Software experimentation

 In this post I will explain my experimentation with a new software process. First term when I was animating I used the OpenToonz software, last term I was only creating GIFs and for that I used the Procreate App and this term I wanted to see another software and be able to compare it with OpenToonz to see which is better for me. I decided to look at Blender. I already knew blender because I did some 3D modeling work before, but I have not used the Blender 2D animation option. I decided to experiment with it to see how I like it and if maybe it is a software I want to create my final project animation in. 

Because I had no experience in this software, for my experimentation I decided to follow a tutorial. Click here to access the tutorial I followed. 

When I opened the Blender 2D Animation set up, it looked like this:

This looked very confusing to me because of the amount of different tools and options. OpenToonz was definitely a less complex program but that also means that Blender will let me do more. I could see that at the bottom there is a timeline and there are drawing tools at the lefthand side of the screen and some options at the top but everything on the righthand side was confusing me. I knew some of the options from the 3D modeling setup of Blender, however I only knew how to use those options for sculpting not for animating something in 2D. In OpenToonz, layers worked as frames and I was pretty much adding layers to layers if I wanted to have frames with layers. It was a little bit confusing. In blender layers and frames are completely separate, therefore it was actually pretty clear to me when the man in the video explained it. 

I was making a bouncing ball for my experiment. I started by creating a very rough draft of where I want the ball to go. With a bouncing ball it is important to remember that after a bounce ball will not go as high as it was before it bounced. Physics of objects are very important in animation. This was a sort of guide for me. After I finished this rough sketch, I have decreased the opacity of the layer and added a new layer called Rough so there I would create the rough draft of my animation. 

I started by drawing some keyframes for the short animation. I placed them in equal spaces on the timeline. This was different than in OpenToonz. Here I was drawing on the same layer, but just in different moments on the timeline, in OpenToonz I had to draw them in separate layers. I think this is more intuitive if I am being honest. 

After placing them in equal spaces on the timeline, I have decided it is going too slow, therefore I have scaled it all down. To scale I needed to press 'S' and hold what I wanted to scale. In blender there are a lot of shortcuts that are important to remember, for example 'G' for Grab, 'S' for Scale and a lot more. After doing that I have decided that I actually do not want the keyframes to be in equal distance from each other because the first fall should take more time than the second fall. I had to grab some of the keyframes and move them around. to make sure timing was on point. 

I also needed to learn how to turn on onion skin. I have elaborated on what onion skin is exactly in my post I did on OpenToonz. It is pretty much showing the frames before and after the frame I am currently drawing. Here I chose to display 2 frames before and after. All those options I can adjust in the righthand side of the screen. When I turned on the onion skin, I started drawing the in-between frames to fill in my short animation. 

When I had all the in-between frames drawn, I decided to work more on the squash and stretch effects of my bouncing ball. I could possibly just draw my ball more squashed but I decided to practice transforming what I have already drawn. I was just slightly moving the vertices to make the drawing look more squashed or stretched. I found it a little bit difficult but it was a good practice. 

I filled in all the frames so the animation looks sort of smooth and follows the draft I have created at the beginning. I also checked if the squashes and stretches look good and the volume of the ball is kept throughout the entire movement and then I added a new layer to make my work more detailed. 

I have added color by, firstly, creating a new color in the material box and ticked the box 'fill'. That made anything I would draw to be filled with the color I have chosen from the palette. I chose a mint green and followed all the rough draft sketches to make sure the ball looks like I wanted it to. I have followed the tutorial to also add some cool looking effects to my ball, such as an element in a second color and an eye. I have also discovered that there are options to add that there weren't in OpenToonz. For example I was able to add a blurry rim to my ball so it looks more interesting. 

I was able to adjust all the options for the rim and I liked how the rim was immediately added to all the frames. It definitely took some work away from me. 

The only problem I have encountered was exporting. I had a problem with exporting and rendering with OpenToonz as well therefore it was nothing new for me. I have decided to record my screen to get the final version. I will try to get the rendering figured out but if it doesn't work then I will do it the way I did it last term, where I recorded my screen for several different short parts of the animation and then put it together in IMovie and lastly exported it as a MP4. 

This is my experimentation animation:

I think it turned out good and I enjoyed the working process in Blender, even though my computer did sound like a launching rocket a few times. I think I can use this software for my final project. This will help me gain abilities in a new software that I haven't fully discover before.