plastikevol

I've been trying to make an honest to goodness animation for more than a decade. It never seemed to come together. My ideas were too extravagant. Where to start? Where was it going.

I tried a half dozen animation programs, and none of them really clicked. All of them are poorly documented, and none of the controls are intuitive. I didn't enjoy freehand controls at all. They're all vector-ish illustration that automatically smooths out lines. The lack of control is infuriating. Watching the rare, precise line get smoothed into a different position is the #1 factor to making me throw up my hands and give up.

Well all that stuff still holds, but I managed to knock out a complete animation. Its pretty rough, in fact it looks like shit, but I'm just relieved to get the monkey off my back. I definitely learned a lot and hopefully the next one will look much better. 

If anything changed, I realized all the decent programs have a "import a file as vectors option". So I could import physical line work and just use the drawing tools for fill-in frames. I also dramatically scaled back my ambitions. Instead of a complex narrative, just a simple little hulkout. That stuff writes itself.

The real reason though may just be age. If there's one benefit to getting older, I've found with time I get better and better with focusing and finishing tasks. I used to get so distracted! But everything works out.