Colouring is Hell

It didn't occur to me when I decided to colour with a watercolour-looking brush that it would take so long. Getting that hand drawn, artisanal feel takes time, maaaan. Ordinarily, I'd colour with the fill tool but getting the texture right in this film means hand painting every frame, which is a nightmare. It means I don't think we'll be able to finish the film with colour by the deadline.

I suggested holding each drawing for 3 frames (we're currently working on twos) or possibly making the colouring simpler by only using a couple of colours on each character to reduce the pressure of colouring, but my team decided that we shouldn't compromise.

I like the look of the colours! I'm keeping it loosy goosy. 

I drew inspiration from Marcus Armitage's videos to arrive at the boiling line, handmade aesthetic.

My Dad (Marcus Armitage)

The Laughing Policeman (Marcus Armitage)

Over Dinner (Marcus Armitage)

I've taken on the line art for my teammate's shots as well, so that we can at least have the animation submitted. I feel most comfortable when animating.

New shots I've taken on

Animating with Maya (OUAN406)

This was far more difficult than the modelling thing. I'm generally pleased with the end results of my three animations although they certainly need tweaking. The timing, for instance, is a little off with the pendulum swing. It swings faster in one direction than in the other direction. I'd like to spend more time familiarising myself the the animation graph editor. At this stage I have trouble comprehending how the movement of the object translates into a line graph, but once I spend more time with it I'll be able to visualise it better.

I like the bouncy balls although I could've slowed the whole sequence down to allow myself more time to play with squashing and stretching. I added subtle movements like a slight squash at the top of the bounce as the ball reaches it's highest point.

Once I got the hang of it, the software wasn't too nightmarish. I reminded myself that this is exactly the stuff we did at the very start of the year, only schmicker and slicker, and I got the hang of the other stuff.

The segmented pendulum was the hardest thing to animate. At first I tried animating every segment individually but that was really hard because I would've had to time everything up perfectly. I got taught about how to animate and slightly offset each segment in the graph editor and that was really helpful. Again, I'm looking forward to getting some more in depth tutorials next year. I think it would be really cool to incorporate elements of 3D modelling into my 2D work to make it look CRISPER. Crisp, crisp like a crisply ironed shirt. Just like what BRAD BIRD did with the Iron Giant.