I've been trying to slowly get better at making fight animations. One thing im confused about and how to do without messing up is: If there's a complicated scene where the backgrounds move along with the characters, should I animate the characters first and then the backgrounds?
(follow up question, is rough animation necessary)
RamenJet
Look, I'm not an animator, but to be honest, whether you draw the characters or the background first might be irrelevant. If you draw the characters, you can then draw the background moving in relation to them. If you draw the background, you can then draw the characters moving in relation to that, you know?
Personally, since the characters are the main focus, then that's what you should consider animating first, and above all, a sketch or draft of what you're going to do.
That seems reasonable enough. My main problem is just being able to keep calm and not color it all in right away.
RamenJet
Ideally it would be
This is what I do anyways
RamenJet
Rough animation is definitely necessary. In terms of industry pipeline you would be best making storyboards with rough approximations of how you want the scene to go, then do your roughs so you can loosely sketch in your key frames to time everything out properly, after that you will add some rough inbetweens and breakdowns to smooth things out, and only once you are satisfied with your animation roughs will you start to clean things up. As for the bg I would say Vinity had it right and I would keep your storyboards in the background on like 50% opacity or something to reference and then you can draw your BG in relation to your character's movements.
