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Being that you're an industry expert, I was hoping if there were any tips or advice you can give to an aspiring Animation Series creator. Any lessons you've learned from working in the industry from so many years. What advice would you give yourself if you were starting out trying to get you're animation picked up by a major network?

Yeah I have a big piece of advice! Stop “aspiring”!!!!! Your aspirations end now!!!!

YES YOU! DON’T WAIT! START NOW! (passionate rambling incoming…)

The freaking coolest thing about living in the year 20XX is that you don’t have to have anyone’s permission to be an Animated Series creator. Grab a trial copy of Flash, or make flipbooks, or your own GIFs, or make some stop motion with your phone. Just start making whatever you want! Don’t save your good ideas for some big-wig executives or networks. Just do them right now! Don’t be precious with your ideas, just put them out there.

Content that’s on TV or in movies is not “more official” than stuff you make in your home on your spare time to share with friends on the internet. It’s all the same!!!!! As long as you enjoy it, who cares!! And if other people happen to like it also, then BONUS!!

The experience you get from trying to make something good on your own is so much more important than any future dream of being a big shot. Upload what you do to the internet and get feedback, show it to as many people as you can and listen to critiques. Learn to do stuff all by yourself, and only for your own pleasure.

From what I’ve seen, the people who end up creating a good animated series are the same people who have been creating their own stories, cartoons, comics and music on their own just for fun long before they ever got the shot at the big-time. Read about how your favorite cartoons are made, and try to do the process on your own. You’ll learn what your strengths are and what you’re interested in exploring.

(If you don’t have the facilities to create animation on your own, make something smaller scale- like a script, a comic, or a storyboard!)

OK THEN HERE’S STEP TWO: once you’ve learned to love your work on your own and figured out what you like to draw and what you’re passionate about, you may get a chance to pitch an idea. And thanks to the work you’ve done, you’ll be READY! Instead of some half-finished ideas, you’ll be able to point to all the amazing stuff you’ve created on your own and say “look, I already know what I like, AND I already know how to do it!” —that’s WAY more impressive than an undeveloped idea with nothing to show for it. PLUS, the bonus of doing good work on your own is that you’ll attract attention and opportunity! I know so many people working in this industry who were discovered from their own silly personal work that was just randomly found online.

GET TO IT! DON’T WAIT FOR ANYONE’S PERMISSION TO BE THE CREATOR YOU WANT TO BE! START NOW! YOU HAVE TO START NOW! DON’T YOU MAKE ME COME OVER THERE AND FORCE YOU TO DO IT! YOUR “ASPIRATION DAYS” ARE OVER!

#i'm surfing my old tumblr content and I need this advice again

taylor-titmouse

Hihi, I'm not the same anon from the other question, but may I ask how do you make grading maps look so good? I just keep messing up and they look ugly af or change all the colors

<|:(

i'm actually going to just paste a post i made about it on main with an example from my graphic novel

this at 50%, set to normal, turned the mess on the left to the harmony on the right.

but when you intend to work with a gradient map or any sort of color overlay, the best thing you can do for yourself is have it on the entire time. like while working on it i never saw that version on the left. it's a bit of trial and error but generally if you have a good idea of your color values, you can make anything look good with a map. also if you want something to Look like a particular color that isn't on the map, you'll have to saturate it like crazy. like that's why the colors look so fucked over on the left. if i wanted something to look bluish or gray, it had to be Very Very blue to compete with the yellow. and even then it wasn't going to be straight up blue.

basically my take home advice for you is that if you want to use a gradient map, figure it out before you color, and color with it on. an overlay applied at the last minute on top of something colored normally won't give you the results you want, because gradient maps operate off value, not hue or saturation. so you need to have a solid understanding of the values in your image before you can start using them effectively.

ohcorny

okay i'm back from the movies let's talk about screen and multiply layers

you can read part 1 of this series of tutorial posts where i mostly talk about gradient maps here.

now we're going to talk about the other layer effects. i feel like these ones are already pretty commonly known, but i've also been using them for like 15 years so it's very easy to assume everyone knows everything but actually i'm just old. anyway.

the panel up top is where we're starting from. i've got a nice blue color gradient applied, and everything looks a bit more harmonious. but...... those inks are pretty harsh, especially in contrast to the background, where there's no black inks at all. i'd like everything to come together a little more.

you can do this with a gradient map, if the darkest value is set higher than black. but since we're not using the gradient map at 100% (it's just 30%) the black isn't really affected by it. so it just stays black.

what a screen layer will do--and this is in practice, i don't know what it's actually mathematically doing--is turn your darkest value into whatever color is on the screen layer. so this is what a screen layer set to 100% would do to this panel. (NOTE: all the layers applied in this post are clipped to a folder containing just the characters. they are not affecting the backgrounds, they'll just affect the characters. the gradient map does affect everything)

That's Pretty Blue! the color that neeta's hair currently appears is the color of the layer. everything else is lightened up and also made a little more blue. and this doesn't look terrible, but screen layers will pretty much always make your art a bit lighter, because it's trying to make its color the darkest color. tbh it's great for fog effects and making your blacks light enough that a texture can show up in them. but let's turn it down a bit, to 40%.

hey nice. everything is still a bit lighter, but neeta and emery's hair isn't as sharp against the background. still enough that they stand out as the most important things in the panel, but not so much that they feel pasted overtop. it's a bit like putting some atmospheric perspective between you, the reader, and the characters. there's air in the image. (and why it's good for fog!)

but i want it just a little darker to make up for the lightening up that happened. i don't think i actually need to explain multiply layers, because everyone has definitely used those for shading at one point or another. but here i'm using a very very light blue over the entire characters. i'm not using it for shadows, but to make everything a bit blue.

now it really feels like they're in a room. the only pure white is the speech bubble and gutters. their eyes/teeth/glasses will still read as white, but they are not white. everything is at least a Little blue, so everything is unified.

and that panel above is what the final looks like! let's look at it side by side with just the gradient map.

neat! it would be perfectly acceptable to stop with just the gradient map, if you value high contrast black inks and characters popping off the page. i... don't! i like the air that's generated by going a little bit lighter overall. it has a nice matte effect, which is why i'm very glad my book was printed on matte paper.

and that's why hunger's bite looks so good. you should buy it and read it

ohcorny

i realized i haven't really posted any pages from hunger's bite here, and the bookshop page doesn't show any previews, so here--! comics! look at my comics!!!!

buy hunger's bite! it comes out next tuesday but people are getting their copies early!!!