The

ANIME
Survival
Kit
Genga Section Draft
Developed by Tonari Animation

Contributors:
Jarrett Martin
Stephen Hausdorff
Beast
Tahoe51
Macarena Duarte
Vivian Lun
Julius De Bellen

Editor:
Bellamy Brooks
2
3
Note From the Author
Hi, my name’s Giuseppe! I’m an animator and designer with Tonari animation. I started back in 2021 as a freelancer,
but I became a full-time member of the company in early 2022. I bet you’re thinking “that isn’t enough time to
understand anime and write a book!” You’re right. I’m not a one-man animation encyclopedia. Instead, I’m more like a

4
researcher. Tonari has experts in every field of animation, but they’re all busy–so they talk and I write. I’ve tried to
cross-verify and vet everything in this book over multiple drafts and rounds of feedback. What you’re getting here is
my explanation of their work, edited to make it as clear and approachable as possible. I hope you learn a ton!

(adding a section introducing the people we interview would be awesome)

Beast

Jarrett

Julius

Nyki

Stephen

Tommy

Hiya! My name is Bellamy.I’m just as excited for this book to exist as the rest of you! A book like this has never existed
before for people outside of Japan. The barrier to entry for this industry is huge, and it’s great that we can help break
that barrier down. I’ve worked in the animation and education industries for nearly ten years. I graduated college from
the University of Arkansas with a degree in journalism in 2016. When I joined Tonari, I immediately spread my
tentacles to every single department I could get involved in, for better or for worse! I am responsible for many duties:
animation, production assistant work, pre-production, character design, costume design, prop design, clean-up,
promotion, and more. Anyways, my broad base of practical experience helps me to catch mistakes and keep the
perspectives balanced as I edit. I spent so long trying to get out of education to join the anime industry, yet here I am
educating people about animation. It’s funny how things work out.

Bellamy Brooks, May 9th, 2022

Variation, Communication, and Clarity: Some Words of Caution

This book is an attempt at gathering all the basic information needed to make anime. I think we’ve made something
really impressive here, but the anime industry isn’t a monolith. People and companies all vary significantly in their
standards, working styles, terminology, and expectations. For example, how Studio Trigger (the studio that made Kill
la Kill) produces a crazy action anime will be quite different from how a tiny indie studio might produce a simple slice-
of-life show.

Why the variation? For more reasons than I can count. Some of this comes from experience, some of it comes from
different specializations, and some just come from differences in personality or style. It’s OK! These differences give
us a ton of amazing work from all kinds of people. We’d be worse off without it.

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Great! So you can do whatever you want! It's anime, get crazy. Make big explosions, throw in some light flares, maybe
some menacing poses. Anything g–

Hold up.

It’s the shared basics that allow variation. Can you cook a complex cake without knowing how to operate an oven?
Nope! Is it a good idea to pilot a helicopter with no prior flight experience? Still nope. Can you write a book all by
yourself in a language you can’t speak, read, or write in? No sir, no how! Anime is the same. You need some basic
knowledge of the core processes before you can join the industry, and you need context and experience before you
can break those boundaries and start making your own rules.

How much information, how many experiences? I wish I could tell you! You’re the one that gets to decide exactly
where these lines are–but it’s usually not too hard to tell when a lack of basic skills is getting in the way of your
ambitions. Take it easy and don’t fret too much about struggling with the basics. Roll with the punches and accept the
frustrations. I guarantee there’s some stuff you’ll need to learn in anime production that’s going to drive you crazy. It’s
a little different for everyone. I, for one, can’t stand writing out time sheets. Some people hate cleanup, others love it.
Some can’t stand the idea of douga work, others do nothing but douga. You’re going to find your own strengths and
weaknesses–but at least knowing a little about everything is absolutely key.

What advice can I give? Well, a common theme in almost every interview and conversation I've had when working on
this book is this: Clarity is key. If the next person in the pipeline can look at your work, understand what you’re doing,
and do their job, you’re golden. Making anime requires the combined efforts of dozens and dozens of people toward
the same ultimate goal, that only works when they understand what they need to do. As a matter of fact, this even
extends out to the viewing audience. The animation team behind a show is just trying to communicate an idea to their
audience, and how well that idea gets transmitted is mostly up to how they share ideas amongst themselves.

So, if you can answer the question “is this clear?” with “yes” then, great! What you’re doing is good. If the answer is
“no” then you need to find a different way to do things. Just remember that YOU don’t actually decide what clear
communication is. The people who need to understand your instructions do. You can do almost anything you want in
animation, but not if other people in your team are confused or it doesn’t properly communicate the story. Be
responsive to who they are. Sometimes they might be able to work from very little. Other times you might need to be
extremely specific. This process of learning to communicate is never-ending. Ask for feedback, try different things, see
what other people are doing and if it’s working, play with ideas. As long as you have a solid working foundation, and
you’re always trying to expand your knowledge, you’ll find a way to make it work!

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 Good
communicatio
n carries the
basic idea
through to
completion,
allowing
everyone to work
Bad
efficiently. If we
Communicatio
think of this using
n cooking
a adds more and
more questions
analogy, then a
at each stage.
head chef says
Before
what long,
they want,
everyone sure
nobody is
what needs toand
understands, be
done.
the In meal
final the is
cooking analogy,
perfectly
Genga 原画 (げんが) each person is
delicious.
more confused or
tries to course-
correct without
Genga (原画) is the japanese term for Key Animation. It consists of Layout, where the animation work and
understanding
composition is created, and cleanup, where corrections are applied and clean drawings are made.
the original
recipe. The result
Layout is something truly
disgusting!
Layout is where animation really starts. It’s the groundwork that lays the basic foundations of perspective, movement,
and design suggested by the director in the e-conte (storyboards). The best way to think about it is like the frame
and foundation of a building. Fail to put in the foundations properly and the entire structure falls apart. Same thing
with layout. If none of the pretty final details actually locks together, the whole animation will look off. Do it right,
though, and even a simple cut will feel unshakable, a clear positive addition to the work it’s part of. As a result, layout
artists rarely focus on making their drawings look pretty so much as they want to make sure that they clearly
communicate how the final cut is composed and moves.

(LO EXAMPLE HERE)

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Cleanup

After the layout stage there are checks by the Enshutsu (演出 - director) and Sakkan (作画監督 - animation
supervisor). Once those fixes are done, a new set of drawings are made which incorporate fixes into clean drawings
that capture the final look of the characters and motion. This stage has a ton of different terms: Tiedown, cleanup,
final key, sometimes it’s just called genga (原画). They all mean basically the same thing. One term that’s used often
but is actually slightly different is nigen (第二原画) “second line”. Nigen actually refers to an artist other than the one
who did layout cleaning up drawings. So, if you say you’re doing nigen, you mean that you’re finishing someone else’s
drawings. For simplicity, I’m going to be referring to this stage as clean up most of the time.

(CLEANUP EXAMPLE HERE)

As this chart shows, there are a lot of checks to make sure that
animations are working in both layout and cleanup–these stages
are a major reason that artists of such different experience
levels and styles can all animate for the same show. We’ll talk
about these much more in a later section, but for now, breathe a
sigh of relief knowing that you’ll have these people to check
your work at pretty much any stage of animation.
Even seasoned layout artists like Beast and Stephen get
corrections and notes on their work. In fact, it’s usually more
worrying when those corrections aren’t happening–it means there are limits in time or money for a show severe
enough to impact the standard pipeline!

Animation Pipeline Steps:

1. Layout レイアウト
2. LO Enshutsu Check (LOチェック)
3. LO Sakkan Check (作監チェック)
4. LO Sou Sakkan Check (総作監チェック)
5. Nigen 第二原画（第二原画）
6. Genga Enshutsu Check (演出チェック)
7. Genga Sakkan Check (作監チェック)
8. Genga Sou Sakkan Check (総作監チェック

LO Enshutsu Check LOチェック The Enshutsu (Director) is focused

on making everything match a
cohesive vision. Their corrections
are based on acting, storytelling,
and correcting shots and angles.
They don’t typically fix mistakes in
drawings.

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 LO Sakkan Check 作監チェック The Sakkan (Animation Supervisor)
is focused on form, drawing quality,
and pose clarity. They help to put
characters on model and improve
animation quality.

LO Sou 総作監チェックThe Sou Sakkan (Chief Animation

Sakkan Supervisor) are senior to the
Check Sakkan. They have final say on
drawing style and quality, and may
also make some more major
revisions to posing and acting. Very
often they are also a lead character
designer.

Over the course of this chapter, we’ll be digging into both layout and cleanup in detail, but animation is much more
about being prepared and understanding the work you're doing than it is just making nice drawings. With that in mind,
we’ll be spending a good amount of time examining all the stuff you need to understand before pencil hits paper. If you
understand the purpose, goals, and methods needed to get the results you want, then the actual process of drawing
becomes much more productive.

Genga Part 1–Layout (レイオウト）

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Layout Step 0: The building blocks of layout
Layout follows e-conte. As I said above, it’s all
about laying strong foundations that everyone
else in production can use. When you draw a
layout, you’re actually making almost every
major decision in the animation. That might
sound intimidating, but remember that you’re
going to get all of your work checked by some
very experienced professionals whose job is to
help you make the right decisions.

(ADD AN LO EXAMPLE WITH

PAGE REF AS AN INTRO)

Layout Step 0: The building blocks

of layout
Before we get into the process of actually drawing a layout, you need to understand how sections are assigned and
what materials you’ll be provided with. An animation is made up of cuts, those cuts are organized into scenes, those
scenes into sections and those sections stitch together into an episode, with anywhere between 10 and 30 sections
in a given episode. This is all organized on an Assignment Sheet or Warifuri Hyou (割り振り表). Usually, this is
going to be a PDF or Excel document you can look through.

In most cases, anime studios want you to take an entire section of animation, which is around 1-5 scenes and
between 5-25 cuts. This is because having the same person draw all the related scenes in an episode improves
consistency. Even with lots of checks and redraws your personal style is going to come through in a layout. If every
cut in a single section were drawn by a different person, those style changes would become really distracting.

Sometimes you’ll be approached to do a section, other times you’ll have the choice. When you do get to choose, most
studios will label the e-conte with the section letters so you can figure out what any given section requires. It’s really
important to check and see what you’re getting yourself into before taking a section, so don’t just choose something
because it looks cool! Think about how much time it will take, what other commitments you have, and when the
deadline is. I can’t stress that enough!

Important Note: A studio isn’t going to give an extension to a deadline just because you took a really
tough assignment and you want to go out to a party, or help your family move, or run from a zombie
outbreak. Do your best to plan ahead, and try not to leave anything until the last minute.

