My Sun has a gift

The 11SecondClub has a monthly competition. The dialogue is from the July comp. I tried to take a simple character design and focus on the animation performance. This was a test run with just the main character's head. The colour idea came from the Adobe "Kuler" web site. When I played the animation, it made me think of a planet talking about his sun. Inspired by Chuck Jones.


Solar Pow Wow from Frank G on Vimeo.

Home made peg bar - animation and scanning

We have a hole punch at school that matches the pegs on our light boxes, so I go to school and punch 500 sheets of paper (recycled)at a time.

Last summer holidays I ran out of punched holy animating paper, so I made my own peg bar out of a plastic ruler and some sawn off paint brushes, and taped it onto the light box disc. The home made pegs matched a standard 2-hole paper punch you'd find in any office. The result isn't as stable as the 3-peg hole punch that matches the animation disc pegs, but it still worked and kept me "moving forward".

The benefit of making the peg bar from a thin plastic ruler was that I could take the peg bar to my scanner and tape it on. So when I scanned my drawings into the computer they stayed 'registered' (in place, held by the pegs). That sped up the scanning and kept the animated movements to the ones I had drawn, not movements due to the drawings being out of alignment.

At school we make registration bars for the scanners out of thin plastic rulers. We punch through some plastic with the animation 3-peg punch. Collect the punched out plastic bits. Then glue them in place on the thin ruler. The punched out bits are only a few millimetres thick but thick enough to register the drawings being scanned in alignment.

Gran - line test

I had a good look at the "Gran Scuttle" line test (below), and realised that Gran just launches off into the walk. I guess that covers the physical action I'm after. But it doesn't show her thinking or preparing for her scuttle. In this line test, I've added a rough background to give her a motivation (get to the gate). The obstacle that she has to overcome is her own age limited physical restrictions. Her infirmity. So she takes 4 seconds to: Do a walking stick check, take a deep breath and ... place her stick (ready for the first step).


gran prepares from Frank G on Vimeo.