This is the current animation I have done so far:
I am really pleased with my advances so far. In 1 week I have achieved to animate more than 30 seconds, for me, that is a good time. I feel I have become faster and more intuitive on my keyframes. The first scene seems more fluent because I spend more time on it than in the other two. I want to establish a sense of movement and timing when (if) I find my animation assistant.
The 2D animation will be done entirely on TV Paint. I have been struggling with the process of learning it. But today I feel it has been worth it. I have found a method to achieved optimal results with my animation skills.
Here are the interface and some of the key aspects I manage to understand in order to get the timing and performance right.
Pic 1. TV Paint Interface:
To be honest, they said TV Paint was intuitive, but for me, that is not the case. It has SO many different elements I have to understand and manage that I struggle the first week to achieve what I got.
Pic 2. Close up of TV Paint Layers:
I started animating straight away before understanding the structure of the software. It seems that is designed to animate on stages, and that took me a while to understand. So after trial and error, I manage to do a layer for the layout of the key poses and the rough animation, thus a layer for the cleanup and some extremes and breakdowns.
Pic 3. Close up of TV Paint Layers and the light table:
The moment of enlightenment came when I got the grip of the light table. This little fellow has many options, but in order to create better breakdown poses and some in-betweens, I use this feature. The light table resemblance the traditional way of doing Animation. Consist of using a "light", to show the previous and the next drawings to create an accurate illustration so the artist can get the volume and proportions of the character appropriately.
Now I think I can do faster animation if I continuously remind myself of not investing much time on details but the overall of the scene. Details come last.
