Something I’ve been meaning to try for a while now is creating an animated illustration. Today I decided to get to it, with the intent of creating a simple, perhaps 12 frame animation of hair blowing in the wind. Aside from my obvious folly in assuming that undertaking any animation whatsoever would be simple or easy (as I was telling myself it would be), I reached cataclysmic levels of “in the zone,” and I went overboard. 

For the illustration I wanted to draw Mignette, my DnD character. At the stage when I was drawing her I was not yet completely bewitched by the hair, so I had some restraint and spent about an hour on her. Then I began the animation, which had a rocky start. I watched some youtube videos, none of which were making themselves helpful, but then I got into the groove of it, and, in my bliss, I overcomplicated it. I spent about 9 hours on it, and the frame count reached 18 rather than 12. Despite the fact that I was running on fumes to begin with, and the fact that I have a few other things in life which require my attention, I put all the energy I had into animating this stupid hair. It was a thrilling battle to fight. 

The main principle at play in the animation is the movement of waves—as her hair is ruffled by the wind, it sends ripples which travel down the length of it. This was made a lot easier by the fact that I had already tried animating fire, surprisingly. The fire animation required almost the same movement, just with different surface characteristics, such as sparks. Her bangs, in contrast, required less movement, since they are shorter and therefore unable to make dramatic gestures. To make it easier to see what was going on, I tried to start with large shapes and work my way towards adding detail. It also helped that I put the bangs and the hair on the back of her head on separate layers. I was also surprised by how difficult it was to in between (draw frames in between the more important frames which are drawn first). I thought it would be easy because I would just add a line exactly in between the lines on the last and next frames, but when I did that it looked completely unnatural. I had to keep in mind the type of motion while I inbetweened as well, otherwise it looked strange. All around, it was a fun time!