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For People Crazy About 2D Animation!

Acme Punched! is for people crazy about 2D animation. It may be enjoyed by beginners and others, but it is aimed at animators who know already something about the process of animation and the basics of character animation. In large part, it will attempt to provide a deep look into the problem solving that goes on in my head as I work out a scene, often in step-by-step posts that I will sometimes enter in "real time", without knowing in advance what the outcome will be. Mistakes and false starts will not only be included but emphasized, so that the creative process of animation will be portrayed realistically. And, while my own bias is for 2D drawn animation, many of the effects and principles discussed here can apply to CGI 3D animation as well. I hope the blog will prove useful and instructive for all.

-Jim Bradrick

Tuesday, May 29, 2018

No. 160, Developing the Scene, part 3

Getting It Right


To conclude the current blog series (No's 157, 158 and 159) we now will have a look at my revised pencil test.  I had said I would be erasing arms from the original drawings rather than creating all new drawings, and you will be able to see in the pencil test the ghost drawings where I was unable to get them erased completely.

Here is the new pencil test.



Now this character-without-a-name raises up his arm in a flamboyant way that says as much about his arrogance and intolerance as his facial expressions and his head movement.  And it has come to me where I had seen almost exactly this same gesture before.  It was years ago, when I lived in New Orleans. In the lobby of a hotel where I then worked I saw a handsome young FBI agent look at his watch in precisely the same way. (How I knew he was with the FBI is a longer story.) But he had an attitude combined of vanity and self-importance that I obviously have never quite forgotten.

A good character animator must be an acute observer of human behavior. We never know when we might be able to make good use of such observations.


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