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'How I Animate' --Model Making

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This is by no means an instructional post, or even the best way to do things, but it is the way that I operate typically.

I draw with a mouse, and have been doing so for about 5 years now. I'm pretty comfortable with it and just personally prefer it over a pad (which I've never tried--bias WIN). That said, working with a mouse has directed me towards a style where I recycle symbols and objects I already spent some time drawing well rather than drawing new symbols from scratch. Inevitably, I do have to draw a lot but with a nice library of models, I can skip a lot of the tedious work and only draw what I absolutely need at the moment.

To make a model, I first think of a dynamic pose that would provide a useful stock image to use as a foundation for a majority of the animation. In this example, Ima Darling (the character I just drew above) will spend the first 1/3rd of the animation on a moped (aka The Darling-Mobile). So I needed a model of Ima on a moped to help with my future work.

I started off vectoring a Vespa (FLCL), and then drew a rough stick man of my character on top of it. Sometimes I'd have to pose for a moment myself, just so I can get a feel of the angles.

Then I keep redrawing over this stickman with higher quality "mouse sketches," each on a new layer, and deleting the previous as I go. I might do this about three times until I get something that looks right and believably interacts with the moped.

Then I start dragging any available symbols I have (such as Ima's face) over mouse-sketch. After that, I'll start drawing the rest of the symbols in by hand, and typically I stick with bold, contrasting color fills just to make sure I get the shape right. I'll fill in the shapes with the more accurate colors from my pallet later on.

Should I need a reference to properly draw an object, I'll click and drag it unto the stage. For this case, I needed a helmet, black and white stripped stockings, and, of course, the moped I drew over.

When I'm done, I go right to "global shading," which is a method I've worked out and I plan to use for the first time in this animation. It's subtle, but it adds a great level of depth and finish. I look forward to implementing this technique into the actual animation. :3
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ShiftyTheChangeling's avatar
Did this animation ever happen? :°