Refrence Footage: A whole Vimeo Channel Dedicated to the Task

So apparently there's a vimeo group dedicated to collecting good reference footage for animatiors. I wish I'd known about these guys sooner, but I'm glad to have found them now.

The Secret Revealed

So I've been pretty hush-hush online about how I'm doing the underwater scene in my gradfilm but.. the film will be done in a month so I may as well explain myself now.



This is a small test from the fall. I'm using a zen/Buddha board. When painted on with water the wet area turns black. As it evaporates the area fades then disappears. I use the evaporating images like an onion skin and do straight ahead animation taking pictures as I go.

An updated leica reel.

A lot of the cuts are in too early and some of the animation needs timing adjustments, but here's an updated reel for my film. This will be the last non-password protected posting of this as film festivals often require works to not be posted online.

A WILD CHANGE OF PLANS APPEARS!

Sooooo... I was thinking through how my film was going to look cleaned up. I thought about what the lines look like cleaned up, how they'll look with the backgrounds, comments from my grad panel waaaaaay back in December about how I shouldn't clean the lines up so much and also of the background sketch I have here on the blog and... I came to a conclusion that surprised myself: I really like the sketchy look of that background kelpie. I regret that I won't be able to have the bleeding ink lines via digital cleanup but... I like the gestural mess and I think if will actually add to the atmosphere of the film.
I had originally thought I was going to do clean lines but ink bled; I abandoned that plan rather earlier on in the game because printer paper does not bleed the pilot pen ink very well. But that failing, I can still use the other aspect of my sketches. I will still be able to colour in the images easily enough using the drag tool paint bucket set to paint unpainted in toonboom. So messy lines of mayhem: here I come!

Character Animation WIPs

Patting Pony WIP from Kendra Davey on Vimeo.

This one (above) was done on paper with grease pencil. I intend to finish off the scene and clean it up digitally in toonboom.

Kelpie Head Whip WIP from Kendra Davey on Vimeo.

This one is just about done, I just need to fix the jaw close and then clean it up.

Animation WIPs: Splashes

splash wip from Kendra Davey on Vimeo.

emerge wip from Kendra Davey on Vimeo.

Cleaned Still

I've decided to clean up on the computer after all. The lines don't look too bad and then it's easy to apply watercolour textures in ToonBoom so that it still has that look.

Smear Drawings

One of the very best parts of animating in 2D is getting to do the smear drawings: