I’m Making a New Rectangle Show Bumper. Here’s the Process So Far…

It can be interesting to push your skills further and further, because what you eventually find is that you end up working on some very ambitious projects, and the level of pain and excitement is jacked up so high that it becomes a creative thrill ride. I’m working on just such a project now, and it’s more ambitious than anything I’ve done in the past for one major reason: it’s a familiar process but a very unfamiliar technique.

I’ve always been obsessed with rotoscoping, ever since I watched the music video for A-Ha’s 1984 hit, “Take on Me,” and I’ve done rotoscope animation several times. It remains one of my favorite processes to this day.

One thing I've never done, though, is to use traditional mediums. I was always content using my computer and Wacom graphics tablet to create such animations in the past, but this time I decided to forgo the computer and tablet — as well as all the convenience they offer — for good old fashioned traditional media! And not just any media — watercolors!

Above is one of the finished frames from this animation, which consists of forty-two frames total. (Forty frames at 8 fps will yield five seconds of footage.)

The source footage for this animation is an 1899 film by The Edison Manufacturing Co. called “Bicycle Trick Riding.” I didn’t use the whole film, just five seconds of it, but I isolated what I consider to be the most climactic part of the film for the purpose of the animation. (I’ve embedded the original source material below so you can watch it.)

After choosing my source material, I printed each frame full size on my inkjet printer, and then I traced each frame onto watercolor paper using a 2B pencil, (while taking care to press lightly so that the lines won’t be too obvious after the watercolors have been applied.)

I had to buy four pads of Strathmore watercolor paper especially for this project.

These are the initial pencil sketches I made, which were traced onto the watercolor paper using my light box.

This is how thick my stack of frames ended up being…

On my computer, I drew some simple animated background sequences using my Wacom tablet (okay, so I’ll admit, I didn’t give it up altogether…) and then printed those on my printer as well. After I was done sketching the main figure, I sketched the background patterns using the same method.

After the initial sketches were prepared, I painted the main figure on each frame using dark violet watercolor. The backgrounds were all going to be light colors, so I had to make the figure a darker color so he would stand out.

All in a day’s work…

After that was done, I began painting the backgrounds. So far, that part of the whole process has been the most time consuming, and I still have more to do today.

So please forgive me if this entry is a bit rushed. But I’m hoping it will be worth it. In the meantime, please don’t hesitate to subscribe to my email newsletter so you don’t miss out on more art and animation. (And, of course, I’ll also keep you posted on this particular project…)

Talk to you soon! :)