How Emilie Muszczak created “Animated

Emilie”

French illustrator and animator Emilie Muszczak thrives on bright colors, quirky patterns,
and tea. Most of her work begins as a happy mess of doodles, words, and colors in her
notebook. See how she created an animated self-portrait using Adobe Photoshop CC and
Animate CC to represent the way her brain generates the random thoughts that become
future projects.

1 Paint the portrait

Emilie imports a scanned (outline) self-portrait into Photoshop. On a separate layer, she adds circles of yellow,
cyan, and orange to the canvas to keep her color palette within easy reach while she uses a Spatter Brush at
varying sizes to paint different parts of the portrait.
Emilie creates separate layers for the head, hair, face, and shirt, and adjusts her brush size as needed to paint each
part. Emilie creates a clipping mask over the hair layer, then paints with a white, narrow brush to trace wavy lines
throughout the hair. When she’s done painting, Emilie hides the color palette and sketch layers before saving the
image as a JPEG file.

2 Animate the bubbles

Emilie switches to Animate to create a series of animated bubbles floating up from her head. She creates an
HTML5 Canvas document and imports the JPEG of her self-portrait as its own layer on the timeline. Then, she
clicks on keyframe 49 in the timeline and inserts a blank keyframe (Insert > Timeline > Blank Keyframe) so the
overall animation lasts just under a minute.
Next, Emilie meticulously draws and animates four separate bubble sequences. She creates a new layer for Bubble
1, then uses a thin brush to draw a small arc that starts the formation of the bubble. She adds another blank
keyframe so this part of the animation lasts two frames.

She continues to draw different stages of the bubble forming, reaching its maximum size, breaking away, and then
popping. At each stage of the bubble’s lifespan, she sets the animation to last two frames until the animated
sequence is complete and the bubble pops. She repeats this process to create three more bubble sequences.
Emilie then exports the sequences so she can finish her work in Photoshop. She exports the Bubble 1 sequence
first. To do so, she hides all the layers in the timeline except Bubble 1. Then, she chooses File > Export > Export
Movie, selects PNG sequence, and saves the sequence to its own folder on her computer. She repeats this process
to create the PNG sequence for the remaining bubble animations.

3 Perfect the bubble animation

Back in Photoshop, Emilie finesses the appearance and timing of the bubbles. She imports each bubble sequence
she generated from Animate (by choosing File > Open, then selecting Image Sequence from the Options dialog
box), and positions it where she wants it in the portrait. Then in the timeline (Windows > Timeline), she moves the
sequences around so they start and stop at different times to mimic the random nature of bubbles.

Emilie spends most of her time tracing and filling each stage of the bubble’s lifespan. She starts with the first
bubble sequence, adds a layer, and fills the bubble using an orange brush. Then, she moves slightly ahead on the
timeline to the next stage of the bubble, adds a layer, and fills the next formation. She repeats this for each
formation of the bubble on all four sequences. When she’s done, each bubble stream may require a range of 30–
60 layers to complete the sequence, and each layer spans two seconds on the timeline.
 4 Add subtle motion to the portrait
Emilie adds subtle animation to the face, head, hair, hair lines, and shirt. Starting with the face, she adds a new layer
and traces the facial features. She repeats this process to create four more layers of the face. Since each new layer is
drawn with slight variations, the result creates a shimmering, hand-drawn effect when animated.
Emilie then duplicates the five layers of the face within the timeline enough times to fill the length of the animated
sequence. Each layer spans two seconds.

Emilie repeats the process for the head, hair, hair lines, and shirt — traces the outline, fills with color, duplicates
layers, spans the timeline — so that each part of the portrait has its own animation.

5 Export as an animated GIF

When she’s finished with her portrait, Emilie chooses File > Export > Save for web (legacy), selects GIF, and sets it
to loop forever.

See Emilie’s animated self-portrait in action.

About the artist:

Emilie Muszczak is inspired by just about every type of art form. She has studied and
practiced graphic, spatial, and fashion design. She’s done painting, modeling, sculpting,
and life drawing, and has a master’s degree in 3D animation. Growing up in France,
Emilie had no shortage of opportunities to be surrounded by art culture and
education. But, it also made for a competitive field when she was trying to make a
 living as an artist. Eventually, she landed a job half a world away, and now works for a
design animation studio in Toronto.
In Toronto, she’s in her element. It’s a city of cultures, colors, and tastes, where Emilie
discovers new things every day. Emilie starts every project with a cup of tea before
brainstorming. Whether at school, at work, on a walk, or almost asleep, Emilie has a
sketchbook handy to capture ideas.

Emilie does her best work in brightly colored, collaborative environments. When she
settles on an idea she likes, she scans her drawing so she can refine it on her
computer. She experiments with colors, textures, and patterns, and then spends a lot
of time finessing the drawing and animation.

Follow Emilie Muszczak

Website
Instagram
Vimeo

08/16/2017
Map data: Google
Music: “Burner” by Birocratic

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