Thanks to Bleke and his handstand animation!
He reminded me of some earlier work I would like to share and discuss with you.
Often when I should do some serious work I find myself doodling thumbnails and little characters un-consciously. It’s a kind of constant research and test, if I can sketch a wide range of character movements by heart.
Doing the same in an animation program can be fun to - straight ahead animation, see where it leads.
For this I was using an older Krita version, somewhat limited brush stock at that time, but I still liked the pencil brush - and how easy it was to color the first rough sketches. ( Some animation programs only work monochrome.)
From 2017 (no artistic perfection intended, just a study)
Revisiting this after some days I wondered if the movement was too constructed and if the timing was right. So I looked for a live video of hand-walking for reference, but couldn’t find a good one.
What I found instead was a nice gymnastics video. I converted a part of it into an image folder with jpgs and loaded them as animation sequence into Krita. Nice setup for rotoscoping on a different layer:
From 2017 (again: just a study, for exercise)
Just think in what fantastic times we live to have all these tools at hand: The web with tons of videos, free video editors - and Krita. - A Disney animator in the 1940s, rotoscoping over film material should get green and yellow with envy…
Cool! I like how it looks for balance after reaching the handstand.
And now, some unsolicited opinions about rotoscoping:
I don’t mind it. It’s good for study.
The really interesting things however, starts when you begin to make changes to it. Like if you changed the girl into a badger or something. Or if the rotoscoped character interacts with something else you have animated. Or if it interacts with ordinary film like this old music video.
Thank you! And for sharing the old A-HA video! Old but fairly impressive, isn’t it?
For me, rotoscoping is mostly for study purposes and always an in-between-step, because my stories and anims will always take place in a universe of funny characters or at least semi-realistic characters. (A kind of exaggeration is necessary all the time.)
Anyway, at the moment I try to concentrate on my children’s books. There will be a time for animation again in the future, I hope.
BTW: Do you know the software package Cartoon Animator 4? For me it really spoiled the fun of handdrawn animation to some extent. Why struggle so hard when it’s getting so damn easy to get a character into motion…
I didn’t know about Animator 4 until just now. I saw a promotional video about it.
Don’t think it’s a replacement for hand drawn animation, it’s a tool to make Terry Gilliam style animation.
What could be a replacement of hand drawn animation is 3D software and NPR rendering. That takes a lot of skill and work to pull off too if you want it to be good, and you’re not as free in the expression as you are with hand drawn animation.
