Fränklin, my first animation short

Fränklin from Lew Bridcoe on Vimeo.

During my free time of three weeks in October I worked on my first animation film Fränklin.

Although some time passed since I finished the video, I still can't judge if it is any good.

When I started to make the first scenes, I didn't plan to do a 'whole' film at all. I just wanted to make my drawings move. I drew a simple and featureless character. I wanted to see if I can teach myself some animation... but after some days, my character evolved and I wanted it to become more and planned scenes until I even found a nice ending.

I made a .psd file for every scene, mostly drawing every single frame by hand, using copy and paste sometimes (the final film is made up from 1012 frames). Since I only had Photoshop, and no experience in layering animations, it isn't very elaborate to the eye, but it was very exhausting to draw it and this and the lack of a proper soundtrack kept me from starting a new thing ever since.

Here are some of the .psds, flatted and some stills.

And thus I depart to 2013 without '2012 legacies'. Mostly. I still got stuff I didn't get around organizing for the blog yet. Anyway! Happy New Year!

Festive Photography on my tumblr

Macros and four pictures from Berlin.

Secret Santa

I painted this picture as a "secret santa" for Wasserbienchen on Animexx.

I mingled with ideas for a while, after having read her nuzlocke challenge on deviantART.
Finally and pretty suddenly I had a precise idea of the image I wanted to paint. I spent a whole evening researching japanese architecture and constructed the stage for the scene.

For perspective grid I like this method.

All the outlines and colouring were done in Paint Tool Sai. I couldn't decide if the shoji (sliding wall things) were paper or glass, so I outlined the roof, too, although in the finished image it is not really visible. Final atmospheric touch-ups were done in Photoshop.

I don't know if I managed to show that Bianca, the smaller girl with the towel is dripping wet from the rain (that's her clothes there lying on the boards). Here is a closeup of the drops. I used the lasso tool, filled with white, lowered the opacity and added two layer effects. Quick and easy. Love photoshop!

Animexx calendar 2013 submission

and somehow I managed to delete all the files. This one is downloaded from my entry on animexx.de. They are making a calendar every year. I felt super inspired (by the required 2:1 crop), but my lack of skills and time made my idea look all lame... maybe I try the "same" idea next year...

anyway, Sai and PS.

Umi desu!

for my boyfriend.

Snowflaaaaaake

White on White

because it's snowing in Berlin.