Greets. I''m starting on working out how to do some hand-drawn animation for my current project (this is the first time I have ever tried drawing animation). I''ve made a simple little running animation, scanned it in, cleaned it up, and it looks pretty decent for a first try. But it was quite a bit of work for what basically amounts to a running pear I was wondering; are there any good sites out there that offer tips for drawing animation sequences? For my running sequence I drew a body with a mess of legs as part of planning it; if I had to move the body as well and add arms, head and cape (and I plan to) it would have been a royal mess. I''ve tried Googling, but almost everything I''ve found to do with animation has been of the computer generated variety and is totally useless to me. Thanks for any pointers Chris Barry (crbarry at mts.net) My Personal Programming Depot

Old school animation required that you photographed each cell. I recommend using lightly drawn stick figures to plot out your movement for the character. Use tracing paper to do this and then use some clear paper to put over it and get your characters drawn bit by bit until you have each cell right. Then after you check all your frames for quality, you can scan in each image one by one, and use each one as the frames they are.

Yeah, that mention of tracing paper gave me some ideas. I''m going to grab some art supplies tomorrow and take another crack at this; thanks

Chris Barry (crbarry at mts.net)
My Personal Programming Depot

Remember that the clear paper is expensive and you realy just want to draw the major gestures of each character first. Then you can worry about the in-betweening. Also remember, that the frame rate per second should be 30 when you start out so just visualize how fast you want the character to move when you''re trying to get the sceen right. That way you can draw less or more depending on the speed.

Japanese animation used to use a sequence of key gestures that were destinguishable only to a certain character. So, they created those key animation sequences, and reused them as neccisary over a background under the clear cell. Thus, saving cost, effort, and producing a better product. Just look at a Scooby-doo cartoon and you will see what I mean (though it''s an American cartoon that used Japanese techniques).

you might want to check out the "how to" section at www.idleworm.com , it´s very good information for someone starting out with animations.

for starting out i wouldn´t bother with more than 8 or 10 frames per second, it´s more than enough, and anything above that will result in much tedious work. especially at the start you should focus on what frames you can leave out, it´ll help you get an eye for the important stages of an animation.


[edited by - Hase on July 22, 2003 6:30:26 PM]

quote: Remember that the clear paper is expensive and you realy just want to draw the major gestures of each character first. Then you can worry about the in-betweening. Also remember, that the frame rate per second should be 30 when you start out so just visualize how fast you want the character to move when you''re trying to get the sceen right. That way you can draw less or more depending on the speed.

I have an animation class that let''s me use keyframes for the timing and it works very nicely for my programmer''s art so far, so this isn''t a big deal for me

quote: Japanese animation used to use a sequence of key gestures that were destinguishable only to a certain character. So, they created those key animation sequences, and reused them as neccisary over a background under the clear cell. Thus, saving cost, effort, and producing a better product. Just look at a Scooby-doo cartoon and you will see what I mean (though it''s an American cartoon that used Japanese techniques).

Ugh, I hate that This is for a video game though, not a cartoon, so I don''t think it applies.

quote: you might want to check out the "how to" section at www.idleworm.com , it´s very good information for someone starting out with animations.

Nothing I don''t really already know there. I just need to get an idea how to do the drawing, and I''ve got some good ideas now, I could really use some animator''s paper and a light table, but I''ll hopefully get by now; thanks

Chris Barry (crbarry at mts.net)
My Personal Programming Depot