More Flash tests...

Since I haven't had as much time as I'd have liked to get more traditional animation done, I've made a few short tests on Flash in order to get a feel for the character's movements and how its expressions would work.

I quite like the 'flying in' motion I got for the morph. This was in part inspired by Eris from Sinbad's movements, and I think it suits the character well.

 The blinking is pretty simplistic, but it was basically to see how I could use the lines around the characters eyes for expression. If I have time I may do some cleaner tests that also involve head movement and the hood/shoulders, just to see how body language can show emotion and character too.

Cinema 4D...

So I have this working rig from last year-

-which I could switch out with my new artwork so I won't need to redo the rig. Once I reloaded the parts...

I moved the joints and the artwork so that they slotted back together. 

Now the character is generally poseable, but the limbs are a little messy, and somehow I think I've damaged with the rig. I'll have to find a solution tomorrow.

Morph: traditional frame-by-frame + Photoshop

I wanted to try at least one traditional animation test, so I drew up some frames using pencil and markers and imported the images into Photoshop.

Using the frames panel, I sequenced each frame and adjusted the timings. However it didn't look particularly good since I'd sketched the initial frames quickly, so I added new layers above each existing frame and began to draw on top of them. I also added details like the head and hands in this way.




The animation was jerky in areas, so I tweened certain frames to make it a little smoother.

Then I overlaid a textures and gradients to make it look more interesting.

The result:

I quite liked how this ended up looking. It looks quite traditional despite the addition of digital drawing, thanks to the brush I used, and the texture gives a papery, almost storybook look to it. 

Unfortunately, using frame-by-frame in Photoshop may not be suited for more complex scenes, and would get far too messy. However I could create moving backgrounds in this style using Photoshop's timeline instead while this style of character animation again using Flash, which is far more suited to bigger projects.

With more time and the appropriate resources, I'd also like to try using completely traditional methods and with a range of materials such as charcoal and inks, since this morph shows it would work well with my character.