SO, SO, SO Close

I am one step away from calling the Panda animation DONE. I started this piece a year and a half ago after being inspired by Jon J Muth's work. I've tirelessly chipped away at painting each frame level by level until this week, when I finish the final section and exported the movie with a bit of sound added to make it feel complete. The only additional task is to add some movement to the foreground branches. I wanted to add them in this time, just to show the overall composition.

Almost Complete ZEN PANDA from bj crawford on Vimeo.

The very first test I did of the project looked like THIS:



It's come along way since May 2008. I enjoyed combining animation and watercolor but I can't say that I'd do it again. It's very time consuming and only a fraction of the time was devoted to the character animation.

Again, thanks to the inspiring work of Jon J Muth and since this is more or less a holiday post here's the cover art from his lastest book "The Christmas Magic":

Meltdown

***UPDATE*** This piece of animation got added to a Vimeo channel called MOTION FARM. Anyone who is a fan of animation should check this channel out.

The sound clip for November's 11 Second Club contest was too good to pass up. I laugh every time I listen to it. The folks that run the website are always offering up interesting and different tracks to work with. Plus, I work best under deadlines, so there you have it.

Meltdown from bj crawford on Vimeo.

My first impluse after hearing the track was to go and look at all of my Norman Rockwell books. He's the best artist to draw inspiration from because every piece he creates is teeming with rich narrative. I try and start every animation with an idea, not a specific piece of acting, but a narrative idea, and then the acting flows out of that. Here is one of the many images of Santa created by Rockwell:



I didn't get the idea of using Santa from Rockwell, but I thought of the idea while looking through his books, so I thought I'd just focus in on using his version of Santa as a starting point.


Here is the very, very first pass I did of the animation. This test is at 50% of the size I ended up animating the actual drawings at.



Thanks again to everyone who stops by to read my blog.

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.