Thumbnailing the time away

Background and time lapse animation

I've recently been asked to do a time-lapse animation for a music video.

The plan is to basically draw up a forest/garden scene in TVpaint frame by frame to create a gradual animation. Revealing the environment slowly to the music. 

The guy specifically wants this to be done in a similar style to Winnie The Pooh's animation series so I decided to try to learn how the style works as well as deciding on the best compositions to use for the final drawing.

Backgrounds from Winnie The Pooh

My interpretations of the style

There is also going to be a small animated character which is why I've been trying to find a suitable place to put a main flower for it to land on. 

Life drawing: Slice and dice

We mixed things up a bit more and were asked to look a lot harder at the body.

Drawing a long pose but looking at different sections of the body and drawing them out on different pieces of paper.

I love that we were encouraged to try out different style and techniques that we have learnt or want to try. I immediately had to use ink somewhere in there.  

Drawing summer characters on a stormy day

Colourful people

I was looking around on other animation student's blogs from other universities and came across Thibault Leclercq's blog. Along with all the rest of his amazing work, I came across a little character study he did by smearing different colours and then drawing in the details. 

I thought this looked exciting and might be a fun thing to try so I gave it a go.

I think his was done digitally but since I have a lot of paint around I decided to do it with the real thing.

I love what came out from it!

I really want to try this again but this time maybe creating the shapes with different objects or fruits?! Also, to provide more clarity I think I might scan in the 'stamped' out colours and draw on them digitally instead.

Observing tones

Life drawing (with sticks)

Like the title suggests, we did indeed draw with sticks. 

To be precise, we drew with bits of branches and wooden skewer sticks dipped into ink. 

For the two larger ones, we were told to shade and rub in tones with charcoal first before drawing with the sticks.

I really enjoyed the technique we used as it really forced us to loosen up and just go with our mistakes.

We still had to observe carefully but it wasn't completely about getting an accurate drawing. It was more about getting us to see things differently and look at things a bit more creatively. Not trying to capture each and every detail but the feeling of the pose. 

I found that it was a lot harder to try and capture the pose in a few loose lines but it when done well, it really made the pose a lot more powerful.