The Animated Self: Drawing Frames Completed!

Once I had finished cropping my video, the animation was going to be a whopping 199 frames long. I got started with drawing and I was happy to be using paper again having been glued to a computer for so long. This happiness soon wore off once I had gotten a couple of days into the drawing. I was soon getting frustrated as the drawing was taking a lot longer than I had expected as I was taking a while to figure out the movements and trying to make her look realistic. However I powered on and worked out how many frames I was going to have to complete a day in order to finish with time to spare so I could edit the animation, which was roughly around 20/30. 

In the end I actually finished drawing a couple of days before I had planned to, and once I had I thought it would be best to photograph the frames using Dragonframe rather than using a scanner, as this would be a much quicker, less painful process. 

Photographs of Frames

This was the first time I had seen my animation run through and I was so happy with how it looked. It really made me feel that all the hard work and frustration was worth it. Obviously there was still work to do as the video had my hand in the odd frame, it was slightly orange and it wasn't cropped down to the right size.

First Edit of Frames

I edited the levels of the frames in Photoshop, and from here I was going to remove the surrounding background of the page, so I could incorporate a background that I was going to create based on my initial plan. I then realised this was going to be harder than I had first anticipated. I tried to click the background by using the magic wand tool, but it would select random parts of the background, even when I decreased/increased the tolerance of the tool. This meant removing the background was going to be quite difficult, and the only way I could see getting around this problem would be to use the eraser tool. This was going to be incredibly time consuming as it was going to be a fiddly job, so rather than do this I decided to rotoscope my drawn frames in Photoshop. The logic was that this would be quicker than using the eraser tool, and when it came to adding colour (hopefully) I would have a much smoother edge to work with. So I went at it.

Half way through Rotoscoping my drawn footage, Mike came to talk to me about my progress and asked WHY I was redrawing my frames. It was only then that I realised that my original photographs of my frames weren't shot at the right size. I then realised how much easier I could have made my work for myself. I knew when I started that there had to be an easier way around my problem, but because I couldn't figure it out I had started Rotoscoping not wanting to waste time, as I only had a week and a bit until my deadline. In the future if I am going to animate traditionally, I am definitely going to have to remember to check the settings of my camera because I could have said so much time had I have done this correctly the first time around.

First Rotoscoped Attempt

Even though this probably wasn't the easiest way to overcome the problem I had, I'm still very proud of my progress and how quickly I was able to get this finished. It only took me two days to Rotoscope all 199 frames and I'm still in a position where I can edit my animation further before my deadline. From here I need to sort out the fact that the lines in the background can be seen through the objects in the foreground. To do this I shall have to either erase them in each frame where appropriate, or I could fill the objects in. Both ways sound like they are going to be quite time consuming, and because I am aiming to have the animation coloured for our exhibition, it makes sense to me to just start colouring the frames now. 

I'm going to start by colouring the girl as she is predominately in front of the objects in the scene and this will sort my problem of the background showing through. From here I will then colour the background and add in any necessary details.