For this assignment, I knew I wanted to try animating in a style that was a bit more cartoony than my usual style. This is to show more style diversity in my portfolio, which is super important for trying to find placement.

It took me a while to find an audio I liked, initially I was debating between 2 songs,

I wanted to a part from the second verse of Hayloft II by Mother Mother or the bridge from Hell’s Coming With Me by Poor Man’s Poison. Eventually I settled on this audio from 10 Things I Hate About You.

I edited it down to exactly 11 seconds.

The next thing for me was to determine how I wanted to draw. I decided to not base it off of an existing studio’s style mostly due to a wish of developing my own more cartoony look, and also because I know myself well enough that I would never complete the assignment in time due to taking my time studying the style of both drawing and animation of whichever studio I chose. It’s a plan of mine for over the summer to practice animating in different styles so I can dedicate the proper amount of time to studying.

So, the next step was deciding on a style, so I ended up sketching two characters out. I have to admit, after listening to the audio, I decided to take inspiration from a book called The Cruel Prince, so the two main characters’ appearances are based off of the protagonists Jude and Cardan.

I wanted to get used drawing in this style, so I sketched more and made small adjustments to the designs because I wanted them to be pretty simple so I could focus on the actual animation rather than worrying about consistency. I wanted to focus on it more so I could practice things more intentionally in this animation. Specifically, I wanted to practice overlap, easing and overshooting and settle.

I’ve never done an acting animation before, so I took the opportunity to watch some videos on lip sync, acting in animation and in general paid greater attention to shows that inspire me.

These two videos were the most helpful to me. I found their advice insightful, since I’ve never done lip sync before. Especially Toniko Pantoja’s advice on not drawing every single vowel or consonant, it’s definitely an easy thing to fall in to doing, so I’ll try to be conscious of it during my own animation.

I then took animation reference for the part I thought I’d struggle with the most. (Spoiler, it was and it shows).

The Video (I want to forget this exists of me)