Full animation
When creating this piece, I had to keep in mind that I had a time requirement for the animation. The required length of the animation was only thirty to forty-five seconds long. Additionally, I had to have some sort of audio to go along with the scene, whether it be talking, music, or some other type of sound. The problem I faced, at first, was getting an idea of what I wanted to put together. I could not decide what subjects I wanted to focus on or what type of theme I wanted to go for. I ultimately decided to try to create a friendly and sweet animation. I went through the process of creating a scene of some animal friends playing in the snow, but it proved to be difficult to use animals as the main subjects. I had no idea how they moved, and I couldn’t go out and observe them like I would have wanted to. I decided to scrap the entire idea and use human characters I had already developed in my own time. I did a copious amount of research on how to draw facial expressions and body language to fit the emotions of the scenes. I needed to find a faster way to draw my characters, and while studying, the use of quick sketching proved to be quite useful. When creating the base for my characters, simple shapes and rough lines helped form bodies. Later, I cleaned them up with the lasso and eraser tool. I needed to find a song that fit the theme of ex-lovers becoming friends again after a long time. The song that I ended up choosing is Godspeed by Frank Ocean, and I picked this song because of the lyrics, wanting to signify forgiveness and healing. I created scenes of past and present relations between the two characters in the animation. There is a lot of emotion and tension between the two, but in the end, they become content with where they are in the present.
here you can see screen captures of the full animation. It was important to capture certain emotions within these characters. I wanted to create a sense of tension between the two, like with the scene of them seeing each other at a party or function of sorts. As the animation progresses, it gives a sense of forgiveness and healing, and you can really see that during the last scene.
Above are some screen recordings of the sketching process. You can also see the cleane up process as well as the animation frames.
This is the fully rendered cover for the animation. It's difficult to animate using full color than just doing sketches or line art. This piece alone took about an hour and a half to complete.