Planes, Paper and Paint

I had a little aeroplane of an idea for my paper last week – why not write a comparison between the short animations of then (1930s) and now (2000s)? I flew her over to Simon so that he could have a look at her. He took her into a hanger and pulled her apart. But he said some of her parts could be useful.

I rewrote and submitted another Preliminary Outline of my Honours Paper on Friday (13^th) built on something Simon suggested when he critiqued my proposed paper ideas. I hope that this time I’m on the right track or at least a lot closer to it. I’m especially hopeful as when I was researching this new idea, I actually found a lot of material.

Now that my paper is temporarily out of the way, I’m refocusing on the project again. Since I’ve last posted I’ve animated a little more and started work on my backgrounds.

The plans for my backgrounds have changed several times since I’ve started. Initially I thought I’d just paint them digitally - - then it occurred to me that I don’t paint very well digitally. I tend to end up choosing the really garish colours.

Then I considered building making my backgrounds out of photographs.

And though I really liked the idea conceptually, aesthetically it (I had to reluctantly admit) kinda jarred with the look of my animation.

Finally . . . and what I’ve currently (and invested about $40 in canvas into) settled on is PAINTING my backgrounds – with paint. And a brush. Not photoshop, not my wacom. But good old acrylic and whatever poor animal they plucked to get brush bristles.

It’s messy, but something different to distract me from (and still remain contributive to) my project. I haven’t composited it with my animation (the characters) yet but I am fairly confident that they won’t clash aesthetically. Hands painted backgrounds were used in 2D Disney stuff and it worked for them. I reckon I can make it work.