A Day For Hand Drawn Animation - 2009

Today I'll be enthusiastically celebrating the hand-drawn holiday, here:

WALKIN'

Here are a few great videos for you to enjoy:


The first one is a robot walking like a human. Uh, WOW.



And here is my great friend Joe Merideth teaching a class at Columbia College Chicago on the mechanics of a walk.

Walk Demo Prt 1 from Joseph Merideth on Vimeo.

And finally, here is Joe's key test of his walk cycle.

Rough Key Test from Joseph Merideth on Vimeo.

Process PART 2: Researching

Coming up with an idea and dreaming about the endless possibilities of that idea is, in most ways, the easiest part.

I think of the "idea" as something located on the opposite side of a dark room. If you just start walking forward through the room, you'll trip and stumble over furniture because you don't know the layout as well as you thought. But if you take time to illuminate it before walking to the other side, the likelihood that you'll be tripped up by obstacles is diminished somewhat.

I built my character out of clay, and in addition I've built up my confidence in drawing her. I've done this before with other characters and it always helps.

Process PART 1

First things first. To start animating on a piece, you gotta order the paper. Here is my box of 12 Fld Ingram from Cartoon Color. This is the scariest part, a big box of blank white paper......

Zen Panda update

I thought I might be able to complete all of the painting on the panda by the end of the week, but I didn't quite get there. I need to shelve it right now to move onto other things, but it WILL get done. It's just a matter of time...

Here is another section of the colored version.

Zen Panda Animation part 1 from bj crawford on Vimeo.

Subway Animation, next step

Here is the next step I took in finishing up the SUBWAY piece.

My feeling was that if I wanted to show a woman taking a seat in a subway car, that I should contrast it with another character sitting down beside her. A wobbly drunk was a good contrast, and showed proof that the woman came prepared and could defend herself.

This is just a very rough pass that I edited in with the woman's animation. The drawings were done in Photohop and timed in DigiCel Flipbook.

August Entry

Thief from bj crawford on Vimeo.

This month was a struggle. The idea, for which I had some help, was difficult to come by. The posing and blocking could have been better. I received excellent feedback, and I wish I had more time to incorporate it.

I probably spent too much time preparing to animate. (Weird, I know). I looked at a lot of Milt Kahl, Glene Keane and Will Eisner. I spent time photographing hand/body reference. But then I just did a lot of sitting around thinking and worrying.

Here is the first blocking I did:



And then the final blocking:



A lot of the best feedback I received picked up on problems that are noticable in these two blocking tests. But I sorta refused any hardcore critique at this stage - bad move on my part!
Anyways, it came together in the end, but there is still work to be done in his performance.
Oh, and the phone cord is missing... gotta remember to add that in.