Animating My Little Friend

by Ashley Nestor

From a crude drawing to a polished animation, but without any further adieu, the process for animating my adorable little dancing friend. Oh, and on another note, this is in no way related to peppa the pig, nor is this peppa.

Ignoring the actual drawing process (ask someone who's actually good at it), we start with just an image of the character, inanimate. This began my absolute confusion over how to animate him doing the wave, and heck I don't even know how to do the wave. A few google results later, and I had my answer... giving up and finding on an easier way to animate him.

So, with my solution substitute stick figure done, it's easier for me to see how to do this with my actual character. In case you're wondering, I noticed that I could flip the character and make an in between frame (a frame to help motion seem fluid in animation) to be able to easily animate the wave going the other way by just flipping the character.

Armed with the knowledge I gained from the stick figure and my poor animation skills, I begin my ultimate adventure to make an animation that, for once, took thought and skill to make.

With some time and a lot of different kinds of in between frames... ta-da! Its almost complete with the only thing needing to be added is the arms in the between frames. Now, this is the difficult bit when using an animation program which isn't so good. Now, begins the arm transplants, where I move the arm frames to fit with their respective character movement frames.  Many frames will be and are  lost in the arm transplants, and they will be remembered for their sacrifices.

AND FINALLY, OUR FRIEND IS COMPLETE!