This week, after reading the brief, reflecting on its contents, and considering what I would like to achieve both during this semester and beyond, I’ve come to a preliminary concept for my final project. The idea I’ve developed is quite ambitious and involves a number of complicated elements. However, to keep things manageable and focused, I’ve decided to hone in on a smaller and more specific segment of my concept.
The element that I was interested in exploring is animation. Although I’ve never worked with animation before, I find the medium fascinating and want to use the opportunity to test the waters and see if it’s a path I might want to pursue more seriously next semester. As this project is meant to be more of an exploratory and rudimentary attempt, I felt comfortable experimenting and making mistakes along the way.
To start I searched for free animation software and came across OpenToonz, an open source that seemed to suit my needs.
Since I had no experience with animation or with using animation software, I turned to online tutorials in the video to help me understand the basics. I particularly found videos by TJ FREE (n.d.) to be helpful. To my surprise, I found the process both engaging and easier to grasp than I initially expected. The tutorials were helpful and the step by step structure made the learning curve feel less intimidating.
However, one major challenge I faced was the technical limitations of my setup. Drawing with a mouse felt unnatural and difficult, which made the animation process much more frustrating than it could have been. The final result is visually rough as I struggled to even draw a straight line using a mouse and it was very hard to achieve any kind of proper detail, at least at my skill level. This made me realize how important the right tools are especially working with digital art and animation. If I decide to continue down this path I might have to consider how I can sync my tablet to my laptop or to invest in a drawing tablet.
Despite the challenges, I genuinely enjoyed working with the animation software and found the experience creatively rewarding. I’m now curious about trying other software as well. For the rest of the semester I would like to continue experimenting with animation but perhaps in a more broken-down and simplified manner, this way rather than diving into complex scenes or character movements I can focus on understanding the fundamentals of motion and storytelling through smaller and more manageable exercises.
Overall this process has opened up a new area of creative interest for me and while I am still unsure whether animation will become a central part of my design practice I’m excited to explore it further and see where it takes me.
References:
TJ FREE. (n.d.). OpenToonz tutorials [YouTube playlist]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLqazFFzUAPc6if6lKp2Z5sDKcvVND0cP-