Week 8.5 - Springing into the Future
My friends, after much time, thought, and consideration, I have made a radical change to my technical approach to this project. It is through the input of so many of you reading this that I have been brought to this decision.
I love drawing on paper, and I will never forsake the old ways of animation. But I acknowledge that we live in a more technologically advanced world than the days of my animation idols, and so I must set out to find my own way to adapt to the demands of modern times. The industry standard is digital, using advanced hardware and software, and if I want to succeed, I must learn and utilize those same skills.
Therefore, as of today I am announcing my switch to full digital animation. I will use Photoshop and Premiere as my primary generators for visuals. I have also gone out and purchased a new Wacom - Intuos Pro Paper Edition Pen Tablet. This will allow me to draw straight to digital, however if I ever feel the need, this tablet has the unique ability to transform physical paper and pen images to a digital format without the need for a scanner. A very cool feature that harkens back to what I’m familiar with.
That’s not the end of my tools list. I have received a great amount of well-deserved criticism for the slow and unnecessarily tedious nature of my drawings. So I am going to be utilizing a program called Design Doll. It allows me to easily sculpt and create 3D models in a visual style that is very compatible with my character designs. I can color, shade, and even add some small texture details to the skins of my characters, giving me an instant base to work off of, which cuts out yet another step of the process. And being digital means I can manipulate and add line-art on top of it and color it basically as I’m making it, just like I already do with my environments.
This is the result:
This means I will be able to create aesthetically accurate character frames MUCH faster. By my estimates, I can now complete a fully colored character frame with some basic shading in HALF the time it would have taken me in the past to simply complete the physical inking and scanning of the character. With this increase in efficiency, I am hopeful to speed up the project’s production and stay on track for completion by the end of the semester.
Thanks to everyone for pushing me onto the path I need to succeed. I know I can be stubborn and slow to change at times, but I realize now it’s what I have to do, and I hope the end result will be pleasing. Stick here to continue watching over my production process, and let’s do this! Once again, this is the Undercover Animator signing out.