test animation

Below are some test animation shots I did to try out the animation and see what it looks like when all put together. I have changed the background a little since I did this animation and intend to make it better still, however it is nice to see it working.

First I did quite a few versions of this small section to check the movement and the best method. I was most happy with the version below which I did in Toon Boom and I think this is probably the best method to use in production.




I then started to colour the scenes as I really wanted to have at least a small section of coloured animation finished by the end of term so that I could really see what it could end up looking like.I began to do this by exporting the frames out and lining and colouring them in photoshop.



However the characters were coming out with quite a thick line and not looking quite as hand drawn as the example character designs do. Andy then showed me how in Toon Boom you can add textures to the line you use, and this would save time exporting out frames and make the drawings look more hand drawn and textured, generally a bit nicer than having heavy black outlines. So I worked through these and roughly drew out the dog character using a few different textured lines to see which worked nicely.




Using one of these I then continued to clean up and colour the characters in toon boom and straight away I could see a difference in the result from the beginning frames where I used photoshop. I think it will take time to get used to working in this way as I find it much harder to colour in toon boom as I think its main purpose is for animating, however it gives nicer results if the time is taken to get used to how it works and I think the animation will generally look better with this technique.