Following suit with some others here in the Animation Forum, here's a thread where I hope to post some WIP pieces and other exercises as time goes by.

Some practice for drawing billows of smoke and dust, on three's and in straight-ahead style.

Here's one of a dog going through an emotional rollercoaster...

So glad these thread are catching on! Followed, excited to see more :D

Attempt at a semi-turnaround.

These clips above were actually parts of an animation I just got around to publishing! Here's a link to the movie page:

I also wanted to put a filter over it to look like it was shot on a strip of film, an aesthetic I've been looking to incorporate. For the filter, I looked at the instructions on this video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HT3qyRM4PIc

In it, the guy talks about arranging the individual frames into After Effects, but since I did the main animation in Adobe Flash, I used an mp4 I got from Swivel, and followed the instruction for After Effects from that point. I opted for the second set of instructions he talked about, which was for a "remastered" look as opposed to a VHS look.

I've always had OpenToonz on my desktop, but never really used it because of the learning curve. Recently I decided I should just brute-force learning it and see how far I get. Here's a head-turn exercise with a cat I did while learning the software:

On a side note, I'm trying to get in the habit of using timing charts more. I really appreciate it's purpose of blueprinting an entire movement through the few keyframes.

I think I'm really starting to like the Opentoonz workflow.

The static part of the head was drawn in raster graphics because I wanted to try the Autopaint Lines feature. All it does is paint over shading lines (red, blue, etc.) with a selected color when you fill in the area. Ideally it would be most helpful to use if I had many drawings that needed to be shaded.

The lip sync was done on one's, 24 fps is very powerful tool.

"Woah! Woah!"

I made a thread a while ago talking about "Full Limited", a kind of animation technique with a focus on varying how long individual frames are held in an action. For this double take my character does, I tried to apply that principle. The quick action has frames that are held on 1's, 2's, and 3's.

Another WIP from the sequel (prologue?) to Kiwi Store Brawl. I've settled on the name "Hyper-Breakers" as the name for the series. With school and all picking up pace I hope to find some time working on personal stuff like this.

Looks really cool! I'll keep an eye out for the final upload.

IMO the second smear would read stronger if you replaced the first smear with 3-4 poses and ease out into the 2nd smear.

Just my 2 cents glad to see updates on the thread :)

Thank you very much for the critique! I'll look to reexamine the timing. Looking forward to keeping this thread updated.

This one's really roughed out as I tried to get the movement down first, so there's still a ton of polishing left, and lipsync too. Done on mostly three's with two's and one's mixed in, and also mostly straight ahead.

Also this is probably my favorite frame from the whole sequence but it only shows up for like 2 frames...

I'll just leave these two clips here...

*whoops, there's a color-fill error in this one!

They're very limited in regards to movement, but I tried to place some exaggerated expressions in there.

I've just finished organizing some of my old project folders, and I stumbled across an alternate version of a scene that I roughed out when I was still working on Kiwi Store Brawl.

(There was supposed to be a shake created by the v-cam, but it didn't work with the GIF export unfortunately)

This is how it played out in the final version.

There are things I like about both, but I think the version I cut would have been more funny. Perhaps I went with the final version because I wanted to appear more grotesque, but with my goofy art style I think the version I cut would fared better. Also, I suspect that I probably cut it so I wouldn't have to find a way to color-fade the can into his hand, which is pretty lazy of me, and only created more work and scenes for myself, oops. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I tried to do some glass breaking from a projectile. The colors I haphazardly chose, but I plan to revise them during a later coloring pass. There's two main drawings for the window frame, but the bits and pieces of glass that fall out afterwards I did at 24 fps.

Woo! Finally done with this one! A prequel to Kiwi Store Brawl but the first movie published under the "Hyper-Breakers" name for this project.

Here's some screencaps I took, some of them are the final versions of the WIP gifs I've uploaded previously.

The choice to do the backgrounds in a watercolor style was a last-minute one, but I think it made the final product look much better.

I again decided to employ a grain filter over this movie, but through an altered method compared to Kiwi Store Brawl. Here, I used footage of grain and set the blend to Screen, and used Opentoonz effects to soften the lineart of the characters rather than blurring the footage through another compositing software. It's not quite accurate to a 90s look but I'm quite happy with how it came out.

Haven't added to here in a bit! I got a couple of academic pieces that I think came out nicely. Both were completed for my Character Animation 2 class.

The assignment was to do "crazy walks" with two characters, so I decided to do this spring-legged fellow dragging along a smaller guy. This assignment helped me realize I can get more milage out of animation by not tackling the entire movement at once. I first animated the spring dude all the way through, which was done straight ahead with minimal inbetweening. Next I did the arm on a separate layer, and tagged on the smaller guy afterwards.

For this one, it was to do a kind of creative explosion. I watch too much DBZ, so I tried to do a transformation with impact frames. One funny thing was that our professor gave us a link to an Anime Sakuga M.A.D. explosion compilation to reference while we worked on this assignment.

Been a while since I've added to here... again XD

I got a bit I animated this week where I tried to pactice some anime-style sakuga. I'm still trying to find a balance for doing rough drawings that is loose and gestural, but could still a confidently-drawn form.

Adding the moving camera somehow made the animation appear much smoother, ha ha!

And so the process begins once more...

I've begun animation on the finale of Caffeinated Chaos, the home-stretch of this goofy idea from my junior year of high school. I still have some inhibitions about dropping the ball with this, but the accomplishment of having a creative idea and taking it to completion is invaluable.

