Author: thimai

This week I worked on finishing the hand-washing sequence. This took particularly long to animate just because of the number of moving parts I needed to update in each frame. Though animating the moving water was a bit of challenge for me, I’m really happy with how it turned out. I also drew the next background with I’ll be using for the remainder of the scene. This is the first establishing shot of the scenes after the intro. This is where we are reintroduced to the main character, color palette, and style. I needed to consider how to create a look that I’d be able to replicate for the rest of my animation.

And, here is the remainder of the animated scene from last week!

This week I needed to animate a series of frames with multiple moving parts happening at once. So far in this project, the subject of the frame is usually stationary while the background moves, or the only movement is light. These elements tend to be a lot quicker to animate because they only require a couple frames switching back and forth or only one layer than needs to be changed. In this scene, I need to keep track of the light (where it reflects, how it moves), water (how it interacts with the hand), shadow (in the mirror), and the hand itself moving (distance, color, etc.). With so many moving parts I’ve found its almost necessary to finish a scene like this all in one go, as even with well labelled layers its hard to keep track of everything that needs to change from one frame to the next. This is definitely a hurtle I’ll continue running into as my animation gets more complex, but for now this is a great way to get used to all the types of movements I need to consider in each scene.

Here is the progress of this scene so far!

This week I started the second scene of my animation. I wanted this scene to feel distinctly different from the first one. I thought a contrasting color palette would be a good way to show this. For the first scene I used a dark red color palette to feel ominous and heavy, so I decided to use primarily blues and greys to create an atmosphere of isolation/melancholy in the second scene. In both scenes, I wanted the yellow light to stand out. Not only to emphasis its importance, but also to indicate that it is the same light and the same person in both scenes. When drawing each frame by hand, especially over a long period of time, I find it’s difficult to maintain stylistic continuity. I’ve tried to combat this issue by keeping a list of what brush I use for which lines, and frequently referencing previous frames for consistency in coloring and shading. Below are the first two backdrops I’ve created for the second scene, as well as my entire piece so far:

I decided I wanted to add an extra scene to the first section of my animation to improve narrative cohesion. I wanted to show the light from the house physically interacting with the character, that way when it appears later in the animation, it can serve as a visual representation of being ‘haunted’. This also gave me a chance to explore how I want light to look as it moves. I used a brush with lower opacity to have reflections of the light shifting against the character as well as the environment. Being a non-physical entity, I wanted the light to change shape in every frame to give it that quality.

I have also been getting used to keeping better track of my layers, and how to get the most use out of each frame that I draw. For instance for this scene, I created two backgrounds of grass, and alternated between the two while adding new movement to the light. This gave the impression of the grass blowing in the wind while still maintaining focus on the light. I was able to finish the first section of my animation this week! My progress is shown below:

This week I began working on animating the first scene of my project. The scene is primarily composed of establishing shots, so the main movement I needed to create was caused by the wind. My process consists of diving layers into their moving parts: ie. grass 1, shading 1, hair 1, color 1, saving that as a frame, then minimizing the opacity of these layers and drawing a new frame over top. The main difficulties I encountered were trying to create overall cohesive movements throughout this process and managing all the layers I was working on simultaneously. I noticed after edited together all the frames that there were certain layers I forgot to include when saving, which is something I’ll needed to return to fix later. Overall though, I’d say this process works fairly efficiently and I’m excited to continue experimenting with movement in later scenes! My progress so far is embedded below:

This week I got started on drawing the first scene of my animation. Specifically, the backdrops needed to animate the first scene (pictured below). As I began this process, I realized there was a lot to consider in terms of color palette, brush settings, how to maintain style consistency, etc.. I decided for this specific scene to have a dark red color palette, cut by a lighter orange for the light inside the house. Since this first scene is meant to exist in a dream-like/non-reality plane of existence, dramatic colors and extreme shadows will fit the tone I’m looking for. I’ll maintain this palette for this first and the last scene which take place in the same location, but use a cooler toned palette for the scenes grounded in reality. I also began experimenting with animating movement of the grass, and am working out the most efficient method to achieve the look I want. Currently, I am drawing scenes in photoshop and exporting them into Adobe Animate. By next week I hope to have completed scene 1!