Running Indian: Skin Color Test

I just finished the coloring of his skin and the tones I had picked out and animated. I like how the forms animate in color, but I am not convinced this is how I should do it. I think the lightest skin tone on the legs and belly confuses more than they do any good, so I am doing a pass where I take them down to the mid-tone brown.

All in all a good test and a nice preview to how it will look when the coloring is done.

Running Indian: Animation

About a month ago I finished the first pass on this animation. The first pass took about half a days work. I finally had some time today to continue my work on it.
Today I've straightened out some arc issues and I feel it's ready for me to move along.

I did a fast color pass on the legs and feet to experience if the kick forward will flash or disappear in the entire shape. It is through color and value that I would like to make this clear as much as in silhouette.

Here's the linetest

Here's the color test

I was positively surprised with the colortest and I believe it will be possible to find the right color for underneath his feet to have them stand out, yet not flash. I set the colortest up against another background than white to ease the eye as it will be when a real background is made in the same value as the blue I chose.

Sketching / thumbnailing

I've spend around a day sketching the characters now, getting into drawing them, coming up with the actions of the scene, the diferent beats and trying to build up poses that would give me the opportunity to reach my goals for the assignment.
As I wrote in the previous post, Mike Nguyen and Alex Williams are both at the school at the moment and I have meetings with them both tomorow about my thumbnails and plan for the scene. Should be very interesting to hear what they have to say to my doodles.
The sketching phase isnt over yet at all, but I thought I share with you the first raw drawings I've done that fits the acting and action I want to animate.
Please feel free to comment with suggestions, questions, critique or praise as always.

New scene: Old Couple

The hairdresser scene has been put away for now, the scene for Tod Polson has been finished and send with him to Thailand and I am not ready to take on a new assignment finally!

For a long time I have wanted to animate the two characters I am going to spend my next weeks alongside. I have both Alex Williams, who is now our Animation Supervisor, and Mike Nguyen, who is teaching the first years, to overlook the early stages of my scene. Can't be much better than that really.

I spend about two and half hours talking to Mike the other day and he had a lot of great things to share. I will write a post about my conversation with him soon.

The focus of this assignment for me is to create a more believable and emotional performance as well as have the characters interact in such a way that the viewer clearly feels that these characters are filled with life. I will try a more straight-ahead'ish method to reach this goal. Mike is stopping by my workspace tomorow to talk about thumbnails to animation. Cant wait to hear him out on this.

For now, thumbnailing and imagining funny situations is the focus. Here is a drawing of the characters who will star in the scene