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October 19, 2014

L'employé du Moi Animation: Part 2

As I mentioned in my previous post, my French-language publisher, L'employé du Moi is currently raising funds for their 15th anniversary exhibit at next year's Angoulême International Comics Festival.  As part of that exhibit, each of their authors is working on a small animation based on their logo.

I was hanging out behind the table all day today with my wife Claire at the East Bay Mini Maker Faire, and I brought this project along with me.  I was able to tape my peg bar to a clip board.  I didn't have my lightbox, but I got on okay by just flipping really quickly between two drawings.  Here was my setup:


I was able to make it through all sixteen frames, cleaning up the rough animation.  There are still some problems with the legs, but at this point I think they are as good as they're gonna get.  I also tried to add some "counteraction," which I think was pretty successful in the tip of Argus's beard and his hood, but got pushed too far with his dagger.  I also added a blink which I'm gonna take back out. With a sequence this short (16 frames) it just happens too often.  I'm learning to "Keep It Simple, Stupid." Anyway, here it is:


I'm gonna blame the squishiness of Argus's head on the fact that I didn't have a lightbox.  I'll probably make one more pass to tighten that up a bit, and then also take out the blink, mellow out the dagger movement and add the final details. Then I'm going to ink it!

I took out all of the extra movement from the cart (swinging handle, bouncing carrots) and just inked four frames of this to loop on its own layer.  The jiggling you see is just natural human error in my hand, which I think looks cool.  I also moved the little lump of built-up snow in front of the sled to the ground layer (animated with Argus) so that it has a unique 16-frame pattern instead of looping every four frames, which I think would have been distracting.

I've probably already spent too much time on this thing, but I still have a lot more I want to do with it, so I'll continue posting as I work on it.  Onwards!

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