Perspective

Givin it a go, will look better soon

Spain beckons

Exploration with paper animation

Over the past few days I've spent many a late night drawing on delicate pieces of paper. A relic today, common practice a few decades ago and a fascination for me, pencil and paper animation has helped me understand charcoal, sketching and general fundamentals of animation. Being able to create pencil tests on paper properly is my main goal over the next few weeks, however, I still require plenty of practice, in order to perfect it 100%.

First paper animation
My first attempt at paper animation involved drawing a drinking mad, using character joints. I sketched various placements of circles where I wanted shoulders, hands and other limbs to go and drew a person over it. While this is good for a first attempt, more concept sketching and better proportion would've improved it drastically.

More paper animation
My next few tries with paper animation proved to be quite successful in execution and I used the opportunity to experiment further with colour and more complex character movement. One of which was a piece called 'Moon' where a charcoal circle stood out on a purple background. I had tried to use watercolours on the paper however, due to the thickness of the paper, the paint wasn't as effective and ended up crumpling the paper and bleeding out. However, the desired effect was achieved and it taught me to be careful using watercolours on such thin paper.

Even more paper animation
Finally (Although we will meet again) I tried going for a different approach to the subject, focusing on more detailed creations and some which introduced more fundamentals of animation. I wanted to create a windy and artistic image to the tree animation, with the branches moving and swaying to the breeze. However, I found that charcoal can get quite messy and smudges can look out of place and wonky, which obviously reduces the quality of the creation.