Saturday, August 15, 2009

Animation Blocking in Flashland


Here's more animation blocking from my next cartoon. I'm getting the timing and action to work on crude drawings first. Then I'll clean them up.
When I did "I'm So Tired" I used started with a very simple animatic. The characters were drawn and colored before I made them move. The resulting animation was a bit stiff.
This time around, it's staging and movement first, details and color last.




4 comments:

Sally said...

seems like a good way to do it. Are you still animating on your tablet and directly into Flash?

Namowal (Jennifer Bourne) said...

Hi Sally,
Yes, still doing it on the tablet PC., directly into Flash. I'll actually need to replace the protective plastic sheet on the tablet soon- I've worn holes in it!

Linda Davick said...

Namo, did you make this method up? Or can I read more about it somewhere? This doesn't mean you're drawing each frame individually--do you mean you just end up with a bigger "library" of symbols to work with for each character, and that their movement won't be restrained so much by trying to work with one basic character shape?

(Oh--OK, just googled it and now I can read about it.)

I'm trying to guess what the song you're using is...

Namowal (Jennifer Bourne) said...

Hi Linda,
I'm doing a composite of several methods.
Most of the crude blocking shapes are mere brush strokes- pasted, altered and in some cases redrawn to get the movement I want.
For the "final" drawings I'll probably use a combination of symbols and brush strokes.
(I probably shouldn't be bragging about stuff I plan to do- but I read recently that it's a great way to motivate yourself.)