Gif from Animation I made as a gift

Back in January for my 6 month anniversary I made my boyfriend a hand drawn letter/animation. I'm not posting it anywhere (for obvious personal reasons), but I figured I would at least mention it because it was a fun experience. I ended up editing the final work to music which is something I hadn't done with animation before. Note to self: deciding to add music in retrospect is a lot harder than just animating to music from the beginning, but in the end it really help with timing. Here's once short gif to give a general sense of what I mean by animated letter (it is Valentine's Day after all):

6Months_kiss.gif

Final Project for Hand Drawn Animation - Progress so far

For my final project I'm animating the story of my dog Pickles learning how to swim for the first time, by being jealous and insane. I started with some gestural sketches to get an idea of how stylized I wanted the character to be. Then I cleaned up some of the line work to simplify the characters a bit, a played around with different poses and expressions. 

Pickles_sketches_01.jpg
Sheeler_sketches_01.jpg
Pickles_model_01.jpg
Sheeler_model_01.jpg

I then did a test animation of Pickles running to see if animating a quadriped would prove to be more difficult than I could handle. I used video footage for the test run. 

Pickles_test_run.gif

After showing my professor the run she recommended animation a movement without the use of video footage before proceeding, so I animated the test jump without a video. We both agreed that the animation I did without a reference had more character, so I decided that I wouldn't animated directly from video for this project. I still plan to use video footage, but I only when my action is from a different angle. This way it'll force me to understand the movement rather than just copy the form.

Pickles_test_jump.gif

A to B Animation

For our most recent Hand Drawn animation project we were given the first and last frame of a character animation and had to fill in the inbetweens, any way that we chose to. It was an exercise in creative motion and sticking to a humanoid character model that was provided for us. The animation had to be a minimum of 12 seconds.

A3_AtoB_PajaczkowskasansKssmall.gif

Some things that I'd like to go back and improve: 

-His proportions when he's on the ground and his legs are in front of his arms

-Adding more sticky stuff when he lands and generally making it stick around for a few frames longer

Flour Sack Animations

For our second assignment for Hand Drawn Animation we had to animate a flour sack emulating an emotion we picked from a hat. My word was "Timid".

FlourSack3.gif

Then for a secondary animation challenge we had to add a tail to our character. I chose an anthropomorphized rat tail.

P3_FlourSackP2Tail_Pajaczkowska.gif

Hand Drawn Animation Exercises

This semester I'm taking hand drawn animation and I'm incredibly excited about the class. Here are just some very simple exercises I've completed so far. 

A self portrait or avatar in 2 frames

A self portrait or avatar in 2 frames

Transforming one shape into another and back again

Transforming one shape into another and back again

For this one I was inspired by the changing seasons. And the fact I wanted to draw a poor little determined snowman.

For this one I was inspired by the changing seasons. And the fact I wanted to draw a poor little determined snowman.