Broken pencil and discoveries
During term break, I wasn’t drawing much or animating, but I was reading and thinking. Thinking a lot about how I want my game to be, how animations should be done, what style it has to have, how to develop, how to achieve the movement and so on.
Sometimes I feel like I am stuck; I want my narrative to be interesting and challenging, and the way I visualize and think about this project makes me doubt about myself and if it is good enough. And doubting yourself is never good. So, this term I start with more confidence and less worrying of what if nobody will like this. As long as I am happy with a result and as long as I am pushing limits of what I can or cannot do.
Yet, I am still stuck. Stuck in thinking.
Before Christmas I was working on some backgrounds. I have a collection of photographs of various locations in Copenhagen, which I am using as a reference. What I have experienced, some places are not aesthetically pleasing, so I am just playing with images and mixing various different elements to create my compositions.
Here is something of how I would imagine ‘An innocent pee’:
I wanted a simple, but detailed drawing, so I traced using a photograph. I was missing some colour and I wasn’t feeling like using watercolour, so I just applied colour blocks digitally. I think it is ok, but needs more developing.
But the other night, I was doing some character sketching and I got an idea of how I should make those backgrounds. Instead of making it to look like just animation, I should show it from a viewer’s point of view. I need to animate like I am walking the street, I see something on my right and I turn to right… After all, it is a game (sort of).
And this made me realize, that I should just draw the way I want to, the way I can. I am just going to use photographs as a reference, but I won’t be tracing them. I think, I lose the easiness and flow this way.
Another discovery was that using a normal 3B pencil is much more better than using a mechanical pencil. I knew it all the time, but I just got so used to a mechanical pencil and that I don’t need to sharpen it (with knife) every 5 min… I was comfortable. It was super quick.
And when I accidentally broke it 😀
Now, my old drawing pencils and a knife are back in use! This I can do with it, just makes me so happy and I can finally see that this is what I was looking all the time. Stupid me, thinking mechanical pencil was a key for a sketchy loose drawing 🙂
These are few sketches for my ‘An innocent pee’ character (which I enjoyed drawing so much!):
Never thought that a simple thing like breaking your pencil can make you realize or notice things… Feels like I cracked a code!
P.S. There was another thing I discovered! Not like I never knew about it; I have been working with it making posters or other graphic design work. So, while I was watching tutorials on animating and how to animate and make interactions using Adobe Animate CC, I realized that I have to convert my drawings into vectors in order to have them separated and have a better view. BUT this means, I have to do to every single drawing I make. However, I like drawing by hand on a paper, so this is the only way. A lot of work, but so worth it!