Animation 🏃💨

I know a couple of people who do animation for films. They have to make dozens of frames per second of screen time. Imagine spending a week or two making a computer model of an animal move so naturally that you wouldn't know it's not real. And all that work is on screen for maybe a minute.

I've been trying to animate a rolling ball for a game. I put little eyes on it. It seems that 5 frames per rolling direction is smooth enough. So rolling down has:

• Eyes appearing at the top
• Eyes in the middle
• Eyes disappearing at the bottom
• Blank because eyes are round the back
• Blank again, so re-use the previous one

Half the directions are the opposite in reverse, so I only need 4 sets of frames. The "eyes in the middle" frame and the "eyes round the back" one can be shared between all directions, so I think there are 10 frames total.

My tip for drawing is one I learned from... some Victorian.

"First you think, and then you draw round the think."

It needs to be easy because I'm drawing with my finger on a smartphone, and my drawing ability is... slight. Luckily, all I'm doing is giving a hint of rolling rather than any kind of accuracy.

=> #animation

P.S.

I tried to fix my crawler, and after some time decided there was nothing wrong. Must have just been too tired to think it through properly.

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