Animating: scene 1

In this blog post I will explain how my animating process goes. I have animated the first scene from my storyboard and I am very proud of myself. First thing is choosing software. I experimented with Blender this term and I have also gotten some experience in OpenToonz during the first term. 

Af first I wanted to animate in Blender because it is new to me and it might be fun to try a new software. I really like the timeline in blender and how drawing frames works in that software. I think it is intuitive and fun to work with. Also there are many options and modes I can choose from, it gives possibilities that I did not have in OpenToonz.  

I started drawing my first scene [taking selfie scene] in Blender and it all seemed great at first. 

Working on layers was fun and easy, I liked the options I had and it all seemed great, however, I have encountered a difficulty. Blender is a very heavy program which slows my computer down a lot. It was slowing down my computer to the point where erasing a single line would take a couple of minutes. I am patient and I know technology is not always as quick as we would want it to be, however, I am not that patient. These were actions that should take me seconds or even fractions of seconds, not minutes. I decided to completely abandon all the work I have done and move to OpenToonz. I did not get all the options I had in Blender, but OpenToonz is also a great software to work in. 

Firstly I thought about a movement I wanted to capture in this scene. I wanted to only have movement on the phone's screen and the hand actually taking the picture. I decided that the characters taking the selfie would be posing for a couple of picture and they would be frozen in the pose when they would be taking the actual picture. 

I started by simply drawing a phone. I made it in a simple rectangular shape and grey color. This was created on one layer. On the next layer on it I have added the characters and then the third layer would be the hand actually taking the picture. I wanted the daytime scenes to be really colorful, therefore I did not make myself use only one shade of colors. I wanted it to be fun and happy. 

I have also added the blue background to symbolize the sky and I outlined a few cartoony clouds. I created colorful characters in the picture and drew a whole lot of frames of them doing a slight movement to create animation. I wanted those eposes to be real, so I got inspiration from how people actually pose for selfies. 

When all of the movement of the characters was ready, I decided to draw the hand and make a quick movement there so it looks like the thumb is actually taking pictures. I added it as a third layer. I think I started to understand layers better and how to create movement in different intervals on each layer to make the image even more movement than if it was all in sync. I think coloristically it all works and looks fun and happy. 

This is the finished scene 1: 

I think this looks really well. I am really happy with what I drew. I think it looks just as planned and it is a successful first scene of my animation. It is not long, but I did not want it long. I wanted it to be quick to just symbolize what is going on. I think this is well done.