Cel

A frame is flat paint plus a line. Build the hero frame of each shot at full opacity before any tween.

Paint

Use only the hexes on the sheet. A highlight is line, moon, or practical. It is not a new hex.

• Sky may be a gradient between sky and ink. Characters, cloth, and the blade are flat.
• One shadow shape per character, hard-edged, ink at about 20% over the local color. No airbrush, no soft light on skin.
• The eye white is sclera. The iris is iris. Pupil is hair or ink. Two catchlights maximum, cut from line or moon, window-shaped.
• Hair is two or three masses. Bangs are chunks. One hard sheen band in moon or line. Not strands, not a glow.
• Line sits on top. At 1080px tall, outer contour about 6px, interior lines about 3px. Taper by drawing the path, not with a blur filter.

Depth, back to front

1. Sky
2. Far silhouette — lighter, lower contrast, few windows in practical
3. Ground and the wide-shot figure
4. Rain, on its own layer
5. Close figure
6. Type

Wide shots are silhouettes. Detail belongs to the close shot. One practical light in the shot (window, moon rim, or blade), drawn as a flat shape.

Effects

• Rain is a field of straight strokes in line, on its own layer. Positions are written out or come from a seeded series. Never Math.random().
• A blade trail is one tapered shape in practical, plus one smear drawing behind a fast arc. Not a stack of glow circles.
• Speed lines are few, straight, and only inside the sakuga shot.

Type

The line sits in the bottom third, in the clear, off the eyes and off the blade. Letterbox bars may hold it. No title, logo, or credit unless the sheet's logline is a title.

Order

For each shot: sky, silhouette, local color, shadow shape, line, effects, type. Then timing.