Why?
Following on from my previous post on this topic, I carried out a further two pieces (see videos below) and felt I had completed what I wanted to achieve with that specific look. If I carried on with similar clips, then I wouldn't have been honing my craft further or pushing my comfort zones. The whole point of me doing these tests is to look at new and different ways of doing things, rather than stick to what I already know. For once I decided to be true to my word! In animation I sometimes struggle to do this, because each short clip takes so long and I don't want to waste time on something which may or may not 'work'. Early this year I realised that my work wasn't really progressing further in terms of aesthetics and differentiation, so the only way I could change my situation was to bite the bullet and go for it. If it doesn't work, I know not to use that style again and if it does, then great, I have a new style to use! In fact, I pretty much wrote the same in a post in April, though I have jumped up another level since.
Something I haven't tried before is watercolour, so I decided to go ahead and create something using that. TVPaint has a fantastic selection of watercolour style brushes which I took full advantage of when creating this piece. As I have been doing recently, I used a piece of footage off my new favourite stock footage site Pexels: 'the World's first inclusive free stock photo and video library'. I love the variety of clips on their site and they are more inclusive and diverse than other stock sites. This is honestly not a sponsored post!
It took a little time to work out what thickness brush stroke to use for the outlines. Watercolour possesses different properties than the solid brush tool I usually use, so it did take a little trial and error. I ended using a 20% thickness with pressure sensitivity, which enabled me to get flowing, realistic lines.
It also took some time to work out how to colour her. I wasn't sure whether I was going to use watercolour for this, or something else. Again, after trial and error, I decided to go ahead with colouring her with watercolour, achieving a full watercoloured look. I think this was the right choice, as I do love the outcome. As the outlines, to choose the right brush thickness for the colouring was a little difficult. If I used a small size, it would end up looking rather blotchy or 'bitty', a look which I really didn't want. Too big and it would have been hard to colour without the brush jumping outside the lines (the watercolour ones tend to be quite jittery). I ended up using a mixture of sizes: a first 'pass' with a larger brush to cover the majority without going too close to the edges, followed by a series of smaller sizes, working my way up to a neat edge.
This 3.8 second clip took twelve and a half hours to complete. I would say that despite being very pleased with this style (and happy that I tried it), it is definitely more time consuming than using a block fill to colour it in. I coloured each frame separately which is why it took so long. I can think of a couple of work arounds, though whether they will achieve a similarly authentic look, I'm yet to find out.
You can watch the video below:
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