This task was to use a video or gif as a reference to create an animation of a human figure moving in a way that required varying spacing between the keyframes. It took me a long time to choose which clip to use, I searched through the site Bodies in Motion and made sketches of the extreme poses bit I realised I wasn't making sketches that were as successful as I wanted them to be so I moved onto going through Youtube clips frame by frame to study a movement in a ballet performance.
Here are some pages of experimental sketches I made before animating:
I then went on to create sketches of a clip from Talbot's A Winter's Tale on Youtube, making screenshots of some of the key frames and extremes and working from them in Photoshop. The original video is below and the movement is about 19 seconds in as the ballet dancer jumps.
Here is the sketch I made of the basic breakdown of the jump:
Once I had decided upon this one I went through and made more detailed notes on the keyframes within the video and where I should add inbetweens for timing. I chose this movement as when you go through frame by frame you can see how many changes there are in steps taken and positioning of limbs that go unnoticed when watching ballet live, it was interesting just to study all the tiny details a ballerina will take to do one jump. I also didn't think I would be stretching myself to a state of frustration due to an overly complicated motion, a couple of steps, a jump, and a land should be a good starting point for me to understand timing in a complex movement.
I didn't have to make too many frames between the keyframes I had picked out as it was such a quick movement. I focused on just capturing the body's form when I started properly animating it and chose to use two graphite sticks to draw it for a messier feel, one was more precise than the other and allowed me to draw the hands more clearly. The only version I have of this stage in the animation is a quick test I made on my phone and is below:
I then eliminated some of the frames I didn't think were necessary as they were slowing it down, and began to add the clothing over the top of my sketches. Although I liked working with graphite to make smudges and excuse my sketchy style it was frustrating the I couldn't entirely rub out the body behind the clothing I was adding. I should have used lighter lines in the test above, making it easier to make any changes as well as add clothing without the partially rubbed out remains of before. I also noticed my scale was off, the dancer begins the clip smaller than he is at the end but as I had put so much effort into it already and didn't want to waste more paper I decided it would be something I would deal with in post. The filmed animation before I edited it to change the scaling is below.
I then edited it in Premiere Pro, changing the scale and adding some contrast to make the smudge lines more noticeable.
I had originally wanted to make this piece on coloured paper, maybe with chalk and charcoal, but realised it would be hard to work that way on a lightbox as the light wouldn't be able to get through the sheets of paper as easily. Whilst in Premiere I played around with the settings and created a mock version of this with the tint effect.
It would have been nice to make the white lines a little clearer, similar to the high contrast version from before to make it really feel smudged like chalk would have been, but as a first attempt I think it worked well and is a method worth revisiting in the future.
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