Shades.

each frame is a slightly different shade to give the uneven effect of hand drawn cell animation, like Steamboat Willie. 

The Design Process.

Each frame was drawn in using Photoshop. I took my Illustrator drawing of my deer and imported it as a smart object into photoshop. I then copied my background layer and placed it on top of my illustration, gradually rubbing that overlapping layer out a bit at a time and saved each Image as a Jpeg as i went along to create my frames.

Each jpeg was numbered accordingly so i could import the sequence into after effects easily.

once the deer was introduced fully into the frame i then did the same process for each shape introduced. 

Splitting the deer in half proved to be a very time consuming process. Each frame i had to gradually rotate each side separately and in doing so it moved the 2 sides out of place so each side also had to be repositioned back into it's original place to avoid it jumping all over the place in the finished sequence. 

Once all 340 frames were completed i then imported the sequences into after effects for editing. Each part is played at a slightly different fps so i could achieve the smoothness i wanted. For example, the starting of the running ink at the beginning of the animation is 12fps then the gradual creation of the deer is 20fps and the falling shapes at around 25fps.

The tree.

I wanted the tree in my animation to be pretty simple. But also look like it could be a dandelion or flower. I went with the black silhouette so it doesn't seem to out of place with the other shapes in my animation.

Widescreen.

I'm working at the PAL D1/DV Square Pixel standard dimensions 788px x 576px. But i want a widescreen style shape. So i've added in White blocks at the top and bottom of the screen like you might see in black in film, giving that ultra widescreen vibe.

788px x 576px with white rectangles top and bottom

Effects.

experimentation with effects.

Untitled from James Smith on Vimeo.

Hand drawn/photoshop/illustrator.

I did a trial run of hand drawing my images, but quickly decided it was way too time consuming for what i'm trying to do. Also I don't want my animation to be quite as jumpy say Steamboat Willie, but not quite as sharp as Motomichi Nakamura's animations. So i've decided to hand draw my image, then scan to Illustrator and then create each frame using Photoshop. Here's a quick test i did for the first scene.

I've also tried to apply a lens flare kind of effect but only to the black line, i think it make quite an interesting style.

Lomography

I'm pretty into the whole lomography style prints lately. I want to introduce a film burn feel to my cells. Here's some real nice examples i found a while back in the 10deep summer lookbook.