I was working with a virtual student trying to convince her that drawings can be rough and sloppy before being tied down. We did a series of gesture drawings which were timed at 5 minutes a piece. My goal was to get her to start drawing the motion rather than precious contour lines.

For the next hour I let her work on one of her character designs. She spent the time tracing lines she had already drawn. Her first drawing were apparently pixelated so I offered a lesson on resolution, which I learned quite a bit about in the last week with several of my films scenes being blurry. I showed her how to alpha lock lines she had already drawn and paint them a color. I’m trying to get her to work smarter, not harder.

While she traced lines. I did this quick animation of a high priest in Callipeg. I worked extra rough and spontaneous as a demonstration. The high priest plunges his hand down and pulls up a virus. I dashed off the animation in an hour. There is no detail, just the motion and timing. I need to change several things and then I will grey it down and start drawing more refined keys. Those drawings will be more precious. I will probably push the starting pose, the anticipation and the final pose of the scene much further. I also plan to change the action on the priest’s right hand.

After this rough stick figure animation I will go back into each drawing and add anatomy and full detail. There is lots of work yet to be done. I will probably extend the animation right down to the legs which are partially hidden as well. The feet can remain as held cells.