Sometimes The First Method WAS the Best
Alrighty folks! DIY Animation Notes to Self/You/Him/Her/Them/and US time! I have a new 31 seconds draft of The Cave 2.0 ~ Enter Red to drop in this here post, however, I believe I should outline just exactly why it took about 25 days, is missing the opening, and what any of you adventurous DIY Animators out there like myself can learn from my exercise in adding time to a project.
So I fell right into my favorite ‘mind trap’. I say favorite because I do it over and over and over again, for the love of Steve, I mean really! Sidebar, what are some of YOUR favorite ‘mind traps’? Don’t be shy now, saddle on up, and let’s commiserate a moment together:
Any of these Mind Traps Feel Familiar?
Leave yours below
As above, so below
What was that like for you? If you feel motivated, leave your thoughts below.
A camping trip isn’t just a camping trip. It’s an opportunity to get perspective on their work while looking at the stars. Art isn’t just art. It’s an opportunity to hone their visualization skills and therefore think better. Just as every moment, personal or professional, is potential material for a comedian, so too is every moment potential fodder for a Nobel laureate. Everything we learn or experience is fodder.
Michael Simmons, MEdium
The desire I had, and still have, when I am creating something: I want to put the best possible thing I can out. Presenting something is different in my mind. That is a chore, publically displayed, but a ‘creation’ is offering myself up from my ‘flow’ place. Sacred, if you will.
That word, ‘sacred’ isn’t there to intimidate, merely to demonstrate. It is how I think about creative endeavors. It’s how I ‘Yobi’. I have digressed enough.
After I completed 531 hand drawn panels using the andriod app, FlipAClip, I was getting into the next scene, introducing Prisoner #2, Astrothane, The Galatian. During the editing review, I realized I had absolutely no idea where the scene was actually going! Worse than that, the animation had gone off the rails into a weird “eyeball fixation” that was uncomfortable to watch, and lacked any character identity or consistency.
Immersed in an “eyeballed” uncanny valley, as a viewer, I was suddenly met by Astrothane, who appears without context, looking dark, intending ‘something’, by his looks. He has a slanted, “Lounge Lizard” smile on his face. 
The “cute moustache blowout” I had intended at the beginning had morphed into a frightening tentacled thing, that seemed in “full on” attack mode, as the “lights” (or whatever I was thinking at the time) flicker, Astrothane jumps close to the viewer. As a New Year’s Eve All-Nighter at the Skating Rink type strobe light effect begins, my “leans in close to hear” action has devolved in replay into a sort of “orgy” of false intentions that could, if left unaltered, become “someone’s” unfortunate, and entirely unnecessary lawsuit. “They would never believe me in court, even with proof”, the thought came unbidden to my mind.
Oh my Dear Playa gods, what, in the hell, have I just created?!?
BLOWN out of my own self confident bubble of ‘creativity’~A. YOBI B.
Here, feel free to experience it yourself before continuing on (*no sound*):
See what I mean?! Thus began my near month long journey into the abyss of amazingly cool programs, equipment, and “things” this boy could not afford (yet)! First I dove into a free trial subscription of Toon Boom’s Harmony 17 Premium. Unfortunately, the functionality is so much less if you go to basic, as to be only good for personal animations and tinkering around with really well made GIFS.
Then I moved into freeware. One pragram I am working with to vett it’s useffulness as a tool is Pencil2D. I haven’t gotten to where any real animations have been produced, and I only got 4 frames complete with Harmony after 25+ days (mind you, I have been working on other things as well. I wish I could descend into an animation pit and come out as amazing as you like,
Bushwacked and Done, I Needed A Boost
So, despite regulating FlipAClip to the status of my “storyboard app”, I found myself on it this morning, working the entire morning away for the 6 whole seconds of unfinished, RAW, DIY Animation, from the DIY Animator himself (which is a term I coined and plan to increasingly use going forward and according to a Google Search-I am getting the domain name for sure), ENJOY!
