So, I’m going to be animating this cat for my school’s News T.V Intro.
This has taken me about 4 hours in Illustrator and, yet again, this cat has been inspired from World of Warcraft.
Hey, this is animated now so check it out!
- The things in my project that worked really well
I know, I know, cats cannot be purple, well guess what? They don’t have glowing stripes either but that’s not stopping me now, is it? Basically I love how this fantasy cat can be used as a broad representation for a wild cat. I enjoy the glow effects that I over exaggerated a bit, I like the nice creamy purple hues and blue contrasts. Always, cats are just something, in my opinion at least, that you cannot really mess up on at all.
- At least 2 things to add or improve on next time
I think I should add the back leg to that back paw there because I didn’t add a leg at all, it’s just a disembodied paw. Also, I would like to improve the face more, add more detail but due to time, I really cannot afford to do that right now. Another thing that I would like to improve on is not having to rely on a base for this style of cat – But when I draw cats, they look more like foxes or wolves more than cats so that is why I’m using a base. Also, I cannot draw front-view cats very well, so I kind of needed a base for this one just so that I can create something that resembles a cat facing forwards.
- At least 1 thing you did not do well
That face, there just something.. off about it and I have no idea what it is. I do not have the time to find out what it is though because I have 7 more days to finish this animation. I also did not draw this without having to reference many pictures of cats, which is something I wish to improve on in the distant future.
Also, I just finished the animation and like, this sweet blueberry cat looks like its eating something even though I meant for it to look like it was meowing. I need to fix that but. Time. Just hates me.
- What was difficult? What was easy? (referencing tools, techniques, styles, etc)
As always, just plain drawing is so easy, making the glow on the eyes and shoulder along with the tail, colour theory is always fun for everyone and just the satisfaction of just finishing this piece is pretty cool. The one thing that I am dreading is actually animating this because that will be hard just like it always has been with this program. Also, since this is a front view of a cat, everything will look very.. 2d whilst I’m animating it, so that might be hard to make it not have that 2d feel to it.
Just finished animating this and the difficult part was trying to make that tail move.. To the right side of the body.. But it was so bad that I just.. Didn’t do that.
- What was the most fun vs most frustrating.
Defiantly that face, there’s something wrong with it and I cannot figure out what it is. I have tried switching colours, adding textures (Which I then remembered are a pain to animate with so I removed the textures), Making outlines, putting glow effects here and there. Nothing seemed to fix it. I kinda gave up to save time and put some pink rectangles on the face which helped a little bit but there’s still something that bugs me about it.
- If I were to do redo this project from scratch I would…
Not animate it.
I understand that it’s the task that I have challenged myself to take head on but oh my goodness, animating this work on the program that we have feels so out of place because I have animated before and the program that I used was very different from the one that is offered to us at this school. I just get confused and look for tools or options that aren’t really there. If I were to redo this project again, I would simply leave my drawing as is (Except fix the face) and maybe change some of the colours.