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Once you’ve got your section, some studios will want to arrange an animation meeting or Sakuga Uchiwase (作画打
ち合わせ), Sakkuchi for short. This is a meeting where the director and anyone else from the production company
with input on the storyboard get together with contracted animators to explain the e-conte and answer questions.

Be forewarned that these meetings are almost always in Japanese and it’s pretty rare to have the studio provide a
translator. Sometimes freelancers don’t attend these meetings because they can’t understand Japanese (or they’re
not invited), but even if your Japanese is abysmal and you’re not sure about attending, see if you can find a way of
joining and understanding a Sakkuchi meeting. Most of the time it’s your only chance to speak directly with the main
production staff for a show, and being able to clear up problems here can save you a ton of heartache and wasted
time over your work on a production. In some cases you might be lucky enough to get a video recording to reference
later. Make sure you download and reference the video as needed!

Even if you know a meeting is recorded, taking notes in these meetings is really helpful. When the director discusses
your section, pay special attention to how they describe the tone of each scene. You don’t want to draw a serious fight
scene like it’s a slapstick comedy, or accidentally draw a quiet kuudere character with a big grin (believe me, it’s a lot
easier to make those kinds of mistakes than you think!). Beyond tone, check to make sure there aren’t important
details that are hard to understand from the e-conte. Sometimes characters are wearing different clothes than they
normally do, or there are special notes about sound effects, camera moves, references to real-world locations. Making
a mistake on any of these points can be costly in time and resources.

Here’s a list with a few more things you might want to listen for:
● Any special instructions for a scene that may differ from the storyboards
● Any emotional beats the director may want to show in a way that isn’t obvious.
● Any changes in character clothing or style
● Any unusual props or settings that might require extra resources or work
● Major changes or missing materials, like storyboard revisions or incomplete settei
● Anything that is missing or unclear

At several points in the meeting you’ll have some time for questions. Ask them! Both you and the studio staff want a
smooth, easy production–so take the time to clear up problems while it’s easy to get feedback.

After the Sakkuchi a Production Assistant (PA) will be your primary point of contact. They’re the ones in charge of
distributing cuts, tracking progress, dealing with contract animators (that’s you!) and so on. Usually, any given
production will have several PAs per episode. Pretty much everyone I interviewed for this book agreed that the PA you
have drastically changes your experience working with a studio. Some PAs are extremely helpful and very

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understanding, others are always pressed for time and can be pretty pushy. Some are multilingual, others aren't. Who
you get isn’t up to you, but it’s always a good idea to be polite to your PA and respectful of their time.

Important Note: PAs do a lot for their studio! You can

learn more about the job in the section on PA work in this PA work is intense!
book. Anime couldn’t be made without the stuff they do,
and understanding how they work will make working with
them much easier for you!

Alright! So, you’ve got a section assigned to you. You’ve taken copious
notes, stayed in polite contact with your PA, and asked any important
questions you can think of. What else can you do to prepare for your work as
a layout artist? Review the gigantic bundle of files the studio you’re working
for dumps on you, of course!

Cut Package

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 Honestly, opening a cut package like this is one of my favorite things to do working in animation. If you’ve even gotten
a new art book and flipped through it for the first time, you’ll know the feeling. Nothing really beats getting to look
through heaps of cool characters, places, and storyboards. Still, this stuff is all-important, so let’s calm down and take
a second to talk about it all.

1) E-conte (絵コンテ) Storyboards for the section or episode you are working
on

2) Settei 設定 Design sheets for the production or section, including

characters, backgrounds, and props.

3) Character Settei キャラクター設定 Design sheets for the characters

4) Background Settei 美術設定 Design sheets for the backgrounds (sometimes just
pictures!)

5) Prop Settei プロップ設定 Design sheets for props, weapons, and vehicles

6) Character Height Chart 対比表・キャラクター Comparison chart of the character heights

7) Layout Paper LO手紙** Layout paper template for making sure you have the
correct resolution and aspect ratio for your work.

8) Timesheet Paper シート手紙 blank version of the timesheet for you to fill out

Cutting/CT sheet timesheet pre-filled by the director

Cautionary Notes 注意事項 Notes on how to avoid common drawing or design

mistakes for the production.

3d Layout ３D LO/3D BG Material for you to use in place of the background

drawings, or 3d character models to trace.

Miscellaneous Reference 資料: Photographs, Manga References, Promo Art, Other

media inspiration

Most of the time this is going to be given to you with Japanese labels, which is why I’ve included the translations for
this stuff. You’re going to be seeing Settei, e-conte, and timesheet labels a lot. It’s probably best to memorize the
kanji for those and/or keep a little cheat sheet you can use to ctrl+F search with. It’ll save a lot of time.

The very first thing you should do when reviewing all of this is to make sure you’re not missing anything important. If
you know you’re supposed to be drawing a character or background but their settei sheet isn’t in the files you’re given,
ask about it right away! Sometimes the PA might tell you they don’t have the settei ready. When that happens, double-
check how they’d like you to handle the missing settei. Sometimes you might just have to use other references. For
background characters or minor locations, they may actually have you design it yourself!

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After you’ve made sure everything you need is there, spend some time familiarizing yourself with it. Do some practice
drawings of the characters you’ll be animating, try to break down and understand the e-conte on your own. Have fun
with it!

Most of the files you’re given are pretty simple, but there are four really important documents worth giving special
attention: e-conte, layout paper, settei sheets, and the timesheet.

E-conte
E-conte (絵コンテ) is a japanese term roughly equivilent to “storyboards” 絵 (E) means picture、 and コンテ (conte)
is short for continuity. e-conte is made up of a column for action, pictures, dialogue, and sound. Exactly what’s on
storyboard paper and where it is varies by studio, but this little chart shows you most of the other important sections
you’ll find.

Like the Sakkuchi, e-conte for anime is pretty much always in Japanese, and it’s handwritten fast. That makes it a real
nightmare to read, even if you’ve got some serious Japanese language skill. Luckily, a good number of studios
understand this, so it’s usually possible to get the written portions of e-conte typed up cleanly. A few studios might
even be able to give a rough translation, but that’s not a guarantee. At the minimum, you should be able to use a
translation scanning app to help you with reading typed notes.

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1) Scene / Cut Scene number and cut
number. One scene has
multiple cuts.

2) Page # Number indicating how far

into an animation the
page is

3) Action Action and instructions,

including acting and
camera moves

4) Storyboard Area Thumbnail drawings

showing composition and
basic acting

5) Frame Size of the final output

image, matches an HDTV

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 ratio.

6) Bleed Area Extra space not shown on

TV, to allow for
adjustment

7) Dialogue and SFX Spoken words and

onomatopoeia for sound
effects

8) Time Length of a cut in

(seconds+ コマ*) *frames

9) Total Time Length of a whole page of

e-conte.

The drawing area of e-conte matches the aspect ratio of most home HDTVs, 16 x 9, just like layout paper. It’s
common for a storyboard artist to draw outside this box for camera moves, shots with lots of detail, or any number of
other reasons. Movement is shown in sequence. Drawings lower on the page come after higher drawings. A new
frame dosn’t mean a new cut or scene though. Those are tracked by the Scene/Cut column.

Sometimes a single cut might take a dozen drawings to show. Other times you might have a single drawing (for
example of a city as an establishing shot) which is the only drawing for a scene+cut together .
Always follow
the labels in the Scene + Cut column. never assume you’re moving on from
one cut to the next based on the drawings alone.
The time column is used to show how much time passes with each bit of motion. It’s measured in parentheses as
(seconds + コマ). Koma means “frame.” Animation is typically made at a rate of 24 frames per second. A 1.5 second
cut is (1 +12) a 0.75 second cut would be (0 + 18). This takes a little getting used to, but actually makes timing out

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 cuts much easier once you are familiar with it.
Imagine how confusing it would be if you had to
deal with decimals each 0.0416666667 seconds
long! Timecodes would be a nightmare.

Important note: When a director writes the timing for the total length of a cut, they mean it. You’ll get some
wiggle room in a scene to play with the precise timing of movement, but the second you start trying to change the
length of a cut, expect trouble. Anime budgets are extremely tight and often have their funds accounted for down
to the frame. If you start lengthening or shortening cuts without express permission, you can completely throw off
that careful accounting.

If the CT sheet (the pre-filled timesheet) has a different cut length or timing from the E-Conte, follow the CT sheet.

Sometimes, sections of e-conte are removed or replaced. These are shown with a big “X” or scribble through them. It
should go without saying, but don’t draw something that has clearly been scribbled out. Occasionally, there will be a
note to refer to a different section of the storyboard for the correct drawings. Other times, the new material might
actually be pasted over the old drawings.

When a character speaks, they’ll always be labeled with their name in the dialogue + sound section. Pay special
attention to this for characters you’ll be drawing, as you will need to know who’s saying what to animate dialogue. If a
character speaks but isn’t shown, it’s indicated with OFF or O.S. (off-screen) If they’re doing the typical anime trope
where they think through a problem mentally, it’s indicated with MONO (Monologue). Don’t be the animator that
wastes hours drawing a cool anime protagonist’s mental anguish with a bunch of unneeded mouth flaps. Sometimes

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onomatopoeia is indicated in the sound section. This is used in e-conte the same way you’d see it in comics. Sound
effects are always written in katakana, and they’re usually not too hard to figure out. Sometimes, you’ll need to time
your animation to particular sound effects.

Since e-conte is created by the director and a small team of storyboard artists, it’s going to drip with personal style.
Some directors, like Hayao Miyazaki (almost every Ghibli film) and Satoshi Kon (Paranoia agent, Patlabor, etc.), are
renowned for their detailed e-conte and extremely rigid standards. Others, like Hyrouki Imasihi (Kill la Kill, Gurren
Laggan, etc.) draw so rough and fast that their work looks more like hieroglyphics than anime. Time and experience
will teach you how to work with a given e-conte style or director, but it’s usually a good idea to see how other work by
the director looks–from the same show and any previous work they’ve directed.

One thing I don’t have a picture of up above is an animatic. An animatic is the first video made for a production, taking
images from the e-conte and timing it along with sound according to the CT sheet.

Once layout work begins, daily and weekly updates are made to the CT sheet, importing those layouts so those
working on the episode can better imagine the final product, and so the overall flow of the episode can be visualized.
The animatic is called an offline for the duration of this process. Once it goes on air, it’s sometimes called an online.

Depending on where in production a project is, the animatic/offline can have dialogue, music, sound cues, effects, and
animation at various stages for every scene. It’s always helpful to refer to these videos before starting your work. It will
help you understand where your cuts fit into the overall episode, and makes timing much easier to visualize.

