I wanted to share this little animation before 2024 ended. It has been a fun year and I've had the chance to work on lots of watercolor illustrations as well as other projects.
It was at the end of 2023 when I started digging a bit more about animation and I explored the idea of animating simple watercolor drawings.
Initially I wanted to avoid using digital tools and try to stick to traditional media as much as possible, in order to preserve the watercolor look and the textures of the paper etc. However I learned that it was a very time consuming process that gets complicated very quickly. Plus it is quite hard to create smooth animations using this method.
This is why I decided to go fully digital for this one and I am glad I did because it allowed me to get results way faster and make changes on the fly!
I drew the sequence frame by frame in Photoshop and put everything together in After Effects.
For reference I followed a clip of AJ Nelson skateboarding on a ramp. I tried to apply the art and animation style of Reece Parker which I love and find it super inspiring.
Despite is being fully digital, I still enjoyed every single minute of this process. I also learned a couple of new tricks and it got me inspired to do more, larger scale projects like this one. But that will have to be in 2025 ;)