Knowing I'll have to eventually draw something more than bouncing balls, I've been practicing headshapes in the style of the Preston Blair book:
And Preston Blair pear-shaped bodies:
I want to come up with a character that follows the generic construction principles but isn't a mouse, a duck or a rabbit. I've been thinking "dinosaur", but haven't got it "cute" yet:
And it's a bit too complex for quick drawing.
Something else I've been thinking of is a dog that's almost all head, kind of like Bandit on "Jonny Quest" but even less body.
Obviously this is all still in the larval stage. Lots of work to do.
My first bouncing ball of the new era. A bouncing ball with no squash and no stretch. This is all on 2's except for the last micro bounces at the very end.
I think the 2's made it harder to get a feeling of impact on the bounces. It's also difficult bringing the ball to a stop. The tiny adjustments you can make in CG are tough to do in hand-drawn.
I've been doing 3D animation for some years now, but I still admire the freedom of hand drawn character animation. I'm going to start repurposing what I've learned about timing, posing and animation principles while doing CG and see what I can do in 2D.
I will be using some 2D computer tools like Flash, ToonBoom Studio, Plastic Animation Paper and various paint programs to enable the process, but I won't be using any automated inbetweening powers they may have. This will be all about drawing by hand.
I studied at AnimationMentor.com in 2005-2006 and learned quite a bit, but did all my exercises in 3D CG. I saw a few students stick their toe in 2D there, but they retreated to CG pretty fast. It just wasn't possible to get a weekly assignment done well and on time in 2D.
But I don't have any deadlines now, so I'm going to start by redoing my AnimationMentor assignments in hand-drawn animation. This was my first bouncing ball at AnimationMentor:
I think I can do a bouncing ball in 2D. But full blown character animation wasn't far down the line. We'll see how it goes!
