life drawings

Before I started animating I did a little research and preparation. This included life drawing, watching real ballerinas, acting out some of the movements myself and doing rough sketches of movements. Oh yeah! and listening to a lot of classical music. Ha! Its funny but it helped me to get into the right frame of mind somehow:) being as they are closely related. Drawing from life prepared me for the difficult task of animating two caricatured women. I tried to picture in my mind scenes that I knew would be a challenge, like say raising the arm into a certain position, which may seem quite basic. But I wanted it to look believable whilst being funny at the same time. The fact that I chose to use 'cartoony' characters as opposed to realistic looking figures did make it a bit easier for me as I knew that I would be able to exaggerate a bit more. But that isn't to say that I was going to take liberties:) For this reason I knew that I would have to at least have a basic understanding of what actually happens when an arm bends or a foot takes off from the floor so that I could use it as a starting point in the animation. Phew! that was a bit long winded:)