Working title, Part 5

I’m now doing clean-up and backgrounds. And there's a problem..

The situation with clean-up process is now this:

Ready:  3

WIP:  4

Undone:  16 / 23

I seriously have to think about this clean-up process again. 

I told before that during the dance scenes the rabbit will be a black silhouette that is dancing in front of blueish background. Now, I can draw dark silhouettes easily and quite fast, it's not a problem. But the highlights make things complicated. You have to draw those very carefully and always keep in mind where the light and shadow comes from. It takes more time than drawing the black silhouette. And that is the most painful part of the clean-up. It's so painful and time-consuming that I don't even know is it possible to finish this whole animation in time.

I could easily get rid of the highlights and draw just the dark silhouettes, but it doesn't look good enough. Here's a screenshot of the clean-up process:

Those highlights make the character look much interesting and three-dimensional. Most of the movements wont even work well if there's no highlights. Aaaargh.

Alright.. I think I will first draw the character in every single scene black and then later add the highlights if I have time for that.

And now the backgrounds:

Ready:  5

WIP:  2

Undone:  11 / 18

Luckily backgrounds aren’t that hard to do. I can do 2 or 3 of them in one day. Here’s an example of one:

Did I mention that the backgrounds move? Just a tiny amount? Freaaaakyyy.

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Previous posts:

Part 1
Part 2
Part 3

Part 4

What are these anyway

I don’t know what these are supposed to be. At first these were “background exercises”, then “silly attempts to draw anything dynamic” and finally random doodles. What a transformation.

I realized something funny while drawing these. Apparently I can make a simple basic structure of the background but then suddenly after that I lose all my interest. That’s why all of these drawings look so empty and unfinished. They lack interesting details and texture. I’m not that much into drawing details or polishing the drawing unless it is absolutely necessary. I enjoy more making rough drawings because there's just "something" in them, like I have said before.

My personal favorite is the one where the wolf is running down a hill (come to think of it, it has been forever when I last time drew a wolf. Interesting..) And that picture where a red animal in falling down is absolutely horrendous but I learned a lot while drawing that. Like how to mess up a picture without knowing how to use perspective correctly! 

Why yes, I do like to draw rocks but I am too lazy to bother to use any reference of them. How lazy and unprofessional is that?

And now something else: This is a bit old news but if you still haven’t seen Waking Sleeping Beauty documentary, watch it. It’s a document about Disney Animation Studios during 1980’s – 90’s. It doesn’t really focus that much on animation process but more about what happened inside the studios during that time.

Blue and orange

Let's forget for a moment that I have some schoolwork to do and upload some drawings.

We have some variety here. Girls, tigers, birds.. Everything for everyone!

And some digital sketches while watching Kiki's Delivery Service (1989). No, I didn't draw any fan-art.

And now something completely different!

A drunk camel. Because everyone loves drunk camels.

I really have to stop reading Inception and Philosophy: Ideas to Die for. I have started to question my reality because of it.

Working title, Part 4.

Guess what? All the rough animation is done!

To celebrate this, let’s stare at this Simba plushie!

Simbaaaaaaa.

Well, back to work.

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Previous posts:

Part 1
Part 2
Part 3

Working title, Part 3.

And now so far:

- 15 shots of 21 are roughly animated
- it has been decided that 3 more shots has to be added

Whaaat. Could this mean that.. I can do this? In time?

Okay, part of the reason why this is going so well is because I made a bet with my friend. If I haven’t done all the rough animation by the end of this month, I have to watch a movie called Gladiator (2008). And I hate that movie. I hate it so much.

I also somehow managed to screw up the continuity in the animation. You know, some basic things like for example the legs are supposed to be in certain position and on the next shot they are completely differently. And I noticed this after animating both shots. So yes, you can imagine that there was a lot of swearing for a while.

The 3 shots that I have to add are not a problem. Just some flashy “strike a pose!” shots and each of them will last about one second.

Photos:

I noticed that there are 32 people reading my blog. That’s wonderful! And I also know that there are at least 8 invisible people who spy on this blog. That’s.. a bit creepy, but still great! Or maybe it’s not that creepy because I know who these people are. That's right. I KNOW WHO YOU ARE.

Freaky, isn’t it? :)

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Previous posts:

Part 1
Part 2

Working title, part 2

So far:
- storyboard is complete
- animatic is complete
- 5 shots of 21 are roughly animated
- music is under development

Looking good.

I’m not going to show the animatic here but you can have some screenshots. They are not in specific order.

Backgrounds are still missing because it depends on the music what they will look like.

This is going to be insanely short animation. Right now the animatic is 1 minute and 10 seconds long. Wow. Of course it will be possible that it will be few seconds longer but that’s still very short.

I decided that half of the animation will be drawn on paper and the other half digitally. I will especially draw those scenes digitally that worked perfectly on animatic. The other scenes that are good but still have some staging problems, I will try to figure out by drawing them on paper.

I would love to draw every single scene on paper but there are many problems with it:

1. Scanning takes too much time.

2. Some of the storyboard’s digital drawings have already perfect keyframes for animation. All they need is some inbetweening and that can be done on computer.

3. When I start to animate on paper I get tensed because my mind keeps telling me that everything has to be done perfectly. I just can’t relax and just work. I had the same problem before when I worked on my first animated short. It has been two years now and I still haven’t got rid of that feeling.

It will be interesting to see if there’s any difference between digitally and traditionally drawn scenes in the final work after the clean-up. Hmm.

And here’s a rough sculpture of the rabbit that I made one night (because obviously the best time to sculpt is nightime!):

The model was made from children’s clay and it has some wire inside to support it. And yes, because it was made from children’s clay it means that it doesn’t dry. At all. But it will be easy to reuse!

Remember when I said that the ears will be tough to animate? Turns out that those are the easiest parts. The thoughest is the head. THE HEAD. What the-

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Previous posts:

Part 1

"And we're launchin', and we're crashin'.."

Here’s a sneak peek of my other unfinished project that started two days ago..

That’s right! It’s the Green bird! In fake 3D!

It wasn’t that hard to build but it took forever to glue every pieces together. And of course because it is quite small it is a bit tricky to handle.

I don’t like the pigs, especially the one that has mouth open. There’s something off about it and I spent almost an hour trying to figure out why. The Green bird isn’t perfect either but for a first attempt it looks ok.

Background is still unplanned (obviously). A background from "Summer Pignic" level could work well here.

Since the beak worked out so nicely on Green bird I wondered would it work on Mighty Eagle too. I made two tests for the beak.

The top is a little more cartoonish and the bottom one is a little bit more “realistic” beak. If the top one was a bit longer it would be perfect for Mighty Eagle.

And yes, I admit. I should focus more on my animation project than this. But.. this is much more interesting! I’m still quite new to these paper craft things so everything about it interests me!