棘町 恵羽凛 – home

My career goal coming into the anime industry is to direct and produce feature-length films, but I’m not much of an animator. I do my best to learn from the people around me, but there is a lot of conflicting advice that you hear about what the rules and standards are for Japanese animation.

Enter: the Animator Skill Test textbook created by NAFCA (Nippon Anime & Film Culture Association).

This textbook is meant to be studied in preparation for 2 exams (that I also intend to take) and very specifically aims to teach you the basics of animating on paper The Old Way, but I am a basic, broke bitch with no tap at the moment so I’ve just been reading and having fun with what I’ve been learning in Procreate. (Yes, I prefer Procreate over Clip Studio for drawing–the horror! [This is actually most likely just because I have more experience with Procreate because it is popular with tattoo artists.])

I had a bit of fun with my favorite Sentimental Circus character, Shappo, last night. It’s very rushed, but even though my watermark is on the gif the two main frames are from some adorable paintings that the official Twitter account has been reposting for a while. All I actually added was one in-between and a blink.

Fun fact, though! This is the first blink I’ve ever animated and I spent like an hour or two combing through merch and artwork to try to guess how Shappo might blink.

For me, though, I think the videos and things that go with the textbook are a GODSEND and I cannot recommend enough that you use the QR codes and actually watch the videos that go along with the text as you read the book if you’re a visual learner like I am.