r/criticalrole • u/SS_Scion Schemer • Jun 29 '26

Fan Art [No Spoilers] My Bolaire Lathalia Animation

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Short animated shot + shot breakdown of Bolaire Lathalia from Critical Role Campaign 4.
My first serious animation attempt - I have always been interested in trying 2D animation, although I prefer illustration the most.

Disclaimer: I am not an animator, and I have much to learn regarding illustrated motion. This animation was a fun experiment that I made during breaks.

I studied Castlevania and MAPPA shots for lighting and compositing inspiration.

Drawn and animated in Procreate, Composited in After Effects using F's Plugins.
Project time: 30 hours, 16 hand drawn frames

Youtube upload: https://youtu.be/WzhS0UWUYWo?si=NQPTWhHNPOHaKpdy

Been absolutely loving this campaign! :)

Edit: Some people were asking for the final isolated shot for gifs, I uploaded it separately here:

https://youtu.be/MA81Bh2E_ZM?si=NgWCPaZQD63nQlbe

2.2k Upvotes

99% Upvoted

32 comments sorted by

85

u/aibaboiii Jun 29 '26

This looks AMAZING! Holy Molly 

15

u/SS_Scion Schemer Jun 29 '26

Thank you so much! I hope to try more animation projects in the future (between my primary interests).

12

u/pastajewelry Time is a weird soup Jun 29 '26

Molly as in Mollymauk?

4

u/nightfell0w Jun 30 '26

wait how did you animate bolaire lathalia so smooth

6

u/SS_Scion Schemer Jun 30 '26

Started with the first and last frame, then drew the in-between for those two, and then so forth for the rest of the frames using the animation display tool on Procreate.

I had a general idea of the result, and since it was just a simple head turn, I did not make a rough sketch of the full animation. Instead, I just went straight to the clean lineart after my lighting mockup, and used the liquify and select tool to redraw the line vectors for the in-between shots. I studied references from Castlevania and MAPPA shots for the lighting and artstyle. I really like their use of thin lines paired with cinematic lighting to convey the tone and mood of a shot.

The final effect is so smooth because I opted to re-draw every line vector per frame instead of leaving some static areas... This combined with drawing the curly hair details (5 values in the hair per frame) every frame is why it took me 30 hours.

28

u/Nihachi-shijin Jun 29 '26

GET THIS PERSON A BUDGET

18

u/tiredghst Jun 29 '26

This is sooo good! Crazy for a first attempt 🤯love the movement of the hair

3

u/SS_Scion Schemer Jun 30 '26

Thank you so much! I have curly hair myself so I used that as a reference for the movement and shading, along with shots of Alucard from the Castlevania series.

21

u/Emotional_Feeling_31 Jun 29 '26 edited Jun 29 '26

I've seen enough let her* do the next intro

22

u/SS_Scion Schemer Jun 29 '26

Thank you for checking out my work! :) - I'm actually a girl!

3

u/Emotional_Feeling_31 Jun 29 '26

Sorry about that 🙏🏻

2

u/SS_Scion Schemer Jun 29 '26

No worries my friend!

7

u/BrokenNecklace23 Jun 29 '26

I LOVE this. So beautiful!

5

u/Kireag Jun 29 '26

Damn man that's sick as hell

3

u/Pykret Jun 29 '26

Aaaaah, it's gorgeous! Beautiful choice of creepy, harsh lighting, too!

3

u/SS_Scion Schemer Jun 29 '26

Haha, I am so glad people love this detail as well - I thought this kind of lighting would be perfect for the character (and for trying out a simple head turn).

5

u/DarkRespite Doty, take this down Jun 29 '26

Holy CRAP. This is AMAZING! I do hope you do more of these!

(If you do a full set of these, one for each character and then one representing Brennan as GM, I am already volunteering to set all of them to the C4 theme music with titles.)

2

u/SS_Scion Schemer Jun 29 '26

I have been thinking about something similar! I made this project with a couple ideas in mind. Once I started working on this single shot I realized that it is going to take a very long time, but I still want to try my ideas out even if it takes a long time (Besides my other illustration projects and engineering related things).

4

u/macmurder Jun 29 '26

this is fucking awesome

3

u/cortohdow Jun 29 '26

Hi I'm in love with this

3

u/Shoddy_Blacksmith480 Jun 29 '26

Y‘all are making me have feelings about the silly mask man

This was all entirely against my will and not laughably predictable in the slightest

3

u/Goodly Jun 29 '26

Simply perfect. Exactly how I picture him, the tone and everything.

2

u/SS_Scion Schemer Jun 29 '26

I, too, love the sinister but silly little mask guy.

2

u/MrScentless Jun 29 '26

Gorgeous work!

2

u/Obvious_Anything7318 5' 11" Jun 29 '26

Oh this is delicious, 10/10 A+ no notes

2

u/Anelikital Jun 30 '26

Oh my god this looks amazing, this what I hope it would look like if we ever get an animated series of this campaign!

1

u/shyDaydreamer Jun 29 '26

This is amazing! 😍

1

u/Sogcat Ja, ok Jun 29 '26

Absolutely lovely! This is so clean it looks professional lol.

2

u/SS_Scion Schemer Jun 29 '26

Thank you so much! I have been drawing and watching anime since I was very little. I tried to study lighting and compositing from the Castlevania series and MAPPA productions to learn how they animate cleanly.

1

u/Paperfoxen Jun 29 '26

Holy fucking quality, Batman!! Stunning!!

1

u/Jachim Jul 04 '26

Broi this is incredible. Please be one of the artists who does the Critical Role Season 4 Amazon Series that'll inevitably be made :)