While TAing a course, I was asked to make a GIF tutorial using Photoshop.
Last time I use photoshop for any moving image applications was probably 3 or more years ago, so I was pleasantly surprised that Photoshop has now included some video drawing features. The video layer is a single layer that can be draw on every frame, although it is not an animation-exposure equivalent, it is still infinitely better than having to make every frame a layer.
But anyways, after poking around for some time, I started to sketch an animated sequence. At the time I was following a wicked magical girl show so I decided to draw a transformation sequence. But the sailor moon style transformation feels too stale and traditional and I want to do something else. I ended up with a even more “traditional“ theme, instead of magical weapons, the transformed character uses cold weapon instead.
A magical girl sounds to fit right in with the cursed blade of 村正 (Muramasa), but directly referencing this feels a bit forced, so I decided to use the historical nick name of 村雨 (Murasame) instead.
I only realized after 中割り (Chu Wari) that she is using left hand as the dominant hand. In fact, after going through my old works, it looks like a lot of character I draw are left handed. I suspect it has to do with myself also use left hand for martial art weapon combat.
For Kenjutsu and Kendo, left hand is typically forbidden (luckily the Dojo I’m in has no enforcement on this matter and I get to through a lot people off with my left hand ). But given her identity of a Murasame user, being left handed makes a lot of sense.