The animatic is always extremely helpful, especially if you’re having trouble imagining the timing of motion from static
storyboards alone.The animatic will include a timecode in minutes+seconds+frames, along with a big character name
exactly timed to dialogue. I can’t
stress enough how useful
watching this is! If it’s not
provided to you, ask your PA
about it and see if you can get
it.

Over the course of working on

an episode, the animatic is
updated with more and more
cuts, first in rough layout form
and eventually in more
complete edits. By the end of
production, it’s functionally a
complete episode. If you’re ever
wondering why you have such
tight deadlines for a show that’s
months or even years from

18
airing, it’s probably because the director is trying to update the animatic as quickly as possible so they can correct and
improve the episode as a whole. Since the animatic is so important, most studios now require you to send a “render”
of your work as part of the submission process, usually as a .mp4 or .mov (gifs aren’t usually accepted).

Layout Paper
Layout paper is much less complicated than e-conte. Though different studios all have their own versions, they all look
just about the same. Even so, you should never, ever, ever use the layout file one studio provides you with
another studio or transform the size and/or resolution of the paper itself. The file sizes for digital layout paper
are in the precise dimensions and DPI needed for production. Messing with these dimensions can completely throw off
later artists working on your cuts, and mixing production materials between studios is technically a breach of a non-
disclosure agreement. You really don’t want to throw out a bunch of beautiful drawings just because you decided to
pump up the DPI to mega levels and stretch the layout paper into a spaghetti string.

1) Hole Punch Also called peg holes, what a pegboard fits through on traditional animation paper
Guide to keep drawings aligned, used in the same fashion digitally and should never be
moved

2) Title/cut title of the animation project being worked on, and the cut number, for ease of
tracking

3) Artist's name name of the layout artist must be included so they can be asked questions and/or
returned work if needed

4) Time given in (seconds+frames) for a cut 24 frames in one second of animation. A cut
that is exactly 1 second long would have (1+00) written, one that is 1.5 seconds
long would have (1+12) written

5) Frame solid black line indicates the outer limit of what is normally shown in finished
animation–anything outside this line is cut off, although drawing somewhat
outside this area is necessary to help other stages of animation

6) Action (inner) Inner dotted line is the “animation safe area”; important drawing elements should
safe area not be placed on or beyond this line

7) Color (outer) safe Outer line which indicates the “color-safe area.” Drawings should extend to this
area line so that background artists, editors, and other people that work on animation
have a safe area in the case of camera movements, slides, and other effects or
changes

There’s not much more to say beyond what the chart shows, but it is worth mentioning that you *can* change the size
of a file in some circumstances.

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Making the size and
shape of the layout
paper different from
the base sent to you
is a no go!

You can change the

size of the .clip or
.PSD file sent to
you for something
like a camera pan
as long as the size
of the basic layout
paper does not
change.

You just don’t want to mess with the actual size of the “paper” or its resolution. You can mess around with the
dimensions of the canvas if the cut requires you to move the camera. Sometimes you can even draw a layout at 200%

20
size for crowd shots, you just can’t have the final output frame be any different than whatever dimensions the studio
set. I promise it’s not as annoying as it sounds.

OK! Last one for now:

Settei
Settei (設定) is the
Japanese word for any
images relating to a
character, location, or object.
It’s one of the most
important words for you to
know since the settei informs
how and what you draw.

As a layout artist, you’ll be

working with the genga
version of the settei most of
the time. These aren’t
colored, but feature clean
drawings and often come in
versions with and without
shadow maps. The shadow map colors in settei aren’t arbitrary. They relate to the kind of material a shadow is on
and the intensity of the shadow. If the character designer creating settei was rushed or the character depicted is of
secondary importance, they might just have flat blue shadows.

Even when the settei itself has flat shadows,

it’s helpful to add color variation for different
objects in your layout if you have the time.
Like with everything else, exactly which
colors indicate what varies from studio to
studio. The chart to the right has some pretty
common color variations.

Just having different colors for different

materials helps douga artists a lot, especially
in situations where there’s complex
overlapping. Imagine trying to figure out
whether a little dot of blue shadow poking
through Sophie’s hair is her backpack, her
shirt, her skin, or the shirt of another character when everything is the same flat blue. Yuck! Just having different
shadows distinctly marked can save cumulative hours as a cut is cleaned up and colored.
Alright, that’s enough on the files you’ll get for now. Let’s spend some time looking at how to actually use this stuff
when making a layout.

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Layout Step 1:Planning a Cut
I think planning and preparation make up 90% of the work in layout. Remember that cooking analogy from the start
of this section? It’s back! If econte is the recipe, your planning and file set up for a cut is the gathering and
preparation of raw ingredients. No point in trying to choose spices if you don’t know what you’re cooking! With
anime, you’re trying to efficiently assemble and arrange the files you get into a preferred workflow. What that
actually is will depend on you, but remember: the key is clarity. You’re making something other artists to work on,
not a personal sketch.

Basic assembly goes something like this:

1. Double-check that all settei and materials are present. If anything is missing, ask the PA
for it!
2. Import the layout template (don’t change its size!)
3. Import the storyboard into software or print out a reference
4. Create the animation timeline in software based on the cut length indicated in the E-
conte.
5. Review notes and special instructions from the animation meeting for any specific timing.
If anything is unclear, ask the PA about it!
6. Make sure to understand the intent of the cut. For example, if it should be more complex
or more simple. Also, be sure you understand the emotional tone.
7. Gather reference pictures/art, study similar cuts, and film personal references.

The last two points are worth adding more context to.

Point six: Animators, even very experienced ones, sometimes look at a cut and start thinking about how to
“upgrade” it. To some extent, you should do this. You’re there to make the best version of the e-conte possible. Be
careful, though. it’s easy to go too far. If you add a bunch of motion the initial storyboard does not call for, like
complex acting or new characters, you might find pushback from the studio. The production staff are trying to
make something with a budget in mind. If you make what was a simple dialogue scene into a crazy fighting
animation, they might not have the time or money to finish that animation. Push where you can, but be practical
about what you change. Most of the time the director will specifically mention if they want a particular cut to stand
out. They’ll tell you specifically if cuts you have are supposed to be particularly impressive

Point seven might be pretty obvious to most people reading, but I feel it’s important to understand that you should
be looking for references in animation and life. There’s nothing shameful about it, and it’s not cheating. In fact,
most successful anime productions schedule in time for the pre-production crew and senior animators to
specifically shoot and study references before and during production. This goes all the way back to the golden age
Disney films, where senior animators would draw while looking at live models dancing or acting to help them nail
their animations. Nowadays reference is usually in video form. Satoshi Kon took a couple of weeks before starting
production of Tokyo Godfathers to walk around Tokyo taking photos of locations. After that, he and several other
crew members dressed up in costumes for characters and shot pose references. They even shot acting and
running footage out in a park that they heavily referenced while animating most of the film. You should absolutely
be doing this, too.
Here are a few reference sources I recommend:

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 1) Personal Photo and video references
You can shoot yourself in a webcam or with a mirror. It’s surprisingly helpful. You can
make expressions, take poses, hold props, whatever works. Rope friends and family into
it, too. Maybe you’re drawing a big, buff guy and you happen to have a friend into
bodybuilding–ask if you can take some photos of them in key poses.
2) Expert photo and video references
There are a lot of books and videos out there designed to be used as reference. Pose
books, nude figures, books and diagrams on vehicles or anatomy–they’re all great. Don’t
just focus on drawing resources, though. Find videos or books from experts in fields, too.
HEMA or fencing matches can be great for swordfights, for example–and there are
thousands of really instructive videos on dance, fighting, parkour, or anything else you
might want a visual reference for.
3) Similar cuts from a previous episode or similar anime
Sakuga Boru and Youtube are your best friends here. Watching a show to learn
animation style and expectations is a great start. You can learn a ton about characters’
personalities and how the show is animated. Similar shots to yours can do the same
thing. Remember that anime is largely about pacing and style. There’s nothing wrong
with learning how to execute that style through studies.
4) Pose Dolls
Growing up I thought using dolls for drawing reference was silly, but brands like FIGMA
are incredible and can help to find anatomy solutions even for very difficult poses.
5) Found Objects
I’m not talking about things you take photos of here, I’m talking about stuff you have
around you that you can draw for reference. Some of this is really standard, like using
your own phone when you need to draw one in a cut. Other stuff is really handy, too. Toy
(or real!) swords, airsoft guns, weird little rocks…anything that inspires or acts as a
reference.

important note: You might have noticed that anime shows almost never directly reference each
other. Even shows like Gintama, which is built from the ground up using references, rarely use another
show’s ideas 1:1. That’s because Japanese copyright laws are pretty strict. They give the original
owners of the work a lot of control over where and how those images appear. Most companies go really
easy on fanart and even popular small businesses like doujinshi circles. This leniency DOES NOT
extend to work at a professional level between studios or the artists working for them. Don’t directly
copy anything from another anime or Japanese IP into the layout work you're doing. You can reference
it or study it, but don’t decide to exactly recreate a character from a show by a different studio into your
work unless you want to be fired.

23
 Layout Step 2: Creating a Working
File

Layer order follows Japanese

timesheet logic. The furthest back
layer is the background, with “A”
being the file (called a Cel in
animation) farthest from the front. It
then goes as far forward as far as
needed. In this cut “C” is closest to
the camera.

I still get this backwards sometimes,

but a good way to remember this is
by recalling how animation cells were
stacked on top of each other in the
golden age of animation. You would
want the first layer to be A because it was the
first cell layer that you placed down. So any
subsequent cells would need to go on top of it after.

Besides cel folders, there are also books. A book is a piece of the background that’s on a different layer. It gets
the same painting pass as a background, but the separation allows it to sit in front of animation to add depth.
Books are also used for special 2D camera effects like parallax. Book 1 is always farthest from the camera. I’ll go
into much more detail on what cels are and how to use them in a little bit when we talk about timesheets. For now,
just know they exist and they need to be separate layer folders ordered from A forward. This never changes
between productions, so stick to it.

Once you’re happy with your book and cel folders, take a few seconds to write out the basic information needed at
the top of the timesheet and layout paper. None of this should be too confusing, and it’s mostly the same between
the two documents.

