I’ve been kicking round the idea of animating my life drawing for some time. This week I decided to bite the bullet and give it a try. The step that had been missing was inking up my sketchbook work. Once I had a properly cleaned up image, I could scan and process it in Photoshop, vectorise it in Illustrator then pull it into Flash to be chopped up, rigged and animated (I’ll then be using After Effects to cut a “how-to” video in the following blog post). This is the result:
Static 32 frame walk cycle
Left to Right walk across screen
Close up of hips
Here’s the original image. I made a point of trying to stay as faithful as possible to the original by not re-drawing any of the parts to make it easier to animate – like adding a third buttock for the extra leg for instance. It took 2 full days work to complete the cycle but I’m really pleased with the way it turned out. It’s got a weird spider-like feeling to the cycle as it moves across screen. Its an odd image in the first place which wrong foots you with its extra leg (no pun intended…) and the animation supports and enhances that vibe. Good times. I built the piece in such a way to allow me cut a step-by-step walk through video which I’m working on at the moment. I’ll post this up soon.
Dave Cropley 