Studio Brief 1: 'I See Faces' - Cat GIF Digital Process

Digital Process

Due to how I have created the artwork for each individual frame already, the digital process was extremely easy when creating my rolling cat GIF.

I was able to scan each of my artworks in (making a note of which artwork related to which frame in the GIF. I was able to edit them individually, cleaning up any unwanted marks with the patch tool and enhancing the colour of the cat and texture of the fur.

Creating the eyes

I was a little nervous about how to go about creating the eyes, but new that doing this digitally would help the overall process (instead of me having to draw them in on each piece of artwork).

I started by whole punching some really nice white textured paper as I felt a simple and plain white disk was a little too clean and stood out too much in contrast to the texture of the fur in the artwork.

I was able to add pupil and iris detail over the top of the white textured disks, making use of the Photoshop guidelines to make sure everything was centered correctly.

Once the eyes were finished, I was able to add them one by one as a new layer in each cat frame. Every time I added them, I made sure to move the eyes downwards (in the direction of the rolling cat) accordingly, using the the guides again for reference. 

Adding frames

Now that each individual frame was now completed, the process was similar to my last GIF.
I was able to use "file > place" to add all my artwork as new layers, then from these layers, add my frames accordingly. I was also able to do a final bit of touching up to the colour/vibrance at this stage to make sure the textures of the cat all looked as similar as possible.

Timing

Timing was such an issue with this GIF. With all my frames all ordered and how they should be, the cat - although continuous and smooth in movement - moved too slow even with 0.00 secs delay. I had envisaged a cat whirling around quite fast, which is more comical than a slow moving cat.

There was no way to speed this up using Photoshop as 0 second delay is the fastest time between frames (obviously), therefore to overcome this issue, I decided to remove some of the frames. This did mean losing artwork but at least I was able to create a faster moving sense of motion. 

Removing the frames really helped the speed issue and to my surprise almost made the movement look a little smoother in places. This was great as I had been scared that with some frames missing, there would be jumps between movements.

Final GIF

Successes

I am really pleased with how this GIF has turned out. As it was a simple idea, I was able to spend time creating artwork to the highest quality that i could, and really focus on how to generate a smooth sense of motion. The media I have chosen also works really well, as the mark making gives a real sense of texture and helps portray movement.

Failures

If I could do this GIF again, I would take better care to make sure that the surrounding area of my character is completely white. Although the creases and marks in the surrounded space do add a sketching/rough element which works well with the coloured pencil media, I think this GIF would have been more successful and the character more striking, if there weren't other distracting parts of the image. I would also like to try this GIF with the eyes hand drawn. Creating the eyes digitally did help the overall process of adding and moving them across frames, however I still feel as if they stand out a little too much in the overall GIF, as they are after all a different media entirely.