24
There we go. Those are all the basics you need before you start animating. I can guess what some of you are
thinking: “twenty pages just to get to the animation part? This is horrible! Forget it!” but all of this gets much easier
with time, and the prep work is there to help make it so that you can focus on the animation once you get to it.
Also, reading about it first can be a little intimidating, and even just setting up a file is genuinely complex enough
that you can make mistakes, but the anime pipeline is designed to make sure that a cut-in layout comes out
looking as good as possible. The senior staff you’re working with are there partly to help catch and fix beginner
mistakes, and as long as you show you’re willing to learn, you don’t have to worry about messing up now and
then. Do your best setting up a file and getting
all the groundwork done right, but don’t let it ruin the
excitement of actually getting to animate

Layout Step 2: Solidifying the

Composition
The first major step in creating a layout is creating
the compositional sketch based on the e-conte. You
can copy-paste in the e- conte itself as a base layer
at low opacity to guide your composition. Drawings
at this stage should still be simple, but their size
and placement should be very close to the final
effect that you want. I’ve found that working on a
small number of layers, or just a single layer, is a
very good way to approach this stage. Doing so stops you from getting confused by different layers, folders,
timing, line colors, and so on. You can always copy-paste out elements later to form the basic sketch for cels,
books, and the background.

25
Keeping things simple also help you to iterate and find the best composition. Don’t go with the first lines you lay
down. Try changing features and see if you can improve the story and emotional impact of your cut. You can come
back to composition throughout the course of your work.

What makes a good composition goes way beyond the

scope of this section, but there are a few things to think
about. Your goal is to make the arrangement of shapes
on the screen interesting and conducive to the story your
cut is trying to tell without distracting or confusing the
audience. Paying attention to how similar cuts use
compositions is good. So is flipping your canvas to see if
the elements of your cut feel interesting but not lopsided.
Don’t be afraid to make small adjustments to your
composition in later stages, too. Sometimes the
difference of a few pixels can massively improve the way
a cut reads.

Layout Step 3: Establishing Perspective and Background

Improving the perspective and background is usually a good next step. You won’t be expected to complete a
perfectly rendered image of the background or paint anything, though. Instead, you’re trying to make sure
everything is clear for the enshutsu and background painters to work from in their future passes. This gets much
more information in the Background Layout section.

Adding stick figures of the characters in the background to check proportion is a really good idea. You can leave
these drawings on a separate layer and use the “transform” function to scale them into perspective for characters
at different distances. Sometimes I just paste
in the actual character settei, too.

Most of the time, you’re the one who decides

exactly what the perspective is since a lot of
e-conte is a bit ambiguous. Despite how often
anime uses crazy angles compared to most
western shows, the majority of cuts are still
done in one or two-point perspective. Three-
point and curvilinear perspectives are used
for more complex cuts, so knowing them is

26
also important, but don’t assume every shot needs to be dynamic.

Light sources are notated with 光源 ( こうげん)

Though most of the time only 光 is written. Use
a 3D arrow when showing lighting, not just a
little stick arrow.

It’s good practice to label anything even slightly

confusing in your background. A cloud might be
obvious to you, but it can very easily be painted
as a clump of trees even if you have carefully
drawn them. Save everyone the headache and
add labels . Writing it in Japanese is best, and
you can even copy-paste the text from google
translate.

You can also write out the name of the background you’re drawing to help the painter find it quickly. Usually,
referencing the full file name is best, something like “TONARI_BG_SETTEI_210_IN.”

Drawing Books

Drawing books is almost identical to drawing backgrounds, except you need to make sure they’re on a different
layer. In this layout, the entire storefront is a book that will have animated cels placed behind it to create a sense of
depth.

27
A book is usually filled with a color to show that it’s sitting in front of other things. Keep the color light since they’re
often printed. If there are multiple objects all at the same depth, you can make them the same book layer. Just
think of it as a flat piece of plastic sitting at a certain depth in the image with objects painted on it. Label your
books, too. It keeps everyone happy.

Layout Step 4: Drawing the cels

Anime has all different levels of animation. A pretty good number of shots in anime are called tome 止め or “still”
cuts, which is what most beginning layout artists dip their toes into. These have only minimal animation, like blinks
or lip flaps. Sometimes, though, you can also get stunning pieces of extraordinary complexity where characters
throw mountains at each other or fly through complex cityscapes. Regardless, the basic rules that govern
animation remain the same.

All 2D animation is made up of individual drawings called cels (セル). The term ”cel” originates from the analog
animation process, which uses transparent celluloid film for drawing paper. So, the layers in your animation
software and the columns on a timesheet correspond to a particular set of drawings grouped by their depth in an
image. Start with A as the furthest back and work your way forward from there.

Cels are used to chop up a shot into different objects and characters. A person far from the camera walking might
be the A cel, while a car driving by close-up would be on the B cel. It’s also common to put different parts of a
character into different cels. Hair, eyes, mouths, and clothing are often put on different cels so that they can all
move at different times.

Another common term is Frame (コム or koma). These make

up the horizontal rows in a timesheet. As I said before,
animation is almost always 24 frames a second. What I didn’t
mention is that one drawing can be held for multiple frames.
Most shots in anime use only 12 new drawings per second,
with each drawing being “held” for two frames. Sometimes
even fewer than this are used. This is partly a cost-saving
measure, but it’s also a major contributor to how snappy anime
looks. Smooth animation isn’t always more desirable.

Since there’s a focus on budget and efficiency, most anime

work is done pose to pose. You’ll be expected to pick out the
most important poses and then you (or another artist) will fill in
the connecting motion afterwards. Diving in with Straight
ahead animation, where each frame is drawn in sequence from the start ot the end of a cut, is much less common,
and usually only reserved for special scenes. Don’t worry about the process of pose-to-pose animation stifling your
ability to express ideas, though–just think of it as a way of keeping yourself from going overboard!

In anime, the more important drawings you find first are called keys or keyframes. These are usually the
“extreme” moments of poses. A character pulling a sword out could be the first keyframe, A1. A2 is the sword high

28
over their head, and A3 is the end of an arc as they swing it down. Not everything has to be that dramatic though.
An eye open is A1, A2 is closed. Simple! These keyframes are the defining moments of the animation. If you don’t
have them, you don’t have enough information to understand how the character is moving.

Keyframe drawings are labeled with the Cel they’re from (A, B, C, etc.), numbered, and circled. The number
indicates how late they come in the cut, in order from one to the last frame.

Important Note: Both the letter and circle are mandatory. Most anime studios still print out their cels, it
makes things an absolute nightmare if you don’t label which drawing goes where. Also, speaking from
personal experience, make sure you write the correct label on the correct layer! It’s really easy to get
caught up in drawing and write “A1” on the background layer, or even another cel layer, rather than the
actual drawing it belongs with. This gets out of hand really quickly and can take hours to fix. Be careful!

In many cases, keyframes only make up about a third of the total frames in a cut. Every other drawing is called an
Inbetween. If the name didn’t make it obvious, these are the drawings that come in between the keys. They
smooth out the motion and give a sense of life. In the vast majority of cases, you won’t actually draw your own
inbetweens as a layout artist. Instead, these are left for the douga (動画) artists, who specialize in creating
inbetweens from provided keyframes in a layout. If you want to learn more about that stuff, check out the douga

section.

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Inbetweens are marked in one of two ways. Most are given a small tick mark “-” as part of a spacing chart
(explained more in the douga section). As a layout artist, you won’t draw these–you’ll just indicate the timing and
spacing you want for them.Others have a triangle drawn around a number. These are called “Douga guides” (動画
参考). They do get their own drawing, but with less detail. You should only really use these if you think the douga
artist won’t understand how to get between two keyframes. In general, most simple animations won’t need the
extra inbetween guides.

As I said when discussing settei, shadows are really important for keyframes. Most of the time a studio will prefer
you have a dark blue line actually separating the areas of light and shadow (rather than just filling in an area)
because this helps douga and shiage artists know where to stop the shadow precisely.

It’s really common for even experienced artists new to anime to get intimidated by how clean the final drawings in
anime look. Don’t be! Layout keyframe drawings should be drawn with a focus on proportion, gesture, and acting,
not perfect line quality. You definitely don’t want to draw a scribbly mess that nobody but you can understand, but
it’s fine to keep your drawings natural and loose. Lines don’t have to be perfectly smooth and nobody is expecting
you to perfectly nail a character’s exact design from the getgo. Aim for a clear sense of volume, make sure the
drawings feel properly placed in perspective, and try to pump up the animation. Worry about nice drawings when
you’re cleaning things up.

Whenever you have a small gap in a character’s

pose, add a little red “x” in that area showing it’s not
part of the drawing. This is done to help the paint
stage, but I guarantee it’ll help you, too. I’ve
repeatedly stepped away from a cut for a day, came
back, and drew what should have been a gap as
part of a character, completely messing up future
drawings in the cut, then had to redo them all. Save
yourself the pain!

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Tap Wari
There’s an extremely useful technique called tap wari or off
tap. On paper, this means you unhook the sheet you’re
drawing on from the holes that connect it to a pegboard (also
called a tap) and slide it around over the others to match up
different parts of a drawing as precise guides. This lets you
keep difficult areas, like faces, on model by overlapping the
faces between drawings even when the character is moving
across the page. It’s also used to measure the arc between
keyframes by rotating different cels to find an arc.

Digitally, it’s exactly the same except much less

annoying. If you’re working in Clip Studio, the light
table function even lets you slide drawings temporarily

then snap them back

You can slide, rotate, and do anything else you

need off tap. Need to match a leg bent in a run to

31
the previous (straight) leg? Slide the new drawing to match it up, then snap it back. Want to double-check the eyes
aren’t getting squished as they move? Untap and check. Digitally, you can do quick checks like this with parts of a
drawing, too– you can draw a head over the previous frames, then lasso it and drag it to match up with the next
frame of movement. Whatever works!

Tap Wari also helpful when preserving volume between drawings is important, or when you just want to double-
check how the next frame you’ve drawn matches up to the previous. It becomes progressively more important as
the animation makes its way down the pipeline.By the time a cut hits douga, volume and proportion from frame to
frame is everything and tap wari is used constantly.

Now, before we dig into the next section, let me give a word of warning: focus on keyframes first. If you get bogged
down trying to figure out spacing charts for inbetweens before you’re happy with how your keyframes are working,
you’ll almost certainly end up having to redo timing and spacing anyways.

lLayout Step 5: Understanding Spacing Charts and Planning Inbetweens

So if we’re not actually drawing keyframes, how do we communicate where they should go? With beautiful little
charts!

Animators typically include spacing charts on every keyframe. However, there is no need for a spacing chart in
the first keyframe of a cut, since there are no previous drawings that need guiding. When it comes to in-between
guides, don't worry about adding spacing charts since they are already included in the keyframe spacing
charts.The beginning shows the previous keyframe’s number, the endpoint is labeled with the current keyframe.

