THEME
Loops
CONTEXT
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCH6vXjt-BA7QHl0KnfL-7RQ
I referenced the artist behind the k-eke tumblr previously in Character, Place and Simulation but it feels appropriate to bring it up again in the context of specifically trying to create a small loop of a cute animal. Stylistically I differ quite significantly from that artist, but I really love the life and motion they convey in their animations. Simon’s Cat is another animator I really like, I remember watching the originals years ago on youtube and loving how expressive it was. I bring up that as a context because while k-eke adds textures and patterns to their work I just wanted to do black lines, which is what Simon’s Cat (by and large) uses.
METHOD
Having used exclusively photoshop’s animation tools last semester it’s time to branch out and use software that is actually designed for the purpose of animation. I chose Toonboom/Harmony because it seems like it’s an advantageous program to have a working understanding of. I conducted extensive research of watching newborn puppy videos on youtube and then I just jumped into the program, which I had (and still have) zero understanding of.
RESULTS
Making this little gif was like pulling teeth, mainly because I decided not to bother with tutorials and just downloaded Harmony. I kept automatically trying to use my photoshop hotkeys, which would make weird things happen (if anything happened) and I was getting very frustrated with the loss of a lot of functionality that photoshop, for all it’s flaws, provides me in an intuitive manner. It took a frankly ridiculous amount of time to fix all of the issues I kept creating, but I do feel like I have a slightly stronger grasp on the program that will be further honed as the semester goes on.
As a piece of work I am not unhappy with my results, because even though there’s some weird head deformations and a couple of my frames just don’t exist anymore for some reason it’s still a puppy and that’s cute.
