Busy Bee

I feel like I dropped off the blogplanet a wee bit. I have been super busy both interning at Buddy System Studios, and working on this commissioned wedding bit I will explain below.


A couple weeks ago a friend from college contacted me to do a super quick animated sequence of shots to insert into a wedding slideshow for a friend of hers. My goal? 50 seconds of animation to be completed in 2-3 weeks. woooweee. I like a challenge, so here we go.

The style I am doing is in the vein of my paper cut out animations. I finished drawing all the elements last week and photoshopped them all in the past couple days. Ideally I will have everything animated in the next 6 days. If not, I technically have a few more days after that... but shipping would be involved if I wait that long. It's tight, but I know I can do it.


On to the project!!!

I've never showed my process with my cut outs before, mainly because I am very self conscious about showing my sloppy "pre-photoshopped" drawings/paintings. There is a method to the madness. Since I animate in After Effects, I see no point in wasting time and paint in fine tuning the images on paper. I simply do my quickest drawings in pencil, paint rapidly a few layers in watercolor, ink everything with a black pen, and then photograph it all. It is much quicker to strengthen the colors and labor over the "likeness" of the characters in photoshop.

Here you can see my quick general drawing of Ash, and then the version I tweak in photoshop using the Transform warp tool to push and tug her face to resemble the real person more.



I put the photo as a layer underneath to use as reference.


Once I get the likeness, I start cutting out things and making movable layers for all the moving parts... eyebrows, irises, mouths, hair etc...

same thing with Dirk, sorry I don't have the photo of him up here.


Ash's father, Valentine


Scotland pre and post photoshop


castle before and after


Jamie, do you prefer the blue sky or sunset sky for the castle wide shot? Both will have sunlight inserted in after effects either way



wedding dress and bouquet- I need to elongate the dress, she looks a little squat


I know there are no hands. That is because to save time, I have a stockpile of hands and feet and other things from previous projects that I will reuse by simply adjusting the color and skintones in photoshop. Trees, hills, etc...

To Jamie:
There are a few things here and there I haven't put up, but these are the main things I wanted your input on Jamie - I didn't have any images of Ash face forward with her mouth closed, so I am still iffy on the likeness of her mouth from the front in resting position. If you have any pics of her without her teeth showing it would be great- or if you have tips on how her lips look if they are different from what I have. Any other likeness tweaks, let me know. Dirk from the front isnt done yet.