Earlyer this year I decided I wanted to make an animated film. I started by doing some small "experiment films, like the one of the baby coming out of a tree. This one was done by drawing each frame in a sketchbook. Then I taped the sketchbook to the wall, and set up a tripod to take a photo of each drawing. I put each photo together in Microsoft Windows moviemaker (a basic video editing program that comes with most windows operating systems). But I wanted to do the real animation with paint, and I didn't want to use up so much paper, so I built a small stand for a rectagular piece of plywood. I set up two lights, the plywood, and a tripod on a small workbench, fastening them to it to decrease camera movment and changes in lighting. After that I simply painted onto the plywood, taking a picture of each frame before painting over it. I was very pleased with the end product although this method of animating was very frustrating and time consuming. If I later realized I had made a mistake on a frame, I could not go back to fix it and then take another picture because I had painted over it so it did not exist anymore other than in the photo. Also, since I did not make seperate paintings for each frame, I had to paint over elements that moved in the frame before painting the object in it's new position. This was what created the largest problem. It wasted time because I had to wait for the last painted frame to dry, then I had to paint over the dry area with white paint, and then wait for that to dry before painting the next frame. The entire process of painting and taking photo's took 15 days at about an hour a day so 15 hours total for a 55 second animation. doesn't seem very efficient.
This I one of the sketchbook animation tests I did.
This is the finished animation. For some reason the sound is not working so if you want to watch a lower quality version of it with sound go to google video and search "deermouse"
