Plan, Plan, Plan!!!

For my next animation (As promised as well) I again returned to the sketchbook and started planning ahead as to what I wanted my character to do. A good friend of mine, Chris Piron was kind enough to let me use his character for my next animation assignment. I first looked at his character and tried to think to myself what purpose would he best serve for? And I simultaneously came up with an idea to use the Michigan J. Frog song and animate that character on top of the music track. That's when I started drawing and sketching ideas, and after about a month and a half of working on the animation, I pretty much used all my drawings as main key poses. Video reference was used, however I tried to stick more closely to the drawings and the poses that I planned out in my own head.

Putting ideas on the sketchbook

As promised,Here are a selection of drawings/ sketches that I did while I was at Pandapanther. As an animator and especially when it comes to doing cartoony animation, Video reference always helps, however you cannot beat the power of drawing and planning out your character's poses on a piece of paper. These drawings helped me tremendously when it came to pushing the poses on my characters. It almost makes me to NOT want to use reference at all, but I still use reference because it always helps in the long run.