The center of the chart should always be shown to help the douga artist measure how the spacing relates to that
point, even if there’s no actual inbetween at the exact center (they call this ghosting the inbetween, which is pretty
cool). The actual physical distance between these points is what gives your chart its spacing. Usually, you should
divide each new space in half each time you add an inbetween tickmark. You can create uneven spacing, but it’s
always helpful to keep the ghost inbetweens so douga artists know what you’re trying to do.

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“But wait!” I hear you say. “What the hell is Spacing? Why do I need these!?” Well,
spacing is pretty simple. It’s the distance between two drawings. Close spacing
makes it feel like something is moving slowly. Distant spacing makes it feel like
something is moving quickly. Spacing has nothing to do with timing (which is what
the timesheet is for), instead, it lets you take the same timing and change how it
feels. The little example gif to the right shows this: the timing for each new drawing
of the circle is the same, but it feels like it moves through the first space faster since
the spacing is farther apart. z

There are three general kinds of spacing you’ll see. Even, ease out, and ease in.
They can be mixed and matched as needed.

even spacing creates an even ease out increases the spacing ease in decreases the spacing
movement, like a ball rolling on a near the end, creating a sense of near the end, creating a sense of
flat surface at a steady rate acceleration, a ball rolling down a deceleration, a ball losing energy
slope, increasing speed as it rolls up a hill

You can also use individual spacing charts for parts of a character (even ones on the same cel) if they move at
different rates. Just make sure you label or otherwise indicate what part of the character the chart relates to.

Some really common motions–especially walks, runs, blinks, and lip flaps–break these spacing chart rules. I’ll be
explaining them in more detail down in the Standard Animations section.

Layout Step 6: Drawing camera notations and filming effects

Many cuts in anime have camera motion, cel slides, and filming effects. You have to draw these on their own
layer, along with notes explaining how they should be applied. The compositing staff, also called satsuei (撮影)
are the ones that actually apply these effects.

33
Filming effects are a complex topic that need their own section–or book–to be explained properly. I’m going to
touch on it more in the camera effects section, but you should also find yourself a copy of the Satuma book. You
can find it by searching for this:

撮ま！〜アニメーターのための撮影基礎知識〜

It’s a pretty comprehensive guide of anime film effect terminology. There are some translated versions out there,
too–which help a lot.

Layout Step 7: Filling out the Timesheet (ADD FULL TIMESHEET NEXT TO LAYOUT)

Most people get into animation because they want to express themselves and create beautiful stories, not
because they like complex paperwork and memo-making. Timesheets are exactly that–but without them anime
couldn’t really be made. A timesheet is like a tax form for your cut, requiring you to account for everything you did–
where every frame goes, what every camera effect is so that others can build off your work to finish a cut. That can
be really hard sometimes, but once you master the process it’s a flexible and powerful tool.

Of course, I’m willing to bet some of you enjoy organization and accounting in your work. If so, I think you’ll be right
at home once you understand the basics!

Regardless of how you feel about timesheets, Clarity is still your number one priority–if others understand it, it
works–and most production teams don’t expect you to have absolutely perfect timesheets on every cut. They get
changed around all the time. Just get the basics down and take your time with the rest.

Why do we still use timesheets? Partly they’re a relic of the old process for animation. Japanese companies tend
to be surprisingly slow to change. Many don’t have the infrastructure (or desire) to update a method they’ve
mastered and which fits well into productions. Timesheets aren’t a complete relic, though. They’re actually
extremely useful for a couple of reasons. First off, they’re what let animators on different software (or working on
paper) work on the same cut. As long as you know how to fill out and read one, you can animate your cut with
anything. They also serve as a sort of go-to place for everyone checking the cut when looking for special
instructions. Also, since it’s just paper, notations can be flexible. You’re not locked into what a program can
interpret, and sometimes that lets you get away with some pretty cool effects in the same way as creative solutions
in your drawings can have awesome results.

Personally, I think we’ll probably see a more comprehensive replacement of them by new studios at some point in
the next few decades, but learning how to fill a timesheet out is still a good exercise. It forces you to understand
timing on a really basic level and you can still explain how to animate even if you’re stuck without electricity!

Alright, without further adieu, here’s the fabled timesheet:

34
35
 1) Title Title for the show, so cuts are not mixed up between projects

2) Memo Space for any notes from the layout artist, directors, douga artists, etc. Often
indicates special effects or camera moves

3) Time Time of the cut in Seconds + Frames

4) Animator name Name of the animator

5) Compositor name Name of the compositor (not filled out by the layout artist)

6) Genga column Column filled out by the layout artist, indicating keyframes and inbetweens

7) Frame count Indication of the frame and second count, arranged vertically.

8) SFX and dialogue column Indication of sound effects or spoken dialogue

9) Douga column Section used by the douga artist (not filled out by the layout artist)

10) Camera column Section for indicating type and duration of camera moves

11) Sheet number Number of the timesheet out of total number for a cut (X/total)

I’ll be honest. The first time I saw one of these, I was pretty scared. Fortunately, understanding a timesheet is
manageable with just a little practice. The top is mostly straightforward. It’s the same information you need on the
layout, with a few straightforward additions. Still, we’ll go through and talk about most of these one-by-one. Just
take it slow!

Let’s discuss the areas you’ll be spending most of your time: the genga, sound, and camera columns along with
the Memo section.

Genga Column

The genga column is where you’ll write all the information from your spacing charts. It’s like a timeline you’d see
in animation or editing software, but vertical. Each row indicates a single frame, labeled along the right side in
small numbers. Every 24 frames is labeled as a second rather than a frame. The individual letter columns are your

36
cels. Remember that A is the furthest back. If you end up needing cels past E, you can actually cross out the
douga columns’ letters and continue from F.

There are a
total of 144
frames on a single timesheet–that’s only six seconds. If your
cut goes for less than six seconds, then you need to scribble
out the timesheet after the last frame of your animation.

Since the timesheet is usually shown as a number of frames, you have to convert your (seconds + frames) to raw
frame count. Just multiply the seconds by 24 and add any frames to get your total.

If you have more than 6 seconds of

animation, you’ll have multiple sheets.
Make sure to mark them in order at the
top (starting from “1”), and count to the
last frame on whatever your final sheet
of animation is.

This can get a little confusing for long

cuts, but just remember that each
previous sheet holds 144 frames, and
add them together. For example, if you
had a cut that’s 13.5 seconds long, that
becomes (13+12) or 300 frames. You’d
need three timesheets for it. The first two
come to 288 frames (144+144), and
you’d have 12 frames left over–so you’d
scribble out everything after that on the
final timesheet.

37
Genga Column
Now let’s talk about filling out the genga column. You can probably guess
most of the basics. Keyframes are marked with a circled number, guides
get triangles, and inbetweens are tick marks. You will also see an “X”
sometimes. This is used to show that a cel is turned off. It’s common if a
character or object isn’t visible at the start of a cut, or disappears partway
through a cut. Most of the time using this is pretty normal, like characters
walking on and off-screen or falling out of frame, but it’s also used for
flickering effects, like when a character disappears and then reappears

close to the camera.

You always have to start and end your genga column on a

keyframe. This is because douga artists only work between
those drawings.if they don’t have two drawings to work
between, they can’t figure out what their frames should look
like! If you look at this example, it should illustrate the
problem. The douga artist could create drawings between
A1 and A2, since they know the start and end points of the
posing, but what about for the inbetweens after? Since
there’s no indication of what the character is doing after A2,
they have no way to make their drawings.

38
In this example, we Start on A1 and end with A2. Our
inbetweens are all between the keyframes, so the douga
artist can use them as reference for making the inbetweens.
A spacing chart like this is exactly what we should be going
for!

But let’s say we actually wanted to keep the inbetweens

from the first example where they were. In that case, we’d
need to add A3, which shows what new pose those new
inbetweens are going towards. As you can see from the
timechart snippet, you can add keyframes after the cut
ends! This means you can have a smooth motion that
would continue even after the cut is finished, which is really
useful in scenes where you want a character still in motion
as the cut ends. A keyframe that comes after a cut ends still
needs to be well drawn because the douga artists will base
the drawings that are in the cut off of it. Bad keyframes
means bad inbetweens.

39
Common Notation 1: Long Vertical
Line
Another common notation is a long,
straight line. This indicates the same
frame is being held for an extended
duration. If a single keyframe is shown for
an entire cut, then it’s marked with tome (
止め) and a line to the last frame. You
don’t need to draw a line between cels
that are held for just a few frames, only
for long holds, more than 10-15 frames.

Common Notation 2: Books

Last are books. They’re noted with a
line indicating which cels they sit in
front of. This can get confusing if
there are many different books, so
try to keep it neat!

This list is by no means exhaustive, but all of these are very common and extremely consistent. There are a few
other ways of marking the genga column, but most of these are used for standard notation. Sometimes studios (or
individual animators) use special notation for other effects. I’ve seen a wavy line used to indicate vibration and an
arrow used to “jump” all or part of one cel to another. If you’re not sure how to do something, check resources like
the Satuma book. If you still don’t see what you need, ask other animators and look for examples online. Chances
are, if you can imagine it, there’s a way to communicate it in a timesheet.

40
Timing
With the basic notation out of the way, let’s
talk more about Timing. Since you have 24
frames in each second of animation, the
maximum number of frames you can show
in one second is 24–but anime very rarely
does this.

Most drawings are held for at least two

frames. Exactly how long they’re held for is
counted with the box the drawing is noted in
and the number of blank boxes after it.

If you hold each drawing for one frame, it’s

animated on ones. Hold them for two
frames and it’s animated on twos. And so
on.

Most of the time when you’re animating, it’s

a safe bet to draw on twos or threes. Twos
are used for motion you want to feel fairly
smoothed out, and threes are for animation
you don’t mind being a little more snappy. Ones are used in some special cases, like the Naruto run, where motion
is so fast that you need a new drawing every frame to capture it. Fours, fives, and greater are used less often. For
really big, slow movements and some particular effects.

Remember that your keyframes can make up any

amount of the total drawings in a cut, and the
timing is about the number of frames each drawing
is held, not what kind of drawing it is! As the image
to the right shows, you can mix keyframes,
inbetweens, and inbetween guides all on the same
timing. It’s also possible to vary the timing of your
cut within a single cel. You can start on ones,
change the timing to threes, and come back to
twos. Whatever benefits your cut!

Anime uses a lot of repetition. Walk cycles, blinks,

mouth flaps, hair blowing in the wind, all of this is
done on a loop. When you need something to
repeat, the convention is to write one full “cycle” of
it out, then write レピト(repeat) and a line for the
duration it loops. Unfortunately, a lot of standard
animations are special cases that don’t quite fit this rule. Again, more on those topics at the end of this chapter.

