Mating press WIP - Roughs and Lineart
Added 2023-10-12 06:00:02 +0000 UTCA bit more of a look at the design process when starting a new animated shot. For a longer animated short that involves multiple shots, this would be repeated over on a shot by shot basis.
I typically start with a still Layout, wherein I roughly sketch out the action/position based on what the angle is meant to be. From that, I'll do a couple of key frame drawings, or Extremes. These just mark out what the full range of movement is going to be for the action.
At this stage the characters are drawn very roughly, resembling mannequins more so than who the actual characters are meant to be. Drawing them this way makes this stage quicker. Speed is important as the main purpose of these Layouts is checking whether the animation will work, before committing hours of work to developing it further. If I'm not happy with how it looks, I can start over without having lost much time.
Upon checks (and feedback if it is a piece for a client), I'll review and make changes to the composition to improve it. In this case, the model's legs have been adjusted to make the position more natural looking and the characters are both redrawn to be kissing.
This second pass at the Layout is drawn with cleaned up line art. This is also where I start breaking down the different parts of the animation in to layers. Whereas the first rough is all drawn on one or two layers, this second pass is using around ten, each layer being for a different body part. Once it's all done, it will serve as the basis for the rest of the animation work where I go in and develop it further by adding additional keyframes to make adjustments to timings and movement.
Hope this sheds some light on how I do things. Of course, you can expect to see this mating press piece in the near future, as it's currently being coloured! Have a guess at who it's going to be in the final piece...
