Making a 2D animation for our indie game Kernel Hearts ✨SEPTEMBER 17th✨ ! ✨ A long and informative thread ✨

Both animated pieces were done by me and my talented friends, I have a background in 2D animation and this was actually my first time directing a 2D animation. I'm super lucky to have the best animator friends, and they jumped when offered to work on something for the game!

Lead animator for the first take was @Miku_mikumis ! Here's the first draft she presented after having a couple meetings and seeing the references I gathered!

While finishing the animatic, @Momotexx was doing the model sheets of the girls (designs already existed, we had to settle for an animation style!) and layouts for us!

Alongside the making of the layouts, we started polishing the animation and deciding on better transitions, as well as putting the girls in model. @MalditaMatu was our second animator and a key part to the whole development!

I started testing vfx around the roughs we had already settled on! Mikumis was working on Spika and Laika while Matu was working on Dolce and Fernet! We closed the assisted rough, and moved onto clean up!

The three of us worked on the clean up !

At the same time, Momo was working on the color key for the piece! Took a bit of time and trial and error to find what we were looking for! (3rd and 4th are old versions)

A wild @Doggasus appeared and made everything pretty and shiny with his AE skills!! we ended up removing the buildings in the bg bc they were too much info lol

Moving onto our second animation!! This time it was @MalditaMatu time to lead! She deserves all the praises here since she pretty much worked on it on her own! This time I just helped with feedback and color! And @Momotexx once again worked the model sheets and layouts

We would be making Fernet's mahou shoujo transformation, so we needed her model sheet as well! As always @Momotexx did an amazing work simplifying her design for animation <3

Once again, we had a million references, and this is how we started off, just a quick animated sketch done by Momo and me to show Matu what we had in mind. The idea was to make a single sequence of Fernet spinning around herself and the camera

Matu's first drafts as well as a shot proposed by Mikumis ! (the gray bg one) There were way too many attempts,,, Matu was super patient with me,,

Even more attempts of different parts by me, Momo, Mikumis and Matu but still not quite there yet

We moved onto layouts with Momo for the scenes that were already decided!

Defined the whole thing a little bit more and then Matu started polishing it and working on a nice impactful timing!

Some of @MalditaMatu hidden gems in between frames,,, (Yes, she hid a fetus between all the cloth strips; no, its no longer there, but it was until the very last export when she FINALLY told us about its existance)

And once everything was approved she moved onto clean up!

This bitch then went on to try color palettes?!??! (jfc is there anything she doesn't do?????????) Y la perra seguia y seguia I kid you not she even made a whole powerpoint with references (we love her @MalditaMatu )

Shadows and music! Again, and by a miracle, I had to match the transformation with our existing trailer and music and for it to have a logic as well. IT SOMEHOW WORKED??? WITH BARELY ANY TIMING FIXES Momo jumped in once again to add the final popping images!

I went bananas and added even more animated VFX and ribbons ✨✨✨✨✨✨✨

And finally it was finished! At least from our animator side our job was done. We both painted the whole thing and made all the exports for Doggeh to work with in AE! Everything colored --> Color correction based on layouts

More matu doodles in between work~~✨

And then once again the capomaster @Doggasus joined us once more to do his magic and make everything look pretty ✨ He made the whole background himself, animated the camera and added all the sparkly particles you can see! As well as the good old "anime filter" 😎

I can go even more technical but I feel this thread is huge as it is and I only have so many characters lmao Thanks everyone who helped make this possible, I'm as proud and happy as a director can be <3 Ephemera animation studio when????👀 Feel free to ask me anything!!! ✨