Animation Test 8: Let's See Where This Is Going

     For this test I tried to do something different. Instead of copying an exercise from the Preston Blair Book, I thought I'd see if I could make my own cycle. I decided to go with squirrels, since there's a lot of them in down town Louisville. Only problem was by the time I got started on this, it was the middle of November and it was already cold as hell outside.

      So I looked up some slowed down squirrel videos on youtube and took some notes to see if what I was learning from my other test had sank in. If you just read the notes, you'd think I had this all down, but it's one thing too understand something in writing. It takes another level to understand how to execute it.

     The movement is pretty fluid, and works great at 24 frames per second. My main problem with this cycle is the drawings themselves (Gee, what a surprise). They do sort of work in silhouette, but they don't feel solid or constructed at all. They shapes all look disconnected, especially in the seventh drawing. Originally, the cycle only had seven drawings, but the last two felt disjointed, so I added a drawing between them. It's an in-between in the most literal sense of the word. While it connects drawings six and eight, the drawing itself looks even more disjointed than the other ones. Seriously, it looks like you could pop his damn head off.

     Like I said, the movement is fluid, but, I dunno, it still feels a little floaty to me, even at 24 frames per second. I wish I followed my notes more, but instead I toned down all the drawings and made them all the same shape, instead of squashing and stretching them. The only drawing that looks squashed at all is the eight one. If I had to say one good thing about this cycle, it's that at least the tail is consistently solid throughout the whole thing. It actually looks like a soft, fluffy tail moving in real time.

     This was a nice try, but overall it sucks. 

The front paws look weird, but the back paws are ok

I don't get these back legs at all

All the back legs in the air are wrong

All inbetweened as literally as possible

This in-between just ruins the whole thing for me

Edit 1/21/15

     Like the last test, I made a flip book out of this cycle for a class I'm in. It kinda looks better than the video, since you can flip through it way faster than 24 frames per second. None of the problems were fixed since I just reprinted the drawings as they were, but it's a nice little novelty.