Flip Book Assignment

Wow, this project really was a test of my patience and a very enlightening learning experience. When I first got the assignment, I immediately had a series of ideas I wanted to try out. This led to a few sketch sessions to develop easy to draw characters so that I could easily recreate it multiple times. Unfortunately, the majority of these concept characters were too complex or not very creative. I decided to just get a book from the store and start with some more intangible concepts. I went to a local thrift shop and picked out a book, "How to Survive the Loss of a Love" by Melba Colgrove PhD, Harold H Bloomfield MD, and Peter McWilliams. I chose this particular book because it had an Oprah sticker on it and it had plenty of white space on the pages.

On a rainy afternoon, I sat down and dedicated several hours to drawing. This led my idea to make the flip book about the creative process. The style and complexity develop as the pages flip. It was a chain reaction that grew artistically. I was also able to incorporate one of the characters I created, the nameless smiley fish. I liked the way its shape helps its animation. The simple curves and lines were easy to change subtly to create the illusion of movement.
Finally, I wanted to make a note about the color. It really was a last minute decision that ended up working pretty successfully. When I incorporated the zooms into the animation, I made the cake bit difficult to color because of its size changes and proximity issues. When the "lens" was too close to the cake, it was going to be difficult (and probably messy) to color the entire page. I then came up with the fading and appearing effect which I thought looked very coral when animated.
Overall, I'm pretty proud of the final product. I'm not very confident in my drawing abilities and I think I need to take a class or something to improve on it but I think the overall composition was successful as a short piece.