My college roommate and I drew a face and added a fake mustache to a lamp and called him Ernest (yes, Hemmingway). That inspired me to make this "Lamp-ified" head of Ernest Hemmingway. It was going to be for a little minute long animated sketch about a man's man who has Ernest Hemmingway give him horrible advice.

I ended up scrapping the idea because all my sketches and tests were too close to the famous heads from Futurama.

ANINATION TESTs!

This whole test started because of an observation I've made about Scranton, PA. It rains a lot, when it isn't there's a lot of overcast, and there's a lot of gothic architecture. A lot like Gotham city. Which inspired me to snap this picture and start on this little test.

For Batman's design, I was emulating elements from his very first iteration by Bill Finger and Bob Kane. Specifically the gun holster, which I used for the grappling gun, and purple gloves.

These two are a really old now (circa 2021-22) but I feel they're important to include because you can visually see me learn a couple lessons about animation.

In the right one, it's the original design of my anthropomorphic character, and I have him walking under a street light in a really dramatic scene. It was constructed by drawing the character/rain on procreate, making the background in photoshop, and putting it all together in After effects. It's here I learned that I can't just keyframe a walking loop across a page, that I need to consider the timing and spacing of every frame instead of just cheating my way through it.

In the left one, you can see that the character begins with the same overall design (I was originally emulating animators from the mid-1900s). However, frame by frame my character becomes more streamlined and consistent. It taught me to be more conscious about my pencil mileage when designing future characters.

Both of these animations where made using the same motion path to practice overlapping action. In hindsight, the skull was probably in the back of my mind when I was making "I'm a Bird". Doing that practice helped me visualize motion in a completely different way.

It was such a mental breakthrough for me, that I drew my anthropomorphic character on the same motion path, this time adding a whole body with the intention of making him dance. It was a rush job, the line work is messy, and the colors are outside of the lines, but I still love it.

These are my very first two attempts at stop motion. I made them using things I had lying around my room already. In the first attempt (Left) I wanted to see how natural I can make unisex mannequin's walk look, which was limited by the stand it came on. However I think I had a decent grasp on the spacing of the walk.

The second attempt (Right) was more fun. This time with a cameraman, we spent six hours putting together this nine second clip. I was determined to get the whole shot in-camera so for the background I used a panoramic photo that I scrolled frame by frame on my Mac. We lit the character separately to prevent the light from the computer from backlighting it.

I marked out the spacing of each scroll for consistency. The camera movement was done in-camera as well, using similar methods as the background. Overall I think it was a success. However, I don't believe that capturing the background in-camera this way was worth the extra step while shooting. Another thing I would want for next time, other than a new puppet, would be a controlled lighting environment to prevent the flicker you see in both clips.