41
You also don’t have to use your
keyframes in order, even outside of
repeat notation. It’s really common for
an enshutsu to re-order keyframes as
they make corrections, and you can
do the same! Say you’re animating
someone who raises their hand up,
then swings it back in and around in
another direction. You can use the
same keyframes to accomplish this!
The effect can look a little cheap, but
there are plenty of times when you
can do this to get a particular effect.

Timing makes up a huge part of the appeal of your animation. Good timing can transform a decent layout into
something amazing, and bad timing can ruin an awesome set of drawings. I admit It can feel pretty intimidating at
first–even with the ability to check timing in animation software. Unfortunately, practice is key–more time
experimenting means better decisions and less mistakes (yes, like always, I’m sorry!).

Now, I do have a few recommendations for other ways of practicing timing. One way to do this is to reverse-
engineer the timing from anime clips. Do reference drawings of the cut and see if you can match the timing in
animation software and a timesheet. There are also a few “art of” and “Groundwork” anime books which include
excerpts of timesheets you can use to double-check your work. One of the first ones I found I like is the
groundwork for Daibuster and some versions of the Gurren Lagann groundwork books do, too. I’m sure there are
many more I’m unaware of. Beyond that, it’s all back to practice, practice, and more practice.

42
Sound Column

Can you guess what the sound column deals with? Yep. Sound!
Fortunately you won’t have to write down every single sound effect that
happens in a cut you’re animating. For the most part, sound is reserved
for two things. セリフ (serifu) and special Sound Effects (S.E).

セリフ (serifu)
Serifu includes normal spoken dialogue, which requires lip flap animation,
as well as offscreen and internal monologues, neither of which are
animated. I’ve had some layout assignments where the dialogue was
actually pre-written by the director, no work on my part required.

Sometimes, you’ll need to add the information yourself. Assuming you

have an animatic with sound to work from, Adding dialogue is pretty
simple. Use the timestamps from the animatic as a guide. Put a line
where the character first speaks and write their name (in
Japanese, usually) then write out what they say in long-form, with
another line at the last frame of their spoken dialogue. Scribble
out the space after that. If a second character speaks, write their
name at the start of their dialogue section. If you don’t have
sound, there are usually approximate timing markers that you can
work from. If the dialogue is spoken aloud, you’ll need to add 口
パク (Kuchipaku) or lipsynch notation to the cut. As you can see
from the example on the right, these are a little weird. Don’t worry
about them just yet, we’ll discuss them more in standard
animations.

Sound Effects (S.E.)

The second use for the Sound column is Sound Effects (S.E.). This is filled in with オノマトペ (onomatopoeia),
which covers any sound effects that are written out in the timesheet. Most sound effects aren’t important enough to
be noted this way. You’ll usually see these sound effects when they directly bear on the timing of your animation.
examples might include precisely timing a gunshot to a screen flash, water dripping into a pan, or an off-screen
sound effect that cues a big effects explosion. These get the exact same treatment as lip-synching, except they’re
indicated with “SE” rather than a character’s name at the top of the sound.

As annoying as it might be, both sound effects and serifu are written in Japanese. On the plus side, you’ll have the
dialogue written out in the storyboards, so you won’t have to listen and add it. Most of the time you can just copy-
paste it in. Dialogue is written in kanji and hiragana. Sound effects almost exclusively use katakana, just like you’d
see in manga.

43
Camera Column
The camera column is going to get more of an explanation elsewhere. For now,
just know that it’s set up in exactly the same way as the genga column. You’ll mark
the start and end of camera effects based on the frames they start and end on.
The only major difference is that it’s not cut up into little boxes for different cels.
This is because camera effects can be indicated with different notations and so
you have extra space to write out specific requests like the speed of a pan or the
kind of camera shake you want.

Memo Section
The Memo section is pretty simple. If you need
to explain something to others working on the
cut after you, write it here. Generally, standard
animation won’t need extra memos. If it’s
something more unusual, like a camera effect,
a blur, or another complex effect, add it here.
IWhen you’re starting out, it’s better to note
something than to omit it until you know for sure
the studio understands it.

Important Note: write legibly. It’s very hard to guess from context what special instructions you might
have left for other artists to work from, so take a few seconds extra to make sure other people can
understand what you’re trying to tell them.

File Submission
File submission was the part of the job I found the most stressful when I started out. It’s the point at which
everything for a cut is absolutely final, with no take backs. After you’ve sent a cut, you might not hear back on it for
days, weeks, or even months. So, I really do recommend double and triple-checking your work before you send
stuff off.

As a rule, PAs prefer you to submit your cuts on a per-cut basis. Anime studios are constantly trying to stay ahead
of rolling deadlines. Getting your cuts early means they can move them onto corrections and cleanup faster, and

44
that makes them very happy. Also, the layouts you submit are going to be added to the animatic as soon as
they’re received. The animatic is a major factor in helping to visualize the finished episode, so studios want it up-
to-date as much as possible.

That said, I’ve always found it frustrating to finish a cut and then immediately stop to export everything and send it,
so I sometimes work on a few cuts at once and send them as a small batch. This is usually OK as long as the cuts
have the same deadline and you’re not pressed for time. You mainly want to avoid submitting all of your cuts at
once in the last few hours and don’t wait more than a few days to turn in something you have done. Just get it out
of the way.

I recommend you check with the particular studio you’re with to see if they have special submission requirements.
The PA you’re working with should update you on everything relevant–but it never hurts to be sure.

Most of the time they’ll want something like this:

● .psd or .csp file of everything

● Flat export of the layout with notes, all cells, and the background as a .jpg
● Exported cels as .jpgs with each cell labeled properly
● .mp4, .mov, or GIF of the layout with proper timing
● Exported Books as .jpg
● Exported Backgrounds as .jpg
● Completed X-sheet in .jpg form
● Exported camera move notation.

Exactly how you get all this is going to depend on the software you’re using. Every program has quirks, and you’ll
need to get used to the ones your setup has.

Let me give a personal example: when I export stuff from the portable Mac OS, folders can’t be shared on
platforms like Google Drive. I have to upload images and files individually, and the search function never
remembers where I’m uploading from or saving files to, so I have to go through the entire file path each time. I’ve
gotten better at it over time, mostly by memorizing where to tap and finding a few shortcuts, but it’s still a timesink.
I guarantee you’ll have some similarities. Plan ahead and try to optimize your export process. It’s part of every cut,
and making it efficient will save you dozens of hours.

Most animators I’ve spoken with do a few checks as they export their files:

First, make sure all the info you need is actually being printed in the right spot on the layout paper. If you
accidentally wrote everything on a cel layer, it might only be there for one frame! Take a few seconds to re-write
anything illegible, too.

You should export the start of your cut as a flat .jpg with the background and all cel layers on. Usually, you want to
lower the BG layer to ~50% opacity so it’s easier to pick out the cels from other elements. The label you give this
file is usually something like SHOWNAME_CUTNUMBER_LO. Make sure you’re exporting the background paper!

45
You don’t want a preview image of your cut to show up with just the lines. This goes for every image you export for
anime.

Next, export the whole thing as a .mp4 or .mov. Some studios accept .gifs, but those are harder to add to an
animatic, so don’t export as a gif unless you’re asked to. Keep every layer on for the movie export, and make sure
you’re exporting only the portion inside the drawing frame (the pegholes and outer safety line don’t need to be
exported).

Next, you can export your individual cels. Most programs have a function that allows these cels to be exported
automatically (in Clip it’s under “export” as “export individual drawings”). When you’re doing layout, you need the
layout template and peg holes to appear on all the drawings for each cell. You also need to have the cel number
and spacing charts. Convention for Cels is that their files are named as CEL_00X. So the first keyframe in an A
cell is going to be A_001.

I recommend doing one final check of all the drawings just before you upload them. An image viewer that lets you
tab through is best, just check to see if anything obvious is missing, or if you’ve accidentally mislabeled or omitted
a cel. It happens A LOT and double-checking is going to save you a ton of headaches.

Backgrounds and Books are really simple to export. Just isolate them (still with the layout template!) and export flat
.jpgs. Backgrounds can just be labeled BG, or SHOWNAME_CUTNUMBER_LO_BG if you want to be really safe.
Books need to be exported into different files with BOOK_X as the names.

The X_sheet can be exported as a flat image, too–usually named something like CUTNUMBER_XSHEET_00X or
CUTNUMBER_TIMESHEET_00X. If your cut is under six seconds and you have just one timesheet, it’s fine to call
it “TIMESHEET.” I upload a .csp of my timesheet with layers, too in case someone else wants to modify it by
changing a few numbers without having to re-write the whole thing.

Finally, you need to export camera movement notation. Luckily, this is much simpler than actually doing most
camera notation. You just need to export the start/end points of camera movement drawn as two boxes the size of
the camera frame and label the kind of move it is. For example, Slide, shake, zoom in, and so on. Again, you can
find more about this in the camera section.

Once you’ve got all that done, you’re ready to send it off. Most studios seem to prefer you send everything in one
folder. As long as you’ve got consistent naming it’s easy to check that everything is there and it saves the PA
some time having to bundle everything into one file themselves before checking and printing your work.

Take a breather, hug a cat, and talk to a friend

Once you send off your cuts, breathe a sigh of relief! You did it! I know this process seems really long and a bit
brutal. Honestly, it is. The first cut I took in anime was working on some simple cleanup for Boruto. I figured it
would be pretty difficult, but I think just one cut took me almost ten hours of solid, consistent work–including some
time sitting at my desk in my second job frantically working just before the deadline. I was completely, totally
exhausted when I finished it, and I was terrified I did it wrong. We’ve all been there! Working freelance can be

46
really unforgiving, but try to keep a positive attitude and remember that messing up or struggling is part of the
process. When you’re feeling overwhelmed, get through what you have to then try to take a step back and have a
short break. Go for a walk, hug a cat, and chat with friends–even if only for an hour. Once I submitted my first cut, I
had the PA make sure there was nothing massively wrong with it, then I went out to dinner with friends. It was
exactly what I needed, and it made me excited to work on more the next day. Be kind to yourself, and find ways to
keep your energy up!

If you can, I recommend trying to find others that work in animation you share your passion and can help you out.
Building a sense of community with other freelancers is one of the best ways to give yourself a sense of
perspective and balance in your work.. Animation is all about teamwork, and working on it in a vacuum can be
really difficult. Find people you trust to share the load with you. Who knows, work together long enough and you
might even find yourselves working as a studio!

