Apply; 5-10 Second Animation

For Apply , I decided to go for some frame-by-frame photoshop animation. Part of this was because I'm very confident with Photoshop, but also because I like having complete control of all parts of my animation; even with a lot of planning, if I'd've done a pixilation or a hand drawn one with a light box, I'd be paranoid of it not coming out right, or that I would have to change a few frames, which I didn't know if I would have time to do later on - at least with Photoshop, I can keep editing all the time, which I did extensively.

I went through a few ideas first, and I considered doing something based off of a show or game that I liked, but eventually I decided to do something original since we're still at the start of the course, and I'm not (or at least I wasn't) sure how long something of this size would take, or the process.

I went for 'surprise' - something that would have an element of fun with it. I thought of a few different ideas, but eventually settled for a cat getting surprised (or scared - this would work for fear as well). I then looked up some cat videos and some diagrams of animal movement and decided that it looked like a fun thing to do.

I looked at a lot of different cartoons and famous cat characters for ideas of how to draw my cat, but eventually I went for a slightly more realistic style (at least for the body) so that I could learn a little more about cat anatomy, which helped me get the animation a lot more accurate. I might try a more stylised approach in the future, but for now I think I made the right choice.

Research

Research

Storyboard

It took a long time, but eventually using only Photoshop, I got the animation finished, with around 90 frames. Timing was the hardest part to get right in the end, but after lots and lots of trial and error I finally managed. I'm happy with how my animation came out, although next time I hope to have enough time to add some colour, as well.