I love cel animation. I love it and I can’t do it. Every year or so I get the itch to try a walk cycle (the most fundamental part of hand-drawn animation). And every year I get bummed out because it looks truly awful. It always shows me how poor my drawing is, and how much I rely on the computer to time out everything in between keyframes.
This is my 2012 walk cycle. The arms are jerky and don’t really swing back and forth with weight. It’s not amazing, but it’s the first time I’ve ever not wanted to quit being an animator after doing one of these.
When I was about 7 years old I was looking for books on magic tricks in the school library. I got to the right area, but one section over. There was a giant book on the work of MC Escher. I spent a lot of time looking at that book.
Card Dance for hatching, Vegas for contour lines.
Created with CC Glue Gun. It works like Write-On but the stroke width settings can be animated for each part of the stroke.
The first of (hopefully) several experiments finding uses for the lame plugins that come packaged with After Effects.
Leaving aside the need to earn money, the thing about being a writer or artist is that you can do what you want, when you want, all day every day. There is no difference between work and holiday. You’re always on holiday and you’re always working. Give or take a vowel, vocation and vacation are…
(Source: The New York Times)
