Still experimenting. Need to get some momentum going.

I really need to get in gear.

I’ve been procrastinating a lot. Mostly doing experiments in TVPaint.

And it has been fun. I think I am starting to get the hang of this program. Maybe even animating well in it. But I find I am mostly jumping from one minor project to another and getting very little done.

I decided to do one more swing animation. One that would change from green to blue to purple then back again. I was very careful with the timing and spacing. And as a result I think this is the best swing I’ve done yet.

Back to doing bouncing balls. I deced to add in a background for this one. I went for a blue ball against a blue background. It looks nice. I used vauge pose to pose animamation. Which sadly made the ball very floaty.

For the next one I tried to make a nice background with some artistic merit to it. And I do rather like it.

I made the ball yell this time. And took more time with the timing and spacing this time. Using a more structured form of pose to pose. I like it.

Feeling ambitious. I decided to try a walk cycle. I did this entirely in straight ahead animation. And forgive me. But i rather like it.

I think it has energy to it. I even managed to put in a background that looked like a nice sunny day.

My ambition climbing I made a brown, hazy background inspired my the Silent Hill series. I used pose to pose animation. And tried to make the character change colour as he walked. I even figured out how to loop the animation!

It is technically a lot stronger than the last one. But for some reason, I like it less.

Maybe it’s just a bit to fast.

I put everything I learned recently into one more walk cycle. Made a nice background, a strong definition between the ground and the sky, and used a mixture of pose to pose and straight ahead animation. I think there’s more charm and character to it. Even if it doesn’t loop all that well.

It’s nice.

I thought I’d just been wasting my time doing all this, and I was. I should have been making my character designs and storyboards. And I really should get back to that as quickly as possible. But out of the blue it suddenly all became useful.

I was tasked with making another animation for my Constellation work. It was a big deal. I had to make something quickly. But now I knew exactly how to make a digital animation quickly. Far quicker than I could on paper!

I decided to do a morphing cross animation. I would take different crosses from differnt eras and places, and show them change from one to the other. Morphing from form to form. All pose to pose animation. Very carefully planned out. Using careful timing and lightboxing techniques I’d learned in the past few weeks.

I worked flat out for three days straight. Not slacking at all. I didn’t think I could switch into high gear so quickly.

When it came out the timing was a little disappointing. I’s put the main posing on 1s to make them stand out more. And it kinda works. But backwards. They go by too quickly and feel like the less important pics.

I went back the next day. Put the main posses in 3s like the morphing poses. It doesn’t have the old emphasis. But it looks better. It has the serene atmosphere I wanted.

I’m glad my procrastinating ended up paying off. But I need to get this passion into my other work. Get a real momentum going. But I do at least feel closer to being able to do this as a job.