It was time to call in the Big Guns: my friend Tim Decker, animation professor at University of Wisconsin, and former Simpsons animator. This guy was the only man on the Disney princess team. I was in the presence of greatness…
We sat down in his studio, and I handed over one of my movement series. “Yep, you can draw all right. But you gotta learn how to make him dance.”
“It’s all in the movement, the gesture, you see,” he says as he confidently starts scribbling out a version of my character. “You can make it look like Jimmy later… don’t worry about resemblances in this stage. We gotta make him jump, and bounce.” He flips his animation pages back and forth as fast as hummingbird wings. “See, look at that. You see it? D’you see that? He’s jumpin’!”
In a matter of 2 hours, we already had amazing “pencil tests” of the most important movements, and even though they were only rough drawings, the jumps and spins were all there, perfect and lifelike.
…and here’s the result!
The Pencil Test
Hi! Any chance you’ll put a clip of the pencil test up on the site? Would be interesting to see the progression through to final work. – Ron
Ron, thanks for asking! I updated the post for you to have a look. Stay tuned!
This is so awesome! Looking forward to more
Looks great. Nice work!
This is brilliant. I keep coming back to take another look.
That is AWESOME! He’s sooo cute!
so, what’s coming next?
This is great. Can you give a bit more of a look behind the curtain? How will you create a book experience, as opposed to producing another channel for animation?
David, thanks for asking. I actually have been thinking a lot about this and I think it warrants a whole separate post… SO check out the next entry. Thanks for visiting us and asking smart questions.
Sounds like a great team.
Thanks for sharing.
I look forward to the development of this project.
Frank
Amazing!!!! Love following this project!