This update is the first weekly update on my short film “Relax.” Whether I will update once a week remains to be seen, but setting the goal is a good start.
Above is the construction of first shot from the film. The film will open on a black screen with the sounds of the city in the background then cut up from black to the main character stepping forward. The image shows the first and second steps in the process, layout and rough animation.
- First I draw out the basic shot in my sketchbook. Sometimes I’ll even register the shot in my sketchbook and draw a few of the keyframes. Since I only get so many hours a day to animate, I try and plan out the shot as much as I can while I’m on the train, on a lunch break, so on.
- After scanning all the material in, I break everything down in Photoshop and draw over each keyframe with the distinctive blue.
Note: Why would I draw in Photoshop using blue, Non-Photographic blue, which is meant for sketches that are supposed to be erased when scanned/photocopied? Am I daft? No there is a point. Practically, the two hues let me layout a sketch then draw over it more carefully in clean-up. Also, for this film, the second hue will remain to pull the character out from the background.
- In the image above you can see all the frames overlaid on each other after I’ve drawn and timed them out in Photoshop. Yes I animate in Photoshop, in a later article I will go into depth on why Photoshop has evolved into a tremendous platform for creating “hand-drawn” animation.
Shot Layout in Sketchbook
In later posts I’ll go into the clean-up and color processes and get into the 3D animation, backgrounds and last but not least, compositing.
Whitney Krape
