Walking Wonder

I was so excited to start this unit in animation. That’s exactly what I want to do when I’m out the door and thrown into my own life. I want to be an animator and CGI specialists, hopefully working for Legendary Entertainment, someday. This was a heck of a lot of fun and I know I say that all of my projects take time, but by far, this one was probably the most tedious.

THE PROCCESS

To start, I needed a reference. I’m awful when it comes to drawing people, so to have something to work off of would be ideal for myself. I had a classmate follow me out into the hall, and we filmed each other walking. I then imported that video into the background layer of an Adobe Animate file. I then proceeded to trace myself, I did that every other frame, for a total of 20 frames. I then added my hair. I wanted to give it a little bounce as I walked, so I created it on a separate layer. Of course, my hair didn’t bounce in real life like how I wanted it to in the animation. I learned that the hard way, because I once again, went through all 20 frames trying to trace it, just to find out that when my hair “moved around” in the animation, at times, it would look like a buzz cut, and others it sporadically jumped into an Elvis pompadour. I then went through the frames again, drawing them without the reference video. It took longer than I hoped it would, but it turned out really nice in the end.

After that, I needed color. Naturally, I decide to take the easy way out. I just copied the animation frame, and then pasted it into the layer I would use for colors. Then I took ages trying to throw together the right colors necessary to make the image look right. My color blind eye holes did not do much to assist me in this endeavor. After I took days to just find the right colors, and then use the paint bucket tool to color it in, 20 times, again, it was time to start the next step.

I next needed details to make the image come to life. I needed a face, and that was probably the hardest part. I made a symbol, and placed it on all 20 frames, again. I then proceeded to see what would look natural on the body. Let me tell you, cartoon eyes are not as easy as Mickey Mouse makes it look. I finally found a look that I liked, and then I went through …. all… 20 … frames … AGAIN, and added details. Shadows, highlights, and some fine tuning.

And then I just played the cycle on loop and there you have it! A “basic” walk cycle that took me much longer than what was necessary for anyone else!