‘Bear’ Animation Week 9

Last week I mentioned I had a 156 frame shot to complete and this week, I managed to finish it, along with 10 others, making this week my highest achieving week in terms of shot completion yet!! And that was working only 4 days- I still had one day where I mainly edited photos. I am so, so, soooo pleased with my progress and it just makes me want to keep going.

I’ve passed the halfway mark (which is mega exciting) and the end is definitely in sight- or at least it is for the outlines. Though I do have a number of tricky shots still to do- trust me, it’s not all plain sailing from here. I’ve been saving the harder ones until I really have to do them. I think that’s a good decision though, as when I started the project I doubt I’ll have been able to tackle them, or not at least as well as I’ll be able to at this point in the process. It’s taken a while to get into the flow of the character and what details to include and so on. I feel there are going to be a few shots I’ll revisit for a bit of a touch up- the earlier stuff isn’t as complex as the current stuff, so I think I’m going to go back in and add some more lines on some of the shots. I think that goes with the territory of animating on a long project like this. Maybe for future projects, I’ll do some ‘warm up’ shots first to really get the mannerisms and style locked, so it will appear more consistent. That’s not to say that this looks all over the place (it doesn’t), but there are some shots I do want to adjust.

But I suppose that’s just evidence of me growing and developing as an artist anyway- whenever I look back on previous work, there’s always things I’d do differently if I were to revisit the project…

Back to what I was saying at the top of this post about finishing a quite lengthly/ difficult shot, I’ve collated a couple of ways in which I tackled it (for anyone reading this and in the same boat):

Firstly: to work on it for a short amount of time daily. Anything between 30 minutes to 2 hours can really make a difference and sometimes 30 minutes was all I was able to handle a day for this particular shot. But because I chipped away at it each day, I got it finished. Working on it in this manner made the shot feel not as daunting as if I were to say section off 7 hours in a row to work on it. It would have put me right off and perhaps even lead me to avoid working on the project altogether. The smaller chunks were much easier to handle, so would highly recommend this if you’re stuck on something.

Secondly, to work on it when you have the most energy/ can’t make any excuses for not doing it. Which for me is first thing in the morning. Mornings are when I work best and my energy slowly depletes throughout the day, so I tend to schedule all the hard tasks first thing, ending in easier/ more relaxing ones in the afternoon. If you don’t know when you work best, try out several different times and I’m sure you’ll soon find a pattern which uses your energy in the most efficient way.

That’s all for now, so will leave you with this timeline screen grab update (so much orange on there now)!!