Yeah! short ver, just fancy way of saying a wand. They’re essentially tools, like the magic equivalent of a pencil or brush. You can still use magic with just your hands as you could with art, but foci just help to focus it. Some wear them as pendants/brooches, or add them to wands or other objects.

Like a pencil, someone who doesn’t know magic could grab a foci and use magic, but they won’t necessarily be good at it or know how to use it. Someone buying a foci when they can’t use magic is like buying a tablet when you can’t draw, maybe it’ll help but you still have to learn.

Kirra draws her magic, the foci helps with things like drawing anywhere. Rosemary’s just means she can use her wand for magic rather than her body (like bending ATLA style).

Easier to describe with some of the characters I still have to post ^^’

There’s Nadia, she bought a foci thinking it would instantly give her cool magic, but because she doesn’t know how it works all it does is give her usual magic a starry aesthetic.

Or Indi! They don’t use a foci, so their magic is a bit more erratic than normal. Daisuke uses a regular pen to draw spells instead of a wand like Kirra, all his spells end up being made of ink. Kirra could do magic to make food, but Daisuke doing the same would make just ink.

Some witches add foci they can’t use for decoration or as a memento from a loved one. Kirra and Rosemary have a foci from one another in their wands (the heart stones), as do Resa and Goixe in their stars.

Hazel’s magic is completely different…which is what it’s about. She can make things into foci and generally use the power of it without practice.

thank you :D maybe?? I’ve been wanting to but I’m also working at the moment :\ might open commissions for things like the flat colour sketchy stuff I’ve been doing if people are interested in that. Definitely can’t do the animated cards or full art unfortunately :0

Thank you!! Uhh honestly a lot of trial and error, it’s something you have to get a feel for.

But! To get a feel for it I can recommend observing frame-by-frame animations you like, you can see how others tackle it. Or if you learn better by doing, take those frames and trace over them. That’s how I picked it up. Note how long frames are held, how many in-betweens, is there any secondary action, any breakdowns, overshoots or settles?

This one sounds dumb but feel how you move or watch how other things move. It’s kind of being mindful of how you move in space. For example picking up an object, are you fast, slow? Do you hesitate, push it forward a little? If that’s too tricky just record yourself! I frame-by-frame stock videos when I get stuck.

I also do rough timing, so taking the keyframes and spacing them out with blank frames. This means you aren’t randomly adding frames. If you do inbetween and it looks off, rather than delete everything try shuffling the frame exposure. Sometimes just holding a frame for a little longer or shortening is all it needs. To avoid doing whole drawings you can also just draw a stick or ball as a placeholder while you figure it out.

Uhhhhh realise I kinda used a bunch of animation jargon, so here’s some more things OTL

Breakdown: like a key between keyframes, it adds an extra action

Overshoot: an action going further than the keyframe

Secondary action: things moving at different speeds, like hair moving after a person stops

Settle: an action stopping, like after an overshoot or secondary action

Exposure: how long a frame is held. Like at 24fps there are 24 frames when holding for 1, hold for 2 and it’s 12 frames, hold for 3 it’s 8 frames.

OOOH that’s such a cute idea!! ; O ; I’d love to draw something like that sometime, and thanks!!

(bit slow replying OTL whoops)

ffffkjf thank you!! squirrels are cute :D never seen one in person though