The Classical Elements - Production - Painting the Frames

Obviously the most tedious task throughout this entire process, painting the frames (Almost made me wish that I had just given Flash a try despite how unfamiliar I was with it, but eh, I had other reasons as to why I decided to animate with Photoshop anyway) but I suppose it isn't all that bad if there are no issues with the sketch… 

Unfortunately for me, there STILL were issues with the sketch, so I had to alternate between painting and fixing up/redoing some of the sketches (Again).

And as the deadline drew nearer, I started worrying that I wouldn't have time to paint in all the details I had planned to initially, and so at first, I was going to scrap the scarf and not bother properly coloring in the umbrella, before reconsidering (Because my perfectionist side was already holding a gun to my head for cutting so many corners), there was also initially going to be more detailed shading (As shown in the image below) but obviously there would not be enough time.

I instead tried to show some very basic lighting details on the umbrella and on the character in a few short scenes, such as when the character is passing under the street lamp at the very beginning of the animation.

What could have been… or not, coloring each frame like this would have taken months, I would have driven myself mad doing it too.

The wind design used was based on the wind animation seen in the game "The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker" (Sob, I still need to play this game, thank you so much Mat for reminding me to do so), it was simple and was good enough to show how strong (And douchey) the wind actually was, also it did not complete obstruct the other details as compared to the original wind design I had used.

I had considered adding in some leaves too, but it didn't exactly go with the somewhat cloudy look of the wind (It might however have worked better had the wind been less visible, as seen in some other animations, like "Pocahontas").

Seen here is the animation I had almost decided to go with (With no scarf, a flatly colored umbrella and a messier wind design):

And well here's the final product, I decided to add the motion blur in Photoshop instead of doing so later on with After Effects, it saves more time that way:

A friend had thought that my character had died in the end… maybe I should have quickly animated some stars coming out of its head.