Chikari Transformation Cycle 

A short animation of my character Chikari transforming into a magical girl for the eMagine Media Festival. I have entered it into the character animation section. I am happy with how it came out, but I may take spare time to clean it up and add more frames for a smoother transition.

Character Design

The character, Chikari, was not something I had planned to animate at all when I started. To be honest I was just messing around when I was drawing, but decided I really liked her. I was messing with some old prisma color markers when I decided the two colors of her hair. A majority of the design happened on photoshop, but her outline and reference were all in my sketchbook. I asked a few people for the colors they preferred on the hair, but did end up going with my original idea. The hair style changed a little from my original drawing. Her magical girl form just kind of happened. I never had a plan for it before hand, but I think it turned out well. I tried shading the side photo a little. I am really happy with how she turned out design wise.

Animating in Photoshop

My initial animation was done in photoshop. The animation has a total of 45 unique layers and 5 video groups; the side image has multiple layers on top of each other set inside a folder. The hardest part of the animation was making sure I was on the right layer, and in the right video group. For each frame I copied the lines from the layer before and edited them to fit the next action, then copied the color from the previous frame and fixed it so they fit the lines.

The things you need to click to use a double
workspace.

Working with two veiws

For a lot of the drawing, I would usually have to find myself zooming out to see it full size and the character reference to the art on the left. Instead, I went to the window tab on Photoshop and clicked "open another tab of chikari.psd" then arranged the workspace so that both of the same file were placed next to each other. They work as two different files in some ways. You have to click over if you want a color pick from the full image or anything; but the files do save as one, and when you do something to one side, while it takes a second, it shows on the other. Its very useful when doing frame by frames and working with fine details.

Two-view workspace!