Animation Production Diary - First Scene

I have decided to animate my film using the traditional frame by frame method. I am hand pencilling most of the scenes because I really want to portray as graceful a feel as possible to the animation and this is the best way that I know how to. I will then be inking the pencils digitally in Photoshop. With the more complex scenes like the dancing scenes I will really want to nail down the keys through to breakdowns and in-betweens as much as possible in pencils before scanning in to ink. But with some of the more straightforward basic storytelling scenes I've found that just roughing the keys and breakdowns then scanning them in for inking can work and will help to economise the process. I realise that the method I've chosen is a labour intensive approach so I am consistently looking for ways to speed up the process while not compromising on the quality I want to maintain.


This is the first piece of animation I've produced for the film. It's for scene twelve, the spotlight coming on.