Sauntermations - Abby's sassy skip! (Early Access) (Patreon)

Synopsis/Description:

Some iPad animation practice with the app "Rough Animator." I need to get back into traditional animation (as opposed to the asset animation I normally do); this took way too long for what I got done.

The Rant:

So, as most of you may/may not know, I have recently become obsessed with the iPad...

However, for as good as the illustration apps are, the veneer tends to fall away once you start looking at animation. Illustration apps like Procreate are 1:1 recreations of desktop apps, like Photoshop and Clip Studio Paint, if those apps don't already have iPad/tablet ports anyway. For animation, you kind of have to hope you find something that has an animation/layer timeline.

Its for that reason that I was initially reticent about the iPad, and non-tablet-computer devices in general whenever someone tried to sell me on them. 

Protip? Judge an art device by the most niche medium available to a general computer (i.e. 3D animation, or animation in general), not by the most general tool everyone uses.
(This is also why I hate when illustrators try to sell me on Clip Studio Paint as a viable animation alternative to Flash/Animate or ToonBoom).

That being said, now that I have an iPad, I might as well look for animation apps. 

The two that I really like are Rough Animator and Callipeg. They're both pretty robust, and their UIs are pretty easy to figure out. RA's more intuitive, but Callipeg's got more features (at the cost of being slightly more obtuse). But a tool is not only only as good as its user, but also only as useful as its user's knowledge base, which means I need some practice.

So, one morning, I woke up and animated this in Rough Animator. I figure that it matches Abby's personality, even if I personally find skipping to be more taxing than just running or jogging.

On the plus side, this came together pretty easily. I wasn't fighting the program the way I might in Procreate or Clip Studio Paint. It was pretty easy to make the keys, figure out inbetweens, and then ink and color between them. I know that, between the illustration, animation, and video editing software on the iPad, I could probably make a short film on it. It wouldn't be as expansive as some of my other stuff, but it would probably work for the current social media algorithms.

On the downside, this took way too long for me (personally).
Took too long to conceptualize and experiment with, took too long to ink, and especially took too long to color. 

You notice how this doesn't have my trademark spotblack shading for Abby's hair and leggings? Or my trademark shine? That's because it would have taken too long to implement. Not only in terms of drawing, but also, in terms of the lighting remaining consistent from frame to frame. This is normally not a problem in my asset animations, becuase I just draw in the lighting, and let the animation move the asset around without changing the lighting. But for traditional animation, you have to draw it in, for. every. frame. and you have to remember it consistently for every frame, less it either wobble or vanish between frames. 

With enough practice this kind of thing is easily mitigated, in the same way that drawing a character over and over again gets faster due to familiarity. But I've been out of practice with pure full traditional animation. By necessity; I wouldn't be able to put out as much animation as fast as I do without asset shortcuts. But those shortcuts don't exist on the iPad, so it takes longer doing it traditionally. I woke up to do this animation, and didn't finish until lunchtime. That's about 5 hrs. Not necessarily a bad time (on computer, I would have finished up the roughs and come back for cleanup and lighting later), but definitely too long for what I got out of it. I need to trim that down, which means I need to go back and remaster my fundamentals.

That doesn't mean anything for you guys (I'm not gonna revert all my ongoing projects just to take myself back to school), but look forward to seeing some personalized exercises in future. 

I want to improve on my niche as an NSFW storyteller, meaning more comics and animations. Part of that will be "illustrated portraits" and sketch animated sequences, which means I'll be needing to bulk up my iPad animation skills. It won't pay off immediately, but hopefully you guys should see some fun experiments coming soon.

What do you think?
Let me know in the comments!
Your feedback lets me know how I'm doing!
Thank you for your continued support and patronage, and I'll catcha over yonder!

-Saunter!