on-the-side creepy-crawlies

So I've been working on the very talented Gayane Bagdasaryan's thesis and it's an honor working for such an awesome animator. I'm animating a supporting spider character for her, and she's kindly given me the permission to share it on my blog.

I'm doing this in ToonBoom Animate Pro 2, which I've never used before, so it's a learning experience for me. However, I'm only just using the software for the basic frame-by-frame drawn animation, so it's pretty much like Flash.

This is one of my favorite shots that I've animated:

They're all quick shots, but really fun to work with.

what if i did THIS...

Still animating. My plan now is to finish the remaining 20 seconds in the next two weekends. Then spend the rest of the time (3 weeks) fixing all the animations that need to be fixed and editing the thing.

So here's the new stuff:

And I was just experimenting with editing styles with the last clip, so it saves me some time when I actually formally start editing:

Floo

So I guess I can say that I have officially started animating for this project. Am I happy with what I am animating? No. I've been really sick with some sort of viral flu for the past 4 or 5 days and now is not the time. People are out frolicking in the apparently warm weather and I am still parading around in my winter jacket.



I really hope that I develop a proper style quickly in the process of animating this. I can make beautiful individual abstract drawings of Bharata Natyam dancers, but once I start animating and get a couple of frames into it, the figures start to resemble "beautiful and abstract" less. It's one of the challenges I have to overcome for this project, I suppose.

I really like the drawing style I have in my Figure Drawing class, and it's probably because I'm using charcoal, and also maybe because I'm drawing big. I don't know if I would be able to animate with something like charcoal/pastels, but I really want to try. The thing is, I don't know if I have the time to experiment anymore. Right now, literally whatever I animate has to be in the final film. I guess this is one of the problems of making a complete film from pre- to post- production in 10 weeks. There is so much scope for learning, but not much for going back and perfecting from what you learn.

But anyway, what I have above is what I've done since the last update, quickly put together. It isn't exactly what the final film will look like, but it hints heavily at it.

We'll see..

Hello Hello, Testing Testing...

I figured I'd start experimenting. It's better if I figure out potential problems with animating at this stage rather than later.

This is a quick AfterEffects test I did. It wasn't shot properly because I need someone to teach me how to use the scanner in our lab. The drawings I did today were supposed to be rough and for experimenting, but I might end up using it in the end. So I didn't want to risk batch scanning the papers without any training with the scanner and having it eat all the paper up.

Not sure how I feel about the animation though.




Will post more details about the project later.