SKETCHBOOK PRODUCTIONS

  This screenshot is apart of a scene that I have recently finished doing base animations on. There is a unique factor in this scene that I would like to discuss. This is another screenshot from a scene I animated a little while back. Upon short glance, it appears normal. However, after comparing both images, one thing becomes clear; they look nearly identical. This is a common practice in animation. Due to how long and difficult the process of animating is, animators often reuse scenes or sections of animations as a template for other scenes; generating a clean animation while saving time and effort. I do believe that I will utilize this process numerous times in my animation, due to how close I am to the deadline at this moment. 

  I have finally managed to animate a running animation that I believe to be up to my standards. I realized that a large majority of my issues here was due to how I was animating the direction of the entire body. I would animate it so that the whole body launches upward while leaning to one side. Once I mitigated and edited this movement, All worked well shortly.  Now, I am challenging myself with animating a horse running. This challenge is the hardest thing I have ever tasked myself with animating, given how unique a horses gallop is in comparison to any other ordinary animal. Despite this, I am making good progress, and I do believe that I can make this work.

 Progress has been difficult. Increasingly tedious, and difficult. A vast majority of the scenes and shots that I have to animate are either perspectives that I have never attempted, or movements that I find painful to animate.  For instance, walk cycles. Walk cycles are a common challenge when it comes to animation; often considered a necessary component to master before taking on a heavy scale project. I have become slightly better at animating walk cycles, but run cycles is where I begin to falter. Somehow, someway, I cannot manage to animate a run cycle without it looking as if the characters are skipping. This makes it harder for me to take on that horrifying, suspenseful theme that I'm going for. If I'm gonna achieve this theme, im gonna have to practice more and more. My only concern is time, given how close my deadline is. 

 This week has been extremely productive, despite my slow, gradual progress. My animating process, though unconventional, works wonders for me, and is helping me better experiment with how I should animate each shot. Considering that I have never attempted major, professional animation before this, I do believe that my methodology looks high quality enough for my taste. My method is simple, yet effective. I mimic that of art mannequins; drawing the body shape vaguely enough to be broken down into simple shapes. This allows me to make the movement of the characters appear more anatomically correct, rather than looking grossly disfigured. I do both the main and the in between frames at once, but I color each sketch of these frames in different colors to help me differentiate between the frames, allowing me to better understand what frame to draw next. Though this method does seem tedious and difficult, it's what works best; and sometimes, that's all a person needs in order to ach...