Greetings, citizens of 22 to 26 March 2016. Lend me your eyes. No not literally OH GOD that’s horrible put them back. You guys! Ugh!!

This week my attention was split. I’ve been knocking out more AMITS thumbnails and cranking out many rough little bits of 2D animation unrelated to AMITS.

Over the course of the week I’ve been going back to particular scenes in the middle of the story and trying out ideas for what could make those scenes funnier, finding clearer poses, etc. So far the story remains suspiciously stable. Maybe my story tweaking glands have been beaten into submission.

The 2D stuff has been really interesting. Full 2D animation gives you a hell of a lot more flexibility to try things with way less time and effort spent in prep compared with 3D. All it demands is drawing skills.

If I wanted to animate an Easter Quokka bounding around the screen using mesh-and-bone based animation Blender, I’d design it, make a 3D model of it, rig it, rig-weight the rig to the model, animate it, sim fur on it, render it all out, composite it… all in all a few weeks of full time work (assuming the sim behaves which it never does because fur is the devil).

If I wanted to animate the same Easter Quokka in 2D, I’d design it, draw the hell out of it, ink and paint.. and that’s it. In a few hours I’d have a rough pass, certainly something that people would be able to watch and enjoy. Something like this.

Even rough 2D animation could be a powerful tool for experimenting and planning. Aaron Blaise’s excellent animation course was the initial inspiration to give 2D another go, so now I’m rereading the also excellent “Character Animation Crash Course” by Eric Goldberg.

I also landed a copy of “Too Funny For Words” by Frank and Ollie, a follow-up to “Illusion of Life” about how Disney came up with their gags. Personally I don’t really rate Disney’s sense of humour as much as I rate Warner Bros or Tex Avery, but that’s like saying I don’t rate Beethoven or Wagner compared to Debussy – I recognise the craft, it’s just personal taste. 🙂

That’s all for now. 🙂