Johanna Gan - Exercise 4

Here is my exercise 4.  I included the stages it took to get to the final, with the final in the front and the end (as JK mentioned it's nice to see).  It's definitely a challenge as I'm not only doing the animation exercises but also forced to draw on the computer (a big challenge for me), draw for animation (another challenge I've never officially put into practice until now), sharing the drawings on more highly viewed public site (yikes!) while expanding my Toon Boom knowledge.  A lot of learning going on!

With that said, the original intent was to make it look like the dog posted in the Facebook event for exercise 4, so you can see that in the first clip (very rough), but I became a bit frustrated as my character designing skills have never been tested up to this point (and I didn't really plan it out).

I wanted to start over so the second part I thought, I really ought to keep it simple; it's a "simple head turn" exercise, yet I was compelled to try a zip turn (Richard Williams, p. 96)/smear (à la Chuck Jones), so you might be able to see it in the pointy noised example in the middle (again very rough).

Frustrated again at my lack of character design and tool (software) using ability, I decided to work on paper.  Luckily, when I had a more steady income I purchased the Walt Disney's Nine Old Men: The Flipbooks, and for the first time since buying it I pulled it out to see if there were any cases of head turns I could "copy".  (Learn from the best, right?)  To my surprise the first book I pulled out was Milt Kahl and the sample was none other than 101 Dalmatians and the first frames were of a head turn!  So, the final (minus ears because I didn't want to do the overlap stuff right now) is  more based on Pongo.  (and yes, the 2nd drawing in this section is a bit rough... I think it makes him look a bit surprised. haha)

I'm a writer so thanks for reading this rather lengthy post, and alas, without further ado...



Animation 51 #4 from Johganna on Vimeo.