For this exercise, I was asked to put together small animations based on the idea of action movies using flipbooks or software. My first inspiration was the stick-men animations that turn into full action sequences. I used my sketchbook to write down some potential ideas.
I was then drawn to the John Woo films of the 1990s and decided that could be a good format for an action sequence. Based on what I had researched about the animation process, I tried to put together a short storyboard to help me think about the shots. (Each vertical pair below was a single page of my sketchbook).
I soon became very daunted by the prospect of doing this animation. I find animation challenging generally because it's hard to stay interested in drawing lots of copies of the same thing. Around this time, Procreate Dreams had been released, so I decided to change direction again and experiment with that software to see if it would help with activating my interest more.
The software definitely had a learning curve, as it allows traditional 'onion-skin' animation as well as keyframe-style animation at the same time. As I played and experimented with the tool, I realised that I could try and experiment with some of the techniques that I had explored as part of my research. Things like parallax, basic keyframe animation as well as traditional onion skinning. Rather than sketch out a new story, I experimented as I went. I tried to achieve a John Woo-style camera pan, and when this was a little tricky I was able to tweak the story into a spaghetti western.
I kept everything rough, concentrating on the animation over rendering to keep my overwhelm under control. I soon managed to get a first shot created that used keyframes to achieve a parallax effect that had hints of anime too. I then cut to a close-up to practice the onion skin animation, before moving back to the original shot at the gunslingers prepared to end their duel. This final scene allowed me to combine keyframes with different timings with small hand-drawn animated aspects. By this point, the animation was 10 seconds, so I decided to stop where I had got to for the purpose of finishing this exercise.
This was slightly unfulfilling as it left the scene at a point of tension, and I would like to come back to the animation in the future and see if I can not only take it to its conclusion but also refine and embellish its fidelity.
I was really daunted by this exercise. While I didn't create a number of simple animations, I am happy that I got to a place where I could push myself and explore not only a new tool but new techniques for animating. I wouldn't say that animation is my go-to technique, but with practice, I think I will be happy to add it to my repertoire as an illustrator.
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