May 7th

This week, I worked less on animating and drawing and more on reading more into techniques and information. I requested The Animators Survival Kit from one of my two local libraries, but it’ll take a little time to get here. Meanwhile, I checked out three beginner’s books from the other library so I could start reading, though they seemed more directed towards younger people or less informed readers who have very little to no experience or understanding of animation, so a lot of the information was things I already knew. I skimmed through the three and decided that one of them was too childish with no new information and instead focused on the other two, which had good basic information. I’m sure The Animator’s Survival Kit will have more in depth information and more helpful tips. However, a few things were helpful, such as teaching the basics of timing each drawing in a fluid way and how to use squash and stretch to make movement more dynamic. Even though I had learned the majority of this from videos, it was good to see it rephrased and reinforced with different examples. I took pictures of the pages that I found the most helpful from these two books, and I’ll include them below once I’ve finished explaining what I did this week.

Besides finding these books, I did draw a bit, but I want to finish this key frame and start on my in-betweens so I can begin to put it all together on the animation app I bought. I did use the app to start a lip sync test using pretty drawn mouths, but I need to fix the audio so the part I’m testing matches up with the music, since the song starts at the beginning of the track  and isn’t adjustable on the timeline. I can’t cut the music from my tablet, but I’ll do it on my laptop using Audacity when I have the time. Then I can match up the lengths of syllables with mouth shapes. When I’ve done all of this, I’ll upload it here so you can see the finished sync test.

Images from the two books: