ClicksyPicsWiggle animations and anything old timey!

Above is my progress so far on this animation.  I like the colors, but they’re too monotone and the bag is too blue.  I’m working on cleaning up the colors on the second frame, they’re a bit out of line.  Most of the faded areas have been lightened or darkened with level adjustment layers.  I’ll probably clean them up a little more, especially around his belt area where there was a bit of extra scratching.

While cleaning some scratches and spots, I noticed that dot (left) on his hand was on both frames. It’s a fly, I could probably have a little fun with that, there’s not much room for any other sort of environmental movement.

I’ll probably crop it a bit closer, but I like to keep it big until they get closer to complete.  His hands will have some pretty drastic movement, at least compared to what I’ve done so far.  The blowing movement with his cheeks will also be an interesting challenge. Then the movement of the bag, potentially with moving layers of the pipe and hands above… but that might be too much.  Perhaps I can just adjust the shadow around his arm to create the illusion of inflation/deflation.

I’ve shied away from too much movement for a couple of reasons.  Mostly because the way I create the movement.  I’ll be tracing his hands and making a new layer of them two times, one for each side of the stereo - I’ll just call them frames since that’s what they become in the animation.  Then I make a new layer for each frame recreating what would be under his hand if he’s moving - the background.  Otherwise, when I create the movement, you would see his original hands under the moving hands and well… I’m not really into sci-fi animations yet.  I don’t know if that makes much sense, but when I get to that point I’ll use the animation to illustrate.

The other problem is the movement itself.  I’ll have to work his fingers like like cut out dolls, piecing together joints and creating new skin in the bends then softening up the edges.  Sometimes I’ll warp them but for this that will kill the quality because the amount of warp it would take, the definition would be lost, shadows would blur, etc.

That’s getting a little deep into it, but that’s where I’m at so far.  Would love to hear your thoughts and suggestions.

I’ve ranted a lot in these last few months about having a hard time working on these.  Turns out, I’m allergic to a medicine I’ve been taking during that time.  I knew it was making me spacey and I was having a hard time concentrating, but eventually more obvious signs turned up.  Now I’m back in business.  I’ve been working on a new one for about a week and hope to get it up in the next week.  I’m pacing myself, and for this one the movement will be much more drastic… if I can pull it off.

I’ve talked about taking suggestions and posting my progress on these animations.  Anyone want a sneak preview?  Comment and I’ll post progress on this one.  But if there’s no interest, it’s not worth the trouble.  I could always use the input and critique.