Secret Garden Update

hm, so what to update about? well, perhaps it would be interesting to see what a hard time ui had designing Dickon. yes, i know he's a marginal character in my animation, but i felt it was still very important that i get him right even though he only comes in at the end. he's my favorite character, so basically i'm just doing it for myself, but i can't help being a perfectionist. :) here's some pages from my sketchbook, where i was just trying to get his face right:





i ended up going into my PHOTO ARCHIVES *DUHN DUHN DUUUUUHN!!!* for reference from some of my smaller friends, so you can see a bit of that on the second page. i think i got him right in the final version i posted a couple days ago. :)

Professor Delao said he'd like to see our method of animation as well, i think, so i'll explain that a bit. basically, i copied the techniques i've learned about traditional animation into flash. you can see it in my layers. i would start with the rough animation, to get the action and positioning on the background correct (the BG layer). i'd use lighter colors (so it'd be easy to trace over) and switch color whenever i went over to tighten something up.



so that's basically the "pencil test" of traditional animation. once that's all good, i would add a new layer and trace over my rough lines, and to color i would just use the fill tool, with reference from a color key i'd made earlier in photoshop. this is the "ink and paint" step.



i haven't done anything fancy with the lines or vector curves, because of time issues, but really i do like that hand-drawn bit of quality it can give to leave it as rougher drawn lines, even if they're digital.

i haven't finished enough animation to call for an update on that, but of course i'm still working on it. i've got two more days, and i think i'll be able to finish it. wish me luck. :)