I took the most time with shot 4. I was inspired by a quote from Richaard Williams The Animators Survival Kit
“Rough drawings have lots of seductive quality, blurs, pressure of line , etc. But when their polished and tidied up you usually find there wasn’t much there to begin with.”
I had taken so much time to do the ruff pass for short 2 in adobe animate, If I had done cleaner drawings from the start it would have made clean up easier and saved time.
I followed the character design sheet for Fern created by Cloe Malard-Fowler
Link to Cloe’s Blog https://blogs.ulster.ac.uk/cloemalard/
Fern’s wand was designed by Amy Long Link to Amy’s blog https://blogs.ulster.ac.uk/amylong/
Art Below by Amy
Bellow are warm-up drawings I did to get used to drawing the character.
I kept in mind the squash and stretch principles as explained by Aaron Blaise in this video below when drawing ferns expressions. I thought about how dramatically I could squash and stretch (features like the fat on her cheeks) and what features were skull that if it were squashed and stretched the anatomy would be broken.
The heavy breathing action took alot of experimentation at first the action was too fast and subtle. I exaggerated and held the inhale and exhale frames making the action clear to the viewer.
I used smear frames to illustrate how quickly Fern bursts through the door in fright. Illustrated by a page from The animaters survival kit below.
If I had more time I would have animated Fern struggling to get up and running out of the shot, creating a smoother transition to the next scene but I had to meet my deadlines for the shot.
The main action of the body and face were animated using the pose to pose method giving me(the animator) and the character a clear sense of direction. I used straight ahead animation for the secondary action because the speed is not as easily predicted. I animated the bow skirt and strand of hair on separate timelines which allowed me to manipulate their speeds that convey the weight of the fabric and hair.
Youtube link to shot 4 process
This is the only shot I was ambitious enough to attempt to colour. I used photoshop to make the colour pallet created by Amy Long grayscale to match the tones in my teammate’s work.
Link to Amy’s Blog https://blogs.ulster.ac.uk/amylong/