Skate

As the title of this post suggests this one has nothing to do with light or shadows and is something completely different altogether. Why? Because I just wanted to have a bit of fun! This isn’t to say the other ones were not (they were), but they were all quite structured with an end goal/ aim and I really wanted a project where I could loosen up again.

I’ve done several skate clips since I began rotoscoping way back when and because it’s a subject I have an affinity towards, every now and then I like to revisit it. I also used to skate. I tend to experiment heavier on the skate clips than anything else for some reason, so it’s always good to go back to them and see how to progress further. Perhaps because they’re often short, snappy clips which don’t take that long to create, it encourages me to do something I usually wouldn’t do as it doesn’t matter if I ‘mess up’ or do a style I’m not happy with. This clip (for a couple of seconds animation) only took 2.5 hours which is like crazy short in animation terms!

As I often do, I rough out several style frames to get my ideas going. Usually more ideas develop from just putting pen to tablet, so even if I don’t have an idea to start with, after about half an hour of messing, I’ll have lots! Most of these were just line work and some were similar to what I have used before so I wanted to steer clear of those. It was the 6th design when I created the one I used for this project.

Style frame

I used the filled stroke tool and silhouetted each section of the skater in a different colour. None of the other ideas were especially jumping out at me and I seemed really drawn to this one- maybe it was the bright colours- I definitely get distracted by shiny things! It’s not a style I’ve used previously and I thought it would look super cool as a moving piece. The original clip had a lot of motion blur, so drawing it in this manner meant I could be quite rough and it didn’t matter if it wasn’t super detailed- I wanted to get the general impression of the clip down, rather than focussing on the minute details. I decided that this clip wasn’t especially about the intricacies, but more the action of the skater, which I feel came across nicely in the final outcome.

I definitely had some fun with this one and I like to think that comes across too. Watch this space for more (maybe skate clips, maybe other stuff, I’m yet to decide)…