Morphing Animation

Not gonna lie, this assignment was a lot of fun. It's been a looooong time since I've done any hand-drawn animation. I remember after I discovered duIK for 2D animation, I was like, "I'm done with this." However, now that I'm starting to enjoy drawing and am rediscovering my passion for it (well maybe not quite "passion", but I definitely don't hate it anymore), I think I may do more hand-drawn animating every once in a while. I know that when I put it that way, it sounds like a lot. But let's face it, in reality I'm not going to have any "free time" so maybe I shouldn't kid myself. I guess basically what I'm trying to say is that I won't totally be distressed if I have to do 2D animation for school. (Which for the record, next quarter I'll be taking 2D principles so....)

But anyway... I was surprised at how much easier animating in Photoshop is now. They updated and put in the "Animate" feature a couple years ago so now Photoshop has an actual user-friendly timeline. Back in the day, I remember putting each frame on its own layer and needing to hide and unhide them and it was just a real pain in the butt.

But it's so much less painful now and I can appreciate this. It's more encouraging to do hand-drawn animation now that I don't need ToonBoom to feel like I can try to do it.

I just kind of sketched out this idea of one thing changing into the other. The bird was a last minute decision as I saw how the girl's gray hair looked like folded wings at the end.

I thought about doing more with the background morphing too, but I kind of liked how it was without anything behind it. Though I am embarrassed at how terribly off-center the whole thing became. But too late now. It's just another little exercise to try out the animation.