For today's Animation Skills class we had the whole day to work on a pose to pose animation with the usage of Acme punched paper and a light table (Several of the latter have been scattered about the classroom since Day 1).
Once the guides were drawn properly, the rest of the process actually went along pretty quickly, especially with the aid of a light table, though I had to redo it at least three times since I screwed up the guides the first two times (And don't you ever stare into that light table for too long no matter how intent you are on finishing that animation, I think there are still some spots dancing around in my eyes at the moment, oy vey...).
I also had a chance to better familiarize myself with the school's computer lab and its scanners, I was told that blue sketch lines normally wouldn't be detected when scanned in (Hence why they are used as guides), but no matter what settings I tried while scanning, they would show up on the image document, as clear as day. So unfortunately I had to do some really quick photoshop editing as well as change all the frames to greyscale so that they will match.
It was also today that I figured out how to convert these frames into a .mov file with QuickTime Pro 7 (Which I will have to use for my pixilation project), I am still trying to figure out an easy way however in converting a .mov into a .gif file, after making several attempts on Photoshop (Which would constantly hang when I tried) and QuickTime Pro 7, I gave up and simply used a website converter.
Overall, it was great finally getting to try out such a traditional animation technique, though it would get incredibly aggravating if you messed up your guides, also there is the problem of wasting paper, especially if you tend to sketch too hard like I do (But don't worry I recycled mine!)... Also staring too long into a light table is just as bad (If not worse) as staring into a computer screen all day, this is Captain Obvious' warning for the day.
I am still considering getting a light table of my own (Argos has some decently priced ones by the way), but if I am not going to use this technique too often, I might just wait until I return home first.
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