free running on private property. By itself that’s not a very engaging hook. I’m changing it to where you get to see how he’s the definition of “means well but is a dumbass.” So he’s trying to protest his high school for not taking strong enough of an anti-racist stance when a teacher was outed as a klansman, so he plans on sneaking onto school property and spray painting “White power is bad” only to run out of spray paint after the R and you see his one little braincell dinking around his head as he begins to panic. It’s way funnier, better introduces his character, and I feel like that’ll leave a stronger impression. You immediately clock from the jump what he’s like.

3. Better pacing/foreshadow some things better. Cut the early set up for a storyline that was cut early on. The character Nick used to have a plot point planned that I scrapped, and the foreshadowing was him ditching school early on. Now I don’t have that being a thing and it’ll be better to include him more early on so I can better foreshadow a different plot point of his. It was something planned from the beginning but I made it so sudden that it feels like a random on the spot ass-pull when you read it. So laying breadcrumbs earlier would be better.

How would you adapt your comic?

I'm trying to improve upon my webcomic, not just adapt it 1-1. So the first step is to change the opening scene to be a fight that was off panel in the original comic. Figured that would be a more engaging hook than my admittedly lackluster first chapter. I also plan on better introducing my main protagonist in a way that's more interesting whilst still being more or less the same scenario as the source material. But I need to finish blocking the first scene before I hop onto that.

Third gif is a color test to see how well I can get the scribbles to work in movement. My plan is to have a "Chowder" texture in below with a more traditionally animated scribble texture on top. I think I'll get the best of both worlds in that.

Jovile- Jovile stand stationary posing as children to attract Drifloon. They enjoy tormenting Drifloon. There is no known reason why they have this behavior.

Fraklawn- Fraklawn enjoys scaring children. It will sneak into people's homes just to scare them.

Twisloon- A Drifloon tormented by a Jovile has been twisted into this new evolution. Their rage builds into explosive energy. This allows them to move extremely fast on land despite no longer being able to fly.

Teksneek- They worship power and are able to sense it. They try their best to mimic the strong in hopes of becoming strong themselves.

Plajimyth- These Pokemon are rare but have been known to be present in areas where legendary Pokemon are spotted. Their multiple wings are inscribed with all kinds of notes in a currently untranslatable Pokemon language. They have mastered the ability to copy a legendary Pokemon's power but cannot use them to their fullest ability. They're considered inferior copycats.

Treskan Geodude- They have smooth skin because they rest in the bottoms of riverbeds. The shaving away of their rough edges has revealed that Geodude from Treska have a golden interior. Although there is a "Fool's Geodude" that is rare but is not a real Geodude. It is a completely separate Pokemon but scientists have had a tough time distinguishing the real from the fake. So, they're not properly labeled as a separate species yet.

Treskan Graveler- The heavy gold within it has forced it to walk on all fours. Its upper arms are very strong and help it with climbing and fighting.

Treskan Golem- The chains on its body seem to be self-inflicted. It lacks confidence and fears people only value it for its gold. The chains allow it to harness itself to vertical surfaces or ceilings. If it feels threatened or wishes to escape, it can swing away.

Foolzgolem- This Pokemon is not a real Golem. The Treskan Graveler you thought you traded was not a real Graveler and was instead a juvenile dragon. Foolzgolem is a very violent Pokemon and has been known to chase trainers out of their own homes.

Gossisper- A deceased bug Pokemon covered in cobwebs. They are said to haunt forests but will sometimes wander into villages. If it knocks on your door, do not answer as it will grab you and bring you into the woods with it and will likely turn you into another Gossisper.