This animatic was made by me for the anime Bleach, specifically for the Thousand Year Blood War arc. It’s a piece I’m really proud of and one I’m happy to share.
Bleach has long been one of my favorite shows, and I wanted to show love to it by creating this animatic. I chose to use the song “Escapism” because I thought the song highlighted the characters’ emotions and dynamic. The artwork is based on a watercolor style to highlight the characters.
My goal of this animatic was to highlight the character arc of Uryu Ishida, where he abandons his friends in order to help the opposing side, only to reveal that he only switched sides to help stop the leader of the enemy, and he is welcomed back to his friends where he truly belongs. I did this by assigning the blue color to Uryu, the color orange to his friend Ichigo, and the color indigo to Yhwach, the leader of the enemy. This allowed the power dynamics to be shown even though there is no dialogue for the characters.
My process for making this animatic included several steps and several types of software. I first sketched out the designs on paper so that I could nail down exactly what images I wanted to include. Once I chose my designs, I created the illustrations in Adobe Photoshop. I started with creating the line art and then added the watercolor effects underneath. Once the illustrations were finished, I brought them into Premier Pro, alone with the actual audio track the illustrations would go with. Then I lined up the images with the music so that the image would change at the correct time. Once that was complete, the animatic was done.