Well golly, this is still in a sloppy state, in so many ways, but I really need to move on to my next bit of practice (or maybe the 11-second contest if the April sound file appeals to me). I think I was fairly happy with the movement early on, but for me the hard part was keeping Mary looking consistent from frame to frame. I didn’t design her for animation, and if I really wanted to use her, I should have drawn a model sheet in advance, and really nailed down how she’s supposed to look from different angles.
I don’t usually think about my age, but when I do, I picture myself as…a cheerful prospector? Seriously, someone asked me today how old I’d be at my next birthday, and when “35” came out, it sounded really, really weird to me. (Commence Aunts telling me how young I am.)
I did a lot of work on my spider-squashing animation this morning. Don’t worry, that’ll be finished soon, but as usual I’m doing a lot of learning and revising along the way. One thing I’m doing to facilitate that is animating in vague scribbles, rather than spending too much time laboring over each drawing. That way I won’t hesitate to revise drawings or throw them away completely. Once I have the motion exactly how I want it, I can start to worry about filling in the details.
Had a little better luck with hands today; rereading the hands section in The Mad Art of Caricature reminded me of some simple methods for considering the structure of hands (such as: the two sides of your palm look like upside-down chicken drumsticks!). Still, I feel like I’m back to square one; it’s almost like I need to come up with an exercise rotation to improve and retain these essential skills.
Tonight I practiced drawing hands, with some truly terrible results. Maybe I’ll just avoid them from now on? Sometimes I wonder when I’m going to graduate from Drawing 101!