Planning and Process

Planning is extremely useful for me before animation. It keeps the priorities and process clean. Sometimes, I tend to get confused in the middle of work, but with planning, everything is made clear to me.

Here’s the plan and process that I found works the most for me.

1. Define exercise
2. Film reference video, keep in mind interesting and exaggerative body poses
3. Identify key frames
4. Sketch out thumbnails of key frames with a body structure and not design.
5. Write out explanation or captions of what’s happening
6. If there are techniques or movements (like smears) I want to try out, write them as a note on the side
7. Scan in frames and resize them to make them all the same size
8. Import into tv paint
9. Draw out a simplified design over body structure.
10. After keys, make breakdowns, then inbetweens, then “inbetween” inbetweens

If there is audio and lip sync:

1. Listen closely to the audio and identify the rhythm
2. Sync body poses to audio
3. On a separate layer, draw out mouth movements from the front.
4. Lastly, add mouth shapes on the body after everything.