So tonight I went back once again into the world of the dry-erase animation walk cycle and I instituted a couple of ideas that I had yesterday to improve on my results. I feel like the ideas worked this time and I was able to animate this character of some complexity and keep his proportions fairly consistent. This time I finished 19 frames which was better than my two previous attempts at 15 frames each.
The idea that helped me so much on this one was that I created a little guide made out of cardboard to help me remember the proportions of my character. First I drew my character’s head on the cardboard. Once I liked the design I cut it out with an x-acto blade, keeping the hole a little bit larger leaving room for the tip of my marker. This hole allowed me to use it as a guide to consistently draw my character’s head over and over again. Then I used the edge of that same piece of cardboard to measure and mark things like waist witdth, leg width, arm width, shoe height, hand height, etc. That way when I’d move on to the next frame I could keep my characters body consistent as well.
The results are definitely an improvement. It’s by no means perfect. I made a few mistakes through the process but overall this has been my best attempt yet. I wished I could’ve stayed up one more hour because I felt like I was on a roll at the end there and I really wanted to get this character across the page. It’s a very therapuetic experience doing this, especially once you begin to gain momentum. I easily could’ve stayed up all night doing it but I, of course, have to go to work the next day so off to bed.
I am going to start this music video pretty soon. I have a pretty cool idea that I plan on testing out tomorrow but this weekend I plan on devoting a full days work on animating. These past few tests I have only been able to devote about three hours. I’m looking forward to gaining the momentum again except this time having the rest of the day to follow through with.
Would it make it a lot easier if you drew onto a sheet of plexiglass that you shot with a sheet of white paper underneath, so it would work the same and look the same as a whiteboard animation, but you’d be able to use reference drawings that you could put under the plexiglass to trace parts of each frame?
I’m loving seeing your progression with this, and it’s something I’d love to have a go at myself at some point. Still on the fence with whether my kids are old enough to get excited about stop motion animation in general.
Wow! That is an amazing idea! Thanks for that. That would allow me to hone the movement and then capture it seamlessly. Tonight, I plan on testing out a cool idea using a mini-projector and scenes from films being projected onto the whiteboard. Being that the song is so rooted in the 80’s I plan on doing a little rotoscoping from 80’s classics.