Visualising the Strings (Illusion of Life: Week 12 Practice)

From the get go, I wanted to test animating flowing lines for the strings, as I feel like it depicted the "flow" of bowed strings really well.

This was my process:

1. My first few tests were to slow, with too little curves and movement for the animated line
2. Really liked the spirals near the end (around 0:38) and wanted to keep it
3. Tried another brush - nope.
4. The last few experiments were getting there in terms of timing, but not perfect
5. Really liked the ink trails brush
6. Duplicated it into four repeating ink trails to represent the string quartet

I had a lot of trouble with this week's experiments. Spent a lot of time (like more than 10 iterations) just trying to get the timing right, and I just couldn't seem to do it due to my limited animation skills. Also wanted to implement some variations in speed where it goes quicker during straight paths and slower in curved paths, but couldn't quite get that working either.

Stop: Stop animating without any prior planning.

Start: Obviously I need more practice with this area, but start planning things out before animating. Maybe that'll help with the timing too.

Keep: Keep practicing.