File Management and Software
and exporting animation and all that technical stuff
Log
Project SONHOS
Time in production 44 weeks and 5 days
Status Clean up, Coloring, Backgrounds (chaos)
Big news! At this point, I turned in the project to my teachers - unfinished. I had such high hopes for finishing in time, but that is the nature of scope I suppose. Nevertheless, the production continues, now without much pressure of a deadline. In a next issue I will get into the details of this not-finishing-on-time business. For now, let’s get into the technical stuff!
Software
For animation and pre-production drawing I used Clip Studio Paint Ex, all the way. It’s a software made for drawing and animating. I heard it is more commonly used in Japan, even in the anime industry, but I hope more people around the globe discover how great this program is. I use the dual device version, which has a monthly cost structure, but it’s worth it. I currently pay $12.49 a month for the full version on PC and iPad. And it is exactly the same on iPad! No limited functions or weird interface, it’s exactly the same - only that if you do prefer a simplified version on iPad, it has that option now too.
For editing the animatics and sound, I am using DaVinci Resolve, which has a very complete free version. Before working on this project I never noticed the limitations to the paid version, only now do I see some, but I still think it’s totally worth it. The main issues I had were with applying blur effects to transparent png files, it seems to struggle with transparency and the solutions I researched involved paid tools. But guess what, I just ended up applying the blur effects in CSP instead, which works perfectly.
Hardware
As mentioned, I have CSP for PC and iPad, because I use both. For this project specifically though, I am doing all the drawing on the iPad. It’s an iPad Pro, 12.9 inch, 5th generation, with 512 GB and the M1 chip thing (I admit to not knowing what that chip exactly means). It has been working perfectly for now. Sometimes, if the animation file starts getting really big, it struggles with processing or will even crash CSP, but that is rare. Most of the big-file processing works great, better even than on my PC. I do recommend the bigger screen, since the animation timeline takes away some drawing space.
I used the iPad for drawing exclusively, because my routine currently involves changes spaces quite often, and the iPad’s mobility is great. I recommend using the iPad with a little bluetooth keyboard though, for shortcuts. Either that or one of those controllers made for shortcuts, but I don’t have experience with them. And also, an iPad stand.
I won’t specify everything about my PC, but what matters is that it has 16 GB Ram, which I am thinking about upgrading after doing the editing work. My workflow involves transferring all files from the iPad to the PC for editing in DaVinci, and while compositing the shots with many image files and blur effects and layers, DaVinci struggled. I had to create a work-around, which I will detail later, to be able to have a smoother playback while editing. Smooth playback is very important for precise editing, I need to be able to see the exac timing of things. That wasn’t great to be honest, and I should have spend more time researching optimization features, but I had no time. Oh, also, I was working in 4K files (haha).
File management
I’m not the best at this - but here we go.
On the iPad, I have folder for the whole project. In it, there are folders for animation, BGs and the storyboard, and loose files with pre-production stuff like the character sheets, style frame and color script.
Inside the animation folder are all the animation files, one for each shot. They are named “SONHOS_an_shot 1_v01” for example. I update the version number (v01) every time I make a major change to the file, like deleting the roughs or trying a secondary version of the animation. Every file type I create has a version number attached. Additionally to those files, there is a folder for 3D exports, which are the vehicle renders as image files, animatic roughs, which has all rough animation exported as mp4 files, collaborators, which has the files I send over to someone, and voice lines, which has the voice recordings I used for lip sync.
To create the roughs animatic, I just exported them as mp4 directly out of CSP, but for final shots, which need compositing, I had to export them as image sequence (a bunch of pngs). To do that, I transferred the animation files to my PC using Google Drive.
On PC, I have the same folder structure as on the iPad, with additions. Inside the animation folder, there is a shots completed folder, where the animation files for the completed shots are. In there are exports and renders folders - in exports, are the pngs from the animation, and in renders the final composited shots as mp4.
Exporting workflow
And finally, here is the workflow for bringing the files onto the PC and creating the final output, including the in-between steps I had to add to avoid laggy playback in the editor.
Put all BG .clip files and animation .clip files into a zip each (on iPad)
Upload zip to Drive
Download and extract zips on PC
Export BG layers, one folder per BG, apply blur filters already (bc DaVinci struggled)
Export animations as png image sequence to keep transparency, one folder per shot
Create a DaVinci file just for the shots to be composed in, no sounds or editing here
To compose a shot, import BG assets and layer them, import animation image sequence, [have DaVinci preferences set to “still import duration 1 frame”], delete duplicated frames, create new compound clip from remaining frames
Export each shot separately as an mp4
Create new DaVinci file for the actual editing
Use mp4 files to assemble the shots
Apply minor extra effects (reframing, camera shake, color adjust, etc.)
I tried to be very detailed here, but please let me know if you have any questions left! I thought about going through the layers inside the animation files but maybe that’s too dense in text form? Would you like access to the files themselves? A video showing the files? Anything else?
Up Next
Next issue I will talk about my favorite part - color! I’ll explain my color script decisions and coloring the characters and backgrounds.
Have a magical day!