Milk. Animation

It's finished! My multilayered animation it's done.
For this animation I did learned a lot of things! From x-sheets to layers, to some timing, and some movement design.

Let's write a little bit about it ^^

The Conception of the Idea - (not that is a great idea, but you get it) 
I began working out something like a happening, or anything a character would react to and move because of it, so I chose a guy trying to heat milk.

First I took that sentence: a guy trying to heat milk but a fly pesters and made some thumbnails. Really small drawings trying to tell the story, something like a storyboard but more rough and simple than that.
I noticed I could "throw" any idea and see how it looked on camera, then choose if it worked or not.

rough thumbnails 

bigger thumbnails

On those bigger thumbnails I laid down the idea in a clearer way. I also began to think about the layers that were going to be used, by identifying what moves and what doesn't. 

character expressions and design

I know the character is not great but the process is the same, so I worked with a simple character sheet just to be sure how he looked. 

Planning the Animation

As many authors state: plan before you animate! And so I did XD

I began to think about timmings and worked with some home made X-Sheets / Exposure Sheets. 

In the ACTION column I drew something like an animation curve which shows me where changes are made on the main character or main action. On the layer columns (1,2,3,4,5,BG) I write the layers that . That helps a lot in postproduction and during frame capturing (scanning, photo). and dial, which is not used since I'm not adding noises yet :P 

It helps a lot to really see how much time something happens. It's a nice way to actually look at seconds on paper. 

With this sheets I also figured out how to make fire to loop right after the guy fired it up. 

The fly is also planned here: where does it enters (p2,117), where it goes out of frame, etc.

the 12 / 24 thing

The "12 frames, 24 frames" animation thing is quite clear while working with this X-sheets too! Here I can decide where I need to work on "24 frames", while working in 12fps as a base, that's why I first write frames in twos (1,3,5,7,9...) Making frame economy possible, and just adding the ones where needed. (1,2,3,4,5,6...). 

 animation / movement  Design
After timming and the entire animation has been planned, I proceed to animate, working with keyframes, breakdowns, extremes, contacts, etc. And leaving inbetweens in the end. ( I mostly worked frame by frame this time, just did some straight ahead on the hand I believe.)

During the animation process I found something interesting: It's not just about working out simple inbetweens that go from point A to point B, there is movement on every frame! That's why I decided to draw this sheets, with some sequential drawings and weird stuffs like flows, timming notes, etc.

the dodge movement planning 

This one was fun to do. At first I drew the entire sequence, shot it, and noticed it was not working at all... that was before some planning was done. I then worked out some ideas with animation basics (left part of the page) and then worked out the flow of his head (center). I've found it's quite usefull to actually study how the character, or object, moves within space and within time. 

overall planning of poses

This one helped a lot to explore what the character was going to do and how. It may look like a storyboard too, but without frame. It's just a sequence where I see how the character changes from being numb to being angry.    

At the bottom right I did some explorations on how the fly was going to invade his personal space :P 

simple layout

 This layout helped me to draw keyframes in place.



 Well, I think that's pretty much all for that animation. It was great to learn animation stuff, to see how movements must be designed, tested, and redesigned, and it also helped to work out a nice pipeline to concieve, plan, animate  and write about, an animation, no matter if it is small or huge.

Thanks for reading!

Oh, have a tiny update for my walkcycle.