Layout Checks

After you send your cuts off to your PA, they’ll prepare them for a round of checks by various staff at the studio
you’re working with. This happens to each cut several times, and each round of checks has different people focus
on different things. For this first layout stage, there are two regular kinds pretty much any cut gets:

● Enshutsu/Kantoku Check (演出/監督チェック)

● LO Sakkan/Sou Sakkan Check (作監/総作監チェック)

Action focused productions will sometimes include:

● Mecha Check
● Effects Check

When you’re doing cleanup work you will be using these instructions as a guide. Unfortunately, they’ll be in hand-
written Japanese most of the time. For people who can’t read handwritten Japanese, an interpreter or 翻訳者
(honyakusha) is really helpful. Sometimes a PA will do this for you by typing out the notes so you can auto-
translate them,

47
Enshutsu/Kantoku Check (演
出/監督チェック)
The enshutsu (演出) Is the episode
director. They handle continuity and
story for an episode, while the kantoku (
監督) is the series director. They handle
continuity and story for everything in the
series. Both do pretty much all of their
corrections using a light pink paper
which is very distinctive, though some
studios use a different color. Ask a PA if
you’re not sure what color the
corrections you’re looking for are.

Most Enshutsu want to make sure

characters are acting true to their personality, that the style of animation feels solid, and that there are no errors in
consistency that could confuse an audience. Most of the time these corrections aren’t nicely drawn since a single
enshutsu needs to get through dozens of corrections a day. That said, enshutsus can have a wide variety of
backgrounds. Some are very experienced draftsmen in their own right, and they might take the time to draw
cleaner, more solid drawings to help improve poses or fix errors in the background.

An enshutsu will also check your timesheet. Sometimes they'll change just a few small things. Other times they
might redo the timing from scratch. If the enshutsu adds new keyframes or inbetween guides in their drawing
corrections, those will be added into the timesheet.. Extra notes and corrections are appended to the memo
section. Sometimes, if there are enough change,s you will just get a completely new timesheet.

The Kantoku won’t check every cut, but they also use pink correction paper most of the time. In the majority of
situations, their instructions will be similar to an enshutsu’s, though their checks tend to carry a little more weight.

LO Sakkan/Sou Sakkan Check (作監/総作監チェック)

Once an Enshutsu finishes their checks, the cut moves to Sakkan (作監) or animation director. They usually draw
on yellow paper. Sakkans are experts in draftsmanship and animation. They ensure that a layout maintains quality
and stays on-model for a cut. Most will expand on some of the changes requested by the enshutsu and kantoku.
Sakkan fixes are usually drawing-heavy. Their work is a major reason most anime looks fairly consistent from
scene to scene. If the sakkan has enough time, they might correct mistakes for the majority of the drawings in a
cut, but it’s not uncommon for them to redraw only a single frame–or small set of frames–and write 他合わせて (Ta
awasete) which roughly translates to “match the rest.” This means that the corrections they’ve shown must be
used as a guide for every frame in the animation. You’re going to need to get very used to this phrase. It usually
means you have a lot of hard work ahead of you!

48
 Sakkan Sousakk
an

After the sakkan comes the final check, the

sousakkan (総作監) or senior animation director. Most of the time they draw on green or darker yellow paper.
They’re in charge of all the drawing and animation corrections for an episode. Sometimes they don’t change
anything. Other times they fix just a few small things like eyes or jawline, and in some cases, they completely
redraw everything to match their vision of the show. Whatever they end up doing, sousakkan gets the final say,
since their check is last.

After passing through these checks the cels are sent on for cleanup, while the background is sent to paint (unless
that has corrections, too.). In most cases, you will be sent corrections on your drawings for the cleanup phase, but
it has also become fairly common for studios to send out cuts done by one artist in layout to a different artist for
cleanup.

Cleanup and Nigen（第二原画）

Cleanup is where you come back in. You will be taking all the corrections made to your original layout and
modifying it to account for your fixes. You might remember from the start of this chapter that if you’re not cleaning
up your own work it’s called Nigen. Either way the process is very similar, and I’ll be calling it all cleanup for
simplicity’s sake.

. When you’re doing cleanup your focus needs to shift a little bit. You’ll be making nicer drawings tha account for
the changes from layout checks, but you can’t lose sight of what made the initial layout work. I’ve found that it’s
really easy to make a drawing stiff and boring if you get too nervous about making every line perfect. Just
remember that these still aren’t the final lines that go up on the screen. Appeal, form, and volume are still more
important than a perfectly even line.

49
Assembling the Files
Nigen cut packages are pretty much the same as layout cut packages, except that you’ll have corrections to go
along with your drawings:
● E-conte 絵コンテ: The Storyboards for the section or episode you are working on.
● Settei 設定: The design sheets for the production or section.
● Original Layout Drawings
● Scans or Digital Enshutsu Corrections
● Scans or Digital Sakkan Corrections
● Scans or Digital Sou Sakkan Corrections
● Filled X-Sheet
● Adjusted X-Sheet

Your corrections are going to be labeled as an extension of the scheme used in your layout submission. For
example, if you have corrections for A_001 you’d have A_001S (A1 Sakkan) A_001S or SSK (Sousakkan), and
A_001EN(Enshutsu). Other times, they’ll just have the same names as the cel they match. In that case, you can
match them by color. I’ve never found sorting these out too difficult since it’s pretty obvious what the old layout
drawings were compared to the corrections. In the worst-case scenario, you can always ask your PA for
clarification.

Constructing cut files from scans

I’d say about 90% of the time the corrections you get will be scanned from paper corrections since the vast
majority of Japanese senior staff have stuck to drawing on paper. Even when you do get digital corrections, they’ll
usually be in the form of .jpg exports, not an updated .csp or .psd for you to work from. In either case, you need to
import both the drawings and corrections into a file and properly align everything. This is done with the peg holes
on a cut. Bring all of your drawings into a single file with a layout template from the studio you’re working with (or
your original layout file). Go through and align each cel to the layout template’s peg holes. When they’re not
aligned, they’ll look like this:

You’ll be able to see the different peg holes ghosting between each other. I usually just zoom in pretty close on
the peg holes and use arrow keys with the transform/slide tool to tap the holes into alignment. This is one of those
times when it pays to be really really careful. You should never, ever assume that drawings are aligned without
looking at the peg holes. Taking just a few minutes to double-check this means you won’t accidentally be drawing
a character’s face off the side of their head, or awkwardly overlapping poses.

50
When you’re importing corrections, you should stack them according to seniority on top of the original drawings.
Remember, the layout correction stages go like this:

You should stack your drawings in the opposite direction. Sousakkan first,
Sakkan second, Enshutsu third, and layout at the bottom. The idea here
is that you should build up your corrections in the same order. For
example The Sou Sakkan might have corrected the mouth of the little
character in the example above, changing the enshutsu’s work. That
means you’ve gotta keep the sakkan’s changes for the mouth and
disregard that part of the enshutsu’s corrections. Same thing goes for the
arm. The sousakkan re-drew it, so you ignore the sakkan’s corrections in
those areas. If the Sakkan/SousSakkan didn’t redraw the entire character,
you still need to draw in the rest of the character following the layout, but with a level of clarity matching the
cleanup work matching the corrections.

51
Sometimes there are multiple sets of corrections for a cut. Usually, this is because the same cut has been sent for
revisions multiple times. If there are multiple versions of corrections, you should always be working from the most
recent ones–ignoring seniority this time. That is, if you’ve got a new set of pose corrections from an enshutsu that
were made after a character redraw by the sousakkan, you need to go with the enshutsu corrections. Look for 修
正 (Shusei) or “Fix” notation. The way the most recent fixes are shown usually falls into one of these categories:

Appending “Fix”

修正 “Fix”

修の修 “Fix of a fix”

52
 修の修の修 “Fix of a fix of a fix”

Other times the most recent fix might be marked by the date. Use the one that’s most
recent.
修 (4/13) Fix (4/13)

修 (4/27) Fix (4/27)

Finally, fixes scan be noted with “S” (short for Shusei), use the one with the most “s” on
the end.
A1_s Cell A1_Fix

A1_ss Cell A1_Fix Fix

Cell A1_Fix Fix Fix

A1_sss

Cell A1_Fix4
A1_s4
(if too many
s)

These situations don’t crop up a ton, so if you find yourself unsure what to do, feel free to ask a PA–chances are
they can set you straight.

General Cleanup Tips

Let’s talk a little about how to actually make nice nigen drawings. You already know the routine. Practice. Don’t
sweat some small mistakes, blah blah blah. It’s still true, but I know you’re tired of hearing it. Instead, I’ll get to
some actually useful tips.

First, when you’re drawing, I highly recommend “flipping” your work. Flipping is kind of an ambiguous term, and as
far as I can tell it means at least three different things, depending on who you’re asking. The first one–which is the
only one I knew before interviewing people about this book–means literally flipping your drawings back and forth
with the “mirror canvas” function most drawing software has. This helps you to pick out mistakes in symmetry and
proportion. The second is flipping back and forth between keyframes to see if volumes are staying consistent. The
third is turning on and off everything but your cleanup drawing to judge how well your new drawing stands on its
own. Which one should you use? All three! Anything you can do to improve your drawings is worth it.

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Cleanup File Submission
Submitting cleaned-up files is really similar to layout. You can follow the exact same naming conventions and
export procedures. Your exports should include:

● .psd or .csp file of everything

● Exported cels separated into Letter folders as .png
● X-sheet
● Updated .mov or .mp4 video
The main difference is that cleaned up drawings should only be exported with peg holes, no layout template.

All the same rules from layout submission apply here. Double-check your file names, make sure you’re not missing
frames, and so on. Do one last set of checks for any notes you might have missed…then call it good and submit.
Again, getting stuff submitted as soon as it’s done is best practice. Don’t leave your PA waiting.

54
There you have it! Once you’re done with cleanup and you’ve sent off your work, you have officially cleared the
last stage counted as “genga” in the anime pipeline. Your cleanup drawings are still going to get a set of checks to
make sure they’re up to snuff, but short of retake corrections, your job on those cuts is finished. Pat yourself on the
back and take another well-deserved break!

Standard Animations
This section deals with a couple of really common animations that have special instructions in anime. I highly
recommend you read through all of these, because you’ll be doing a lot of these animations on almost every
assignment you take, and none of them work in quite the way you might expect.

