Blog Post 2: BLUEPRINTS

I've been practicing my cartooning, and I think I have found a "style" that I like. Of course, said style must develop in order to incorporate all elements of the animation. Currently, I have a general design for people (it may remind some people of "Diary of a Wimpy Kid" from way back when...). I have yet to figure out what the objects will look like, taking background/middleground/foreground into account.

Here is a page of my sketches. I don't want to give too much away, but these designs should be enough to give you all a taste:

***Note: for animation, the right drawing utensil is surprisingly important

As you can see from the picture above, I have an idea of how the scenes of the video will look. For many days, I thought about how to make the drawing process as efficient as possible. For now, my plans involve drawing the background on a long strip of paper and looping back to the beginning of the paper when needed. On that piece of paper, I will place cut-out figures or objects and move them independently. This way, I do not need to "draw" hundreds of frames; instead. I will arrange separate pieces and take photos of the different arrangements. Think of it like Flappy Bird, where there is a bird moving relative to a scrolling background and green pipes.

This presents a few complications. Firstly, I will have to cut out many forms of the same character to show them walking. I showed an example of this in my previous blog post. I will also have to create transitions between two different backgrounds (I have three pictured above). The perspective in a scrolling animation is limited; I will most likely insert close-ups to show more specific actions than walking or moving. This may or may not utilize a traditional frame-by-frame drawing method, in which I do not have independently moving parts.

Here is a cool video that I saw yesterday. While it is not an actual animation, it uses stop motion (and walking animation) extremely well. It was made by the YouTuber Ryan Higa:

While we're on the subject on that video, I should mention its use of actual real-life objects along with images. If convenient, I might incorporate actual objects into my animation as well.

Starting this next week, I will start to draw "test" animations. Perhaps I will draw 20 to 30 frames of simple images and piece them together using various software. I should figure out all the logistical issues before the final video comes together.

Some other things I've been thinking about/working on:

- Background music
- Color scheme
- Shading

If anyone has any suggestions, I'd appreciate any comments and feedback very much!

COMMENTS FOR CYCLE 1:
Commented on Brett's/Liliana's/Paul's blogs.

COMMENTS FOR CYCLE 2:
Commented on Felicia's/Christy's (Red class)/Noah's (Red class) blogs.