Production Diary: Progress reels

For the next few weeks, I would have to animate the introductory scene of our story. Because I hadn't done 2.D for a long while this was quite a challenge for me. I wasn't that used to working on Flash either, and to be honest I don't particularly like using it. This is mostly due to the fact that it is extremely limited in comparison to other adobe products like PhotoShop, mostly in terms of brushes etc. Nevertheless it is is an effective program for 2D animation. 

These are the opening keyframes for the piece. As I stated before when talking about the animatics we thought it best to use the animatic as a starting point for where each keyframe would be. Of course the timings would have to be altered in certain areas, but it was a start. 

One thing I did regret doing though was while doing these keyframes, I made the mistake of organising my frames into extremely complicated folders, one folder per keyframe. I later realised that when the time came to do inbetweening that this would cause great confusion in my animating (and wreak havoc on my N:Drive). I later rectified this by creating layers for each element like the characters, but the time it took to do so wasn't very beneficial. 

I have made a bit of progress on the inbetweening here. One thing I found difficult was ensuring the characters would be consistent with the designs and the other segments. In this particular scene, the transition to the Shaman scaring the boy is different to the keyframes. Instead of walking behind him, which would have taken a lot of time to animate, the shaman jumps behind him instead, which actually makes the scene more intense, especially when we see the frightened reaction of the boy when he realises the elder is right behind him. One of the things we changed from the animatic was where we see the boy's eye. Originally we would see the eyes of the shaman's mask, which then cut to a shot of him staring straight into the shaman. However, I thought that because the boy would stare at the hand beforehand, the hand would be the shape inside his iris, which would swirl into the shaman's mask eye. The imagery would be more surreal that way.   

More progress made here, rapidly approaching the end by this point. I have added follow-through animation to the hairs on the shamans mask. I have also added more inbetweens to the boy's run cycle at the end. I found construction layers to be very beneficial in this piece, especially in terms of the run cycle and the jump.  

It is always beneficial to look at reference when animating. So I looked Richard Williams book 'the animation survival kit' for references on run cycles. Because of how quick the run needs to be, only the keyframes with a handful of inbetweens were needed to do it.  

I also needed to look at reference for a jump as well.