As some of you may already know, I took my very first *Animation* class this semester. It was entirely hand-drawn, extremely time-consuming and just SO MUCH FUN! :) Above is a lil' video I put together of a bunch of my first exercises and camera tests, and at the bottom of this post is a link to the final 1-minute film I created. Every frame is an individual drawing or layering of drawings. To bring it to life, we shot our drawings frame-by-frame with an Oxberry 16mm camera at 24 frames per second. Our final film was supposed to be 1 minute in length, roughly 12 drawings per second, not including backgrounds and other layers. Like I said, very time consuming, but ultimately very rewarding!
When I was animating the final piece, I had a rough idea of what I wanted the story to be and what kind of things would *come to life* but I discovered that as I animated, wonderful new ideas would pop into my head and I'd end up drawing something that I never had imagined. I told this to my professor, Mr. Fred Burns, which is when he told me that he believes animation is a lot like dreaming. The very act of animating activates a certain part of your imagination that usual lies dormant . . . like dreaming during a deep sleep . . . . I suppose that's how it is with most acts of creation, but this reminder was a beautiful thought.
It's funny because I never thought I'd get into film-making and moving images, but here I am! Who knows where this will take me... ?
November 11, 2010: My date with the Oxberry to shoot my final film took exactly 6 hours .. whew! *
Cleaned-up scan of my animation slate that appears at the beginning of every exercise. Real-life version + Inverted version ;)