Latest scene in Caffeinated Chaos that I did today

Even though I started the animation stage later than I hoped, I'm quite happy with how quickly things are getting done. For example, since the point I started in my winter break, the first act is halfway done. One thing that I've neglected with the past two animations in this series is organization, which I'm trying to fix. Using excel sheets so I can be mindful of progress made has helped out a ton.

This is a screencap of the chunk of spreadsheet that covers the first act. The stages are Rough Animation, Inking, Painting, and Background and Effects. BG & FX I'm saving for later. Scenes are divided into subscenes if two separate clips in the movie more or less use the same elements like drawings or backgrounds.

Some really cool stuff going on here. Definitely keep posting your wips, they are great to see. I like how you are organizing everything too. Nice!!

Yo!

I've been making progress on Caffeinated Chaos lately, and I'd like to show this animatic I have for a section of a fight scene. I've no problems with spoiling anybody, ha ha!

A powered-up, caffeinated, Aaron the cat fends off Flex, a guy made out of pure energy drink, to get back he and his friend's stolen bag of junk food.

For inspiration I've been looking at a lot of work done by one of my favorite action animators, Naotoshi Shida.

His stuff is incredible. It has the intensity of a Saturn V rocket launch.

Actually, this animatic came about because of a hitch with my production. I was able to finish the animation for Act 1, all the way up to ink and paint! Now faced with Act 2... I just wasn't really feeling it with the boards I had in place. Already I do kinda feel like I'm tiptoeing the line between cringe and not-cringe with this animation. Otherwise I really was at the point where, if I wanted to make any changes to the storyboards, I had to do it now, or otherwise begin animating.

On a side note, I did end up repeating myself. Caffeinated Chaos has an unfinished version dating back to 2019, which I ended up scrapping because I lacked the skill/experience. Funny enough I had most of it storyboarded, except for that fight scene. My video editing timeline just had blank space in between that and the ending.

In that prototype, I dug up this funny rough of Aaron's friend Todd having this reaction shot upon seeing his friend's power-up, going "What the fuck?"

After drawing these characters for so long I think I've refined the style of them. But damn I need to make room for bullshit like that expression. I'd like to go more into that prototype sometime, perhaps a retrospective forum post is in order when I get this episode finished.

I do like how this current iteration of the fight is coming along. It's fast-paced and it's looking to be short. I allotted myself around 45 seconds to do the fight and wrap it up, then act 3 begins and takes the whole thing home. The daunting thing about this fight, act 2, is that the animation it warrants should be a cut above. As my first big take on an action sequence, I'll give you guys my word that I'm gonna give it my best shot!

All in all I'm on track to having this finished during the summer because after that... the production stage of my senior thesis will go into full force.

More on that another night, lol. I'm sleepy.

you're really damn good! Which is why I want to voice my couple of whinging nitpicks, y'know so you can be even better! I wish you'd do more stuff with breakdown positions, basically when inbetweening 2 positions, put the middle position somewhere not in the middle. You did it in this example, where the head goes down then up:

but a lot of your movements, such as your other head turns, just do straight inbetweens, which works fine but isn't as visually interesting as using a good breakdown position.

My other tip is not to overuse smear frames

Thanks so much for the feedback, you bring up some good points! Your smear frame comment in particular I think is pertinent. While I do like distorting the drawings for the sake of exaggeration, I need to animate more "full" actions without using smears as a crutch.

I AIN'T DEAD!

Since my time off from school began a few weeks ago, I've been trying to grind out the rest of Caffeinated Chaos. Last time I shared an early animatic of an action sequence that's supposed to appear midway. I'm happy to say that I finished the storyboard/animatic of the whole fight scene! Here's two of my favorite parts:

So the above isn't really the rough animation. But, I wanted these animatics to have enough specificity so there's not too much more planning I have to do when I actually sit down and tackle these scenes. On a side note: even though I'm animating the final footage in Opentoonz, Flash was by far the best tool for quickly hammering out this animatic.

I also use impact frames too much, but man are they fun to draw:

So as it stands, over half of the animation for the whole cartoon is done. Every scene is now storyboarded out, no blank spots.

Well, since I finished the last of the storyboards my project needed last week, I had no choice but to bite the bullet and begin animating these difficult action scenes.

In this scene, the cat is dodging a series of punches and a kick.

Here's a slowed down version:

And here's my rough animation (Just the cat character):

*I animated the plastic bag separately, and the punches afterwards.

I'm really really happy with how this turned out! I ended up animating straight-ahead and it seems like it was the way to go for a frenetic scene like this.

You're the reason to visit the animation forum now TBH. Really nice movements!

The animation for all the scenes in Caffeinated Chaos' final part are done... Now all that's left are background painting and special effects/compositing. These two stages may take some time themselves but it feels great that all of the heavy animation work is done.

Watching my rough cut over and over throughout working on this, I can no longer tell if the story is melting before my eyes or if it resembles something comprehensible. Maybe that's the charm of it ehhh......?

So even with Background and Effects still needing to be worked on, I still consider this the final stretch for this animation, and I have one last set of clips to share, from various points in the runtime.

ITS DONE! The final part to cap off this trilogy...

As is tradition in this thread, I have some screencaps.

I'll probably write a more in-depth reflection later, but I'm gonna head to bed and get some rest. Thanks so much to all you guys on the forum who stumbled across my thread!

Well done, mate!

Hello hello! It's been a while since I last updated this thread. Since the beginning of the semester, I've begun the animation stage for my senior thesis film. It's about a cartoon rat who wakes up late for work. Heres a couple bits of WIP stuff from it:

Here's one of the main rat character, Reese.

And here's one of a meter maid.