Alright, first post.
This is a blog to commemorate my high school animation class, including projects I've completed, which I will post about.
My first animation project was a flipbook drawn on a post-it note booklet.
The 'story' is this: Dog-critter approaches apple, and prepares to munch down. Apple, of course, grows arms and legs and runs away. Critter sits down, confused. It's not all that complicated, but hey, it's only supposed to be 50 pages.
What did I learn?
Well, it was like a crazy game of telephone. My dog-creature slowly morphed from an exoskeletal doodle to a gummy-style Fleischer Brothers thing, to something that actually looked like an animal, but much smaller than the original. And also more adorable. I've decided that it was an unintentional sequel to another student's flipbook, which was a stick-person growing and shrinking, saying, "Remember to eat fruits and vegetables." Then they left and came back, asking, "Did you remember? To eat fruit? Or you'll shrink!" And then they shrunk away. So Mr. Critter shrank because he didn't get his fruit.
It was interesting to try and make the movements similar to a dog's, but I think it only resembles an actual animal if the animal is drunk and has a bad leg.
It turned out basically like I expected; re-drawing the dog every page was more time-consuming than was warranted by the project, but I think I learned more. I don't think I would change anything; more accuracy on the drawings is nigh-on impossible without thinner paper, and otherwise would take WAY too long. I might use simpler shapes next time, but on the other hand, I'm glad I tried to do something complicated to start with, because I enjoyed really exploring the animation process.
Later on, I think it would be cool to scan each image into Flash as a keyframe and maybe fill in the frames a little, but otherwise leave it alone as a digital record of this project.
'Bye.
-Bug