This week, I started to create my loop animation in Krita. I already had the storyboard down, so this part was pretty easy.
I started off by drawing some simple shapes to create the space my shadow would move around in. It’s a simple pair of walls with a ceiling. I wanted to work with a corner, because I thought it would look cool for the shadow to move between the corners of the room. I aimed for the light to look like the viewer themself was casting it on to the wall, following the bodiless shadow as it moved around. I lowered my frame rate from 25 to 17, as I felt I wouldn’t need that many frames per second for this animation and I didn’t want it to take me too long to complete.Next, I added in my rough sketch for Sulli , my shadow character (which I have unfortunately deleted at the time of writing this post, so what you’re seeing now is the clean line art). I simplified his eyes a little from the original design, as I felt like I was able to be more flexible with his face by simplifying it. I completed this animation using one of the methods I learned in paper animation; I drew in the key poses and then drew in betweens for them. I didn’t plan my timings in detail as I was able to move frames around, so I kind of just held them for as long as I thought they needed to be held. I drew my in betweens in the way you’d draw smear frames; very quick and non detailed. I did this because the character’s changes in shape were supposed to look fast and drastic, so I wanted him to look somewhat shapeless between forms. The frame above is the in between for him changing from his regular form to a smaller rabbit. For frames where he passed between walls, I distorted the shadow’s shape so that it would look like he was on two different surfaces. I did this by using the selection tool and then pressing ctrl, which gave me the ability to move the drawing around as if it was a 3D object. (I put a picture in because I think I described it a bit weirdly)For scenes where the light wasn’t on Sulli, I didn’t draw him in, since shadows only exist where light is. The point of the animation was him trying to escape visibility, so I tried making him use the darkness to his advantage.After finishing the sketches and line art, I added some colour to the piece. I chose to keep a simple dark palette for Sulli, since he’s a shadow so it just makes sense. I made him dark grey instead of full on black so that you could see his facial details well; I contemplated making him fully black and changing the line art to white, but I didn’t really like how this looked (I’ll attach it below). I gave him blue eyes so that he had a feature that was somewhat recognisable in any form that he took.
All in all, this process took me about a week. I think if my work ethic was a little better, I could’ve finished it sooner, but I failed to stay on schedule this week and I wasn’t very well focused. I’ll try to improve on that with the following week.
As for the animation, I’m happy with how it turned out for the most part. I feel like maybe my project isn’t looking so experimental at the moment, but I’m not really sure what I can do to bring it forward. I’m thinking of adding a background (just some simple colours and some more minor details), but I don’t know if I want any colour in this piece as of now because I kind of like the simplistic look of the animation.
