A Spooky Adventure

Hey everyone! I hope you’re having a lovely day!

As mentioned in the last post I’ll try to challenge myself with a new animation every week.

Luckily for me, after some research, I found an Instagram account called “Monday’s Challenge” that does exactly what I had in mind, every Tuesday they publish a post with a theme and a colour palette. Motion Graphic Designers and Animators across the world try to make an interpretation of that theme.

To enter you just need to do an animation, deliver it by Monday and use the hashtag #mondayschallenge.

I participated this week and as promised I documented my process and I’d love to share it with you.

If you’d like to see a new animations every week follow my Instagram.

 Week of 26/10 to 1/11
This week’s animation had to be about something “Spooky”

Tuesday

Storyboard & Brainstorm

I always start by looking for some inspiration, usually on Pinterest, Dribbble, Behance and Artstation.

Usually you would think of things related to Halloween: Pumpkins, Ghosts, Skeletons, Candles. I had some ideas, but I wasn't convinced.

After some time I thought about Inktober, for contest, Inktober is a drawing challenge where artists around the world have to create an ink drawing everyday throughout October and share it on social media.

These are some of the examples that really caught my eye:

Wednesday

Sketching & Establishing the idea

On Wednesday, I began sketching and putting ideas on paper to see what would work. After some deliberation, I decided to go with the concept of a cat and its shadow endlessly running. When the cat touches the ground, a skeleton appears in its shadow to add to the eerie atmosphere.

Inspired by this illustration. Made by feefal.

When I saw it, I immediately imagined it as an animation: What if the cat was running? What if I add ghosts while it’s running? What if I add colour?

I love to question a lot of ‘what if’s’ when I’m in the creative process. Unfortunately sometimes it leads into dangerous territory, when you have a lot of ideas the options increase and it’s harder to make a decision.

Process of Sketching

I believe it's important to highlight that I did on a 12 frame per second basis.

After some research a lot of animators started doing 12 drawings per second instead of the standard 24 frames per second used in film. This lowered the cost, time and the quality was generally preserved. This is called animating on 2s, as you would draw one frame for every two frames of film.

Thursday

Inking & Composing

In this step I played a little bit with brushes, textures and the position of the layers

Saturday

Flip Book animation

Even though it looks hard, I discovered it's easier than it looks.

I exported the animation to Adobe After Effects and masked every frame so it looked like cards or a page of a small notebook. I made every card a 3D Layer and animated the scale, position and the Y Rotation so it looks like a flip book.

Monday

Add final details

For the final details I added music to the animation and also some texture to give a more organic feel.

Final Thoughts

I wish I had more time to add more details and make it feel a bit more spooky but either way I'm happy with the results.

On a final note, check out what other animators and designers did at @mondayschallenge.

Let me know in the comments what's your favourite animation for this week's theme.

Stay tuned & Thank you for reading!