In order, we’ll be tackling:

Serifu

Blink

Head Turn

Walk Cycle

Run Cycle

Serifu and kuchipaku (口パク

)
Serifu is the Japanese word for
dialogue. Animating to dialogue is
usually called animating kuchipaku (口
パク) “lip flaps.” Serifu notation in
Japanese productions is quite a bit
different from western lipsynch. First off,
mouth shapes aren’t usually mapped to
particular sounds. Instead, they’re
roughly timed to the peaks and troughs
of speaking rhythm generally. Second,
only three drawings are used. These
are the Akiguchi (アキ口) or open
mouth, the nakaguchi (中口) or middle
mouth, and the tojiguchi (トジ口) or
closed mouth. They’re ordered 1-3.

There are two common methods for

serifu animation. In both cases, standard notation for the spacing chart in the layout and the keyframes in the
timesheet is modified with セリフ to indicate the drawings are lip flaps.

55
The first way of creating lip flaps keeps everything on one layer. The first keyframe is the character’s full model
with a closed mouth. The third keyframe is the mouth fully open, with the rest of the body replaced by a red outline
with the notation 他A①合成 which means “hold cel A1.” Gousei (合成 ) is a really useful tool that allows you to
keep parts of a drawing the same between cels while changing only some parts. It basically tells the douga artists
not to bother re-drawing all the details between cels, since nothing in the red areas changes. Keep in mind that
these keyframes don’t have to be 1-3. They could be 7-9 or 26-28. It’s just a group of three frames that are all
clumped together.

On the timesheet, you write 1 2 3 セリフ when dialogue starts and a line to the end of the dialogue section. You’ve
probably noticed that the second keyframe isn’t circled or drawn. That’s because it’s considered an inbetween–
which makes sense, considering it’s also literally called the “middle mouth.” You won’t need to worry about it in
layout.

As the time chart indicates, you also don’t

have to keep the ordering as a strict 1-3.
If the character starts out standing still
with their mouth closed, you can start with
a 2 for an inbetween mouth.

The other method requires two cels. The

A cel is still the whole character with their
mouth closed. The B cel is labeled X-1-2.
The first circled frame is “BX” which
means that the B cell is turned off,
showing the closed mouth from the A
frame. B1 is now the middle mouth, and
B2 is the open mouth, which you also
need to draw. When you do, circle it with
a red line.

I’ve heard different people explain why

this is done. Some have said it’s so it can
be easily copy-pasted in. Other people
have told me it’s to make the mouth easy to find even if it’s tiny on the page. Playing it safe, let’s say it is because
it makes the drawing easy to copy-paste. Don’t overlap the red line with other important facial features like the
nose or chin, since that’ll result in those parts getting chopped off in the shiage stage.

Just like with the first method, these frames don’t have to start from 1, and you can use whatever division of cels
makes sense. A-B, B-C, E-Q, whatever fits.

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Since this method involves copy-pasting a mouth, you can’t actually use it when the character’s mouth opens to
show the background in a side-view, since the pasted open mouth would actually just show the closed mouth
underneath.

Blinking
Blinking is pretty similar to serifu notation. A standard blink covers three frames with an open, middle, and closed
frame. The open and closed frames are your keys, and the middle frame is an inbetween. That means you can do
the same thing for a standard blink as for a standard lip flap–draw the open and closed frames, but leave the
middle for douga. You do need to include a spacing chart and proper timing for blinks. In some cases, you might
want to add more inbetweens and change up the spacing a lot.

If the eyes aren’t being covered by hair, a hat, or anything else obscuring the
blink can all be done on one layer with gousei notation for the second frame
assuming the character is also standing still, you can use gosei notation exactly
like you would for the gousei method in lip flaps.

If

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If the eyes are partly covered and especially if what they’re covered by is also moving, it’s usually best to separate
them onto a different cel so the cleanup and douga stages are less difficult.

The average blink is done on 2s or 3s, but the spacing and timing can be biased to adjust the feeling of the blink
pretty easily. Different animators I’ve interviewed have their own preferences on whether easing into or out of the
blink is better and, as always, it’s also going to depend on the project you’re working on and the acting you want to
get across.

Head turns
In the layout stage, head turns tend to be surprisingly simple. The minimum expectation for a layout artist is
drawing the start and endpoint of the turn. Its useful to go “off tap” (Tapiwari) when doing head turns. You can do
this to match up different parts of the head exactly and ensure you’re not going completely off model. This is really

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useful with the eyes, since they change drastically between front and side views but you need to keep the size and
proportion consistent.
In some cases, it’s helpful to use
either a third key or an inbetween
guide at the halfway point.

A lot more goes into turning your

head than just swiveling it on a flat
plane. Most experienced animators
I’ve spoken with recommend that you
draw the head tilted down slightly with
the eyes closed if you include the
middle drawing. It makes for a much
more natural head turn.

The eyes also tend to “lead” a head

turn, which means they look in the
direction the head will turn before the
motion starts.

I’ll do a more detailed breakdown of

what actually goes into a finished head turn in the douga section. I recommend you look at that section to
understand how your layout work is translated into a finished set of drawings. It will be super helpful in your
decision-making process for head turns.

Walk Cycle
This description is adapted from a great tutorial done
by Beast, a senior animator at Tonari. The drawings
and handwritten notes are all his. Keep in mind that this
explanation is about the mechanics of a walk. In a
standard layout you would only draw A1 and A3–don’t
give yourself extra work on a layout assignment!

What follows is a pretty high-level overview of walk

cycles. If you want to get in-depth on the particulars of
drawing out these poses and keeping everything on
model or adding secondary motion, look at the douga
section, since layout artists don’t actually animate
much of this cycle.

How someone walks says an enormous amount about them. I highly recommend you study how a character
you’re animating walks, and that you always stay on the lookout for interesting walk cycles in animation and the

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world around you. For a primer, you should be able to find the Inoue walk cycles and notes as well as examples
from many shows you can break down frame-by
frame.

A walk cycle usually has four important poses, two

contact positions, and two passing positions. Contact
positions have the legs extended out, the body slightly
lowered. The passing positions have the legs passing each
other, with one straight and the other bent. They’re the point
where the character is highest.

The drawings translate to something like this when properly

overlapped:

You might notice how the head bobs up and down

between the four frames. That’s super important! If you
have a character slide along without changing height,
their legs will have to stretch out in the contact poses,
and the entire animation will look like a robot walking on
tentacles. You really don’t want that.

There are two basic ways to complete a walk cycle in

layout. One way is to simply space out the drawings
like above. In that case, you have to fill out the
timesheet with every frame of the walk (even though
you’re only drawing two) , since each one is moving
further across the screen. You can copy-paste the
drawings from a previous section of the cycle to the next, but their number still goes up. So you would have A1,
A2, A3, A4, but then to repeat them you would have to copy-paste A1 as A5, A2 as A6, A3 as A7, and A4 as A8.

Alternatively, you can use a slide and repeat notation. The idea here is you mark out how far each step is on a line
at the character’s feet and add slide notation in the camera section for the cell the walk is on, then you do just the
key drawings A1-A4 one-by-one. They can all be overlapping. write “repeat” after the first frame of the second
cycle and leave it to the composition team to create the actual movement across the screen. That looks something
like this:

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Standard walks are kept to 3s. Fast walks can go to 2s. Depending on the character you’re animating, you might
go even faster or slower than this, but as a standard animation for someone calmly walking, 3s works fine.

Believe it or not, you don’t even have to draw all four of the frames from the above example in most layouts. A
layout artist is only expected to include the two “contact” positions in a walk cycle–when the left and right leg
extend forward on two different frames. This keeps your work very light and usually communicates what you want
just fine. All you need to do is indicate where the inbetweens are spaced and what the timing is for the walk.

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Since you’re only doing two drawings in this method, it’s really important to keep volumes consistent, particularly in
the legs. Feel free to use tap wari for the drawings, or just lasso/copy and paste the parts you need between the
two. Cleanup and douga will love you for the extra care.

If you’re more experienced, you can add the passing position as a key to your layout. This gives you extra control
over how the walk is filled in by douga, which can communicate more character than letting them inbetween
everything without your input. If you’re going to do this you need to keep things even more consistent.

Finally,
we’ve got the arms. They work very similarly to the legs, but in reverse.

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Just be sure they’re of consistent length and make sure the arm and leg on one side of the body are always
working in opposite directions.

Running
Running is very similar to walking if we’re looking at it from the point of view of a layout artist. You’ll create two
contact poses with an optional third passing drawing. Mechanically, it’s actually pretty different. I’m going to
explain the “why” for running here, but if you want to see how to actually animate a standard 4 frame cycle (and
keep everything on-model), check out the douga section. For now, I want to talk about getting these passing
poses right and creating the spacing chart for a run. You’ll have two keys, A1 and A4. They look like this:

Each is one leg extended, the other retracted, with the arms pistoning in the opposite directions. That’s all you
need for a layout! Of course, it helps to know why this is–and what that weird spacing chart means.

The red line shows the tilt of the body. It can also act as a guide for the up-and-down motion of the body as a
character runs, which you can see more of in the douga section. Notice it’s pretty severely tipped forward. Running
is an unstable, dynamic action. Levering the torso forward means the runner is catching themselves in a series of
quick falls. Sometimes you want to really push out the torso and bring the legs low like an extreme sprinter. Other

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times a character might be doing a light jog and a less severe tilt is appropriate. As always, the key is matching the
tone of the e-conte and keeping things clear.

Now, Let’s take a closer look at that weird timing chart:

In a run the character is going to start at a middle point in the contact frames. In the first inbetween, the’ll be
“down” and in the the second they'll be “up”. It looks something like this if you have all four frames:

Again, don’t worry about how to draw those middle

two poses for now, just remember that a douga
artist is going to have to work with a chart like this.
Keep your two passing frames even and let them
handle the up-and-down motion.

If you’ve got a particularly special run cycle, a lot of

this basic information might be thrown out. For
example, Naruto run cycles operate on 1s and
complete a cycle in just three frames (two contacts
and a passing “up” frame). The example i’m giving
here is just a basic guide, and you should always
consider what works for the show you’re on as first
priority.

Just like with walking, running can say a lot about a character. In fact, we often start to blend walking and running
to create interesting kinds of motion. Someone polite who’s late for the train isn’t going to break into a run, but they
might start speed walking–tilting the body forward and using wider steps–or someone might pace, with no
noticeable bobbing of the head when they’re thinking. Once you have the basics, you can get creative with things.

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Quadruped Walk and Run Cycle References:

As a key animator you may be asked to do walk cycles for more than just humans. Just as we described above,
you will use less frames to complete a walk cycle for animals than is taught in the western animation industry. 4
key frames is all you need. Below are some examples of different types of standard walk and run cycles for
different types of creatures.

Keyframes for a Cat Walk Cycle

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Tip: A3 is a leg swap of A1. So once you get your first two frames, you can copy them and just re-draw the legs for
a quicker walk cycle.

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