#26 Tinder Browsing

This took so long...

You like? Again, I tried experimenting with animating light. I don't like having to post it as a gif, because I have to compress the file a lot, and the colors don't look as cool as on Photoshop. And speaking of Photoshop, look at all the layers I had to use for this gif:

I might talk about how I made this on the next post, because I'm out of time for this week.

Peace.

EDIT: By the way, I don't do this. It just came to me while thinking about a way to animate light. Seriously. I don't... Eh whatever, you won't believe me.

#25 Sneak Peak

I haven't finished my latest gif, so I'll just post a picture of where I'm at right now. I'll explain the process I went through next time. It'll be a while before I post again, because next week is Spring Break!

See you soon.

#24 How to Animate using masks

I'm coining a new term, ninja animation. It's the type of process where masks are used to animate....

Get it?...

I thought I'd show how I do it here since that's sort of what this blog is for. It's also not that complicated.
________________________________________________________

TUTORIAL

Step 1: Make your drawing with the usual tool you use to draw. For me, it's the default brush tool.

 Step 2: Make a new layer above it and then use the lasso tool to mask around the drawing.

Step 3: Fill in the mask with any base color. I choose to use a skin color, so later I only have to color in the clothes' color.

Step 4: Move the layer with the original sketch above the one with the base color. We do this to see where everything is supposed to go.

Step 5: This is the cool part. I like this option that Photoshop has. Select the layer with the base color, then click on the checkered symbol next to where it says "lock". This means that if you try to draw on that layer, you'll only be able to draw where color has already been placed.

Step 6: Color your object appropriately.

Step 7: I just chose to add some detail here. You don't have to do this.

And Ba-da-bing. There it is, a neat way to color in shapes without needing lines. And remember that if you're going to animate like this, call the process you used 'ninja animating'. I'll feel special if you do.

#23 Needing ideas

So about this gific, Delta... Instead of taking five weeks to do it, I finished in three days. That's something, huh? I don't know how I overestimated the time I would take to do it by that much. I'm pretty proud of myself. Now, I think, is a pretty good time to self-reflect on how it turned out:

Looking back, I think I rushed on it. No, actually, I did rush. Part of the reason why I finished it so early was so that I could present it for this other school project. The deadline for that happened to be on the day I posted the gific. I wasn't planning on completing it that early, but once I noticed it was possible to submit it for the other project, I set out to finish in that week. So that happened.

In terms of technical stuff, I think the animation could've been better. I was animating from 12 fps to 2 fps. I don't think two frames per second can even be considered animation.  That's more like slideshow frame time. Furthermore, all of the strips aren't completely clean. Colors and lines sometime go outside their panel on accident. I also wish I had animated the words, but that would've brought a lot more work. As a whole, more detail would've been better. Specially with shadows. I wanted to put more of them.

Beggars can't be choosers though. I decided to give up some quality so I could finish on time. And I guess that's that.

Onto my next project!
___________________________________________________________

I wasn't aware I would be able to make more stuff once I finished Delta. Now there's like four weeks left for me to start on the next season on learning PS, and I have no idea what to do with it.

But now that I think about it (it's been two days since I wrote the stuff above) I think I want to focus on making an animation paying attention to light. This idea has been on my mind since I saw a short movie called The Dam Keeper. They did something special with animation and that is that they didn't just animate lines, they animated form. That film is the only one I can find right now that does this so... elegantly. It's enough to go off of, I think.

Something like this...

 12fps

I think this even incorporates more of what Photoshop has to offer, so that's pretty cool. I'll try to make something with more pizazz next time.