Warning: The word 'duplicate' will be used over and over in this write up, so get ready to get mildly annoyed.
I was just so intent on finishing this that I forgot to take more screenshots as I worked along, so sorry if it seems like I skipped out on a lot.
The first thing I did was design one segment of the background, seeing that the animated character would be a 'simple' silhouette, this gave me the chance to design a much more detailed and appealing background to create that contrast. I looked through various references of vintage looking art galleries, and since I had a particular color scheme in mind (Gold, grey, violet or white, etc), designing the background thankfully did not take too long, I did also mess around with some textures to make it less flat as well as painted in some light shadows.
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| Started out by figuring out the floor level before painting in the first pillar. |
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| Obviously some parts would then be duplicated. |
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| Tada. |
Since the animation would last for 30 seconds, I then duplicated the segment ten times (Thankfully it wasn't too much of a problem connecting them nicely together, before beginning to arrange the illustrations I had compiled together days before (And that took awhile seeing that I also had to arrange them from the time period from which the art/style/technique originated from).
I had to make a lot of tough choices during this step since I had collected so many nice examples, only about 8% of the images were used in the end, and while I initially did not plan to place any images on the columns, seeing that I was running out of space, I felt that I had no choice but to do so.
Like the sign I had designed for the very first segment I was planning to frame each piece of illustration with a golden frame, and while it was sure to take some time, I thought the duplication method would make things less tedious instead of painting one for each of them… and apparently that didn't work.
While I had painted the frame separately for the museum sign so that I could duplicate and reuse it for the illustrations, it could not be properly resized to fit each illustration (For instance, when I tried changing it to a more rectangular shape, the side of the frame became to thin). And so I had to make do with simply giving each of them some light shadows with the layer effect option, which looked quite alright, much to my relief.
For the grecian pottery however, after removing/erasing the backgrounds surrounding each one, I hand painted in some light shadows beneath and around them instead of simply using the layer effect option like I did with the rest.
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| Zoom in, if you dare. |
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| I redid this walk cycle about four times, since I kept messing up on the placement of his feet. |
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| Finally decided to add in some guides to figure out where his feet should lie flat on when it is placed down completely. |
The rest of the animation would thankfully not be as difficult (Save for the clothing detail, but I will get to that later), I decided to go with a walk cycle where the character's head did not raise and lower as much as the ones seen in more basic walk cycles, also the character's arms were always kept behind his back or in his pockets to make things easier.
Once I had drawn out the template, some calculating was in order… as this walk cycle consisted of 16 frames (There were references consisting of only 12 frames, but I really preferred this walk cycle over the rest) and each segment should last for 36 frames, I needed to be careful when it came to duplicating and arrange the frames. (Eg, 16+16+4= 36, so the next segment should hence start on layer number 5 instead of 1… yeah, I carried on like this for the rest of the segments, figuring out what was the next layer to start on with each new segment)
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| When onion skinning fails, blind yourself with this method. |
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| Silhouette for the medieval illustrations. |
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| This silhouette was perhaps the biggest pain in my tuckus to animate, and you know why? Well take a guess… did you say top hat? Well, well done you deserve a cookie! |
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| You'd think that it would be the coat that was a pain to animate but noooo… Hats, HATS, HAAAATSSS! (I responded similarly to the fedora one after) |
When I had finished drawing in all of the frames (And duplicated), it was time to alter a few frames between each segment to make it seem like they were morphing from one form/outfit to the next (And thank goodness his posture stays the same after the caveman one), the transition had to be quick so only 2 frames were altered for each one (Not that I was being lazy…).
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| I cleaned up a few frames before quickly doing up the reverse version, I know it still looks pretty wonky overall but I felt that it was best to simply move on. Also yeah, I know, I almost wanted to give the character more distinct footwear which each outfit he changes into, instead of sticking to those pixie feet. |
Again as expected, I made a few changes from the storyboard, for the animation I ended up scrapping a few transitions (Such as the one with the little bowl hat, and the 80s one with the parachute pants), I even reused one of the walk cycles for two segments instead of just one, seeing that what it still seems to fit that time period.
And once all of that was done, it was time to put everything in After Effects… though I once again goofed up and forgot 3 seconds worth of walk cycles, so I had to go back and duplicate, rearrange and redraw the morphing frames in between each cycle (Just kick me).
Original Version:
An interesting point that was brought up by my classmates after they viewed it was why was it that the animation moved from right to the left, when it should be the other way round (After all, one also (Well normally) reads from left to right, no?). Perhaps it was because of the fact that I had previously watched a few good walk cycles that started from the right instead, or the fact that I'm right handed... (Which is a really dumb excuse since I have drawn people walking from left to right before… or have I…? No wait, oh gosh, I hadn't realized this before… most of my animations DO start on the right side, I'M RUINED!)
Anyway while I felt that if didn't matter all that much, I decided to quickly do up another version where it starts off on the left side instead (Just in case), it came to mind that by making the character move from left to right, it was a discreet (Or obvious, I don't know anymore… I haven't slept for days, help me...) and more proper way to symbolize progression, while moving from right to left clearly symbolizes the opposite (So it doesn't really make sense for the caveman to start off from the right).
Reverse Version:
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