Over the time I haven't been updating the blog, I did research into different techniques of animation and how they effect the final product. Then, I chose a technique which I wanted to use on my own animation. I chose to use Photoshop animation, as it allowed me to use interesting textures, such as the one on Red's cape. This was such a large factor because I very much want the background trees in the creepy part of the forest to be twisted paper, because when I was a child, when trees were described as "twisted" in a storybook, that was what I imagined. Another reason I chose Photoshop was because I have it at home, and this means I can work on it at all times.
After I had made my decision, I started working on the assets for my animation. Firstly, I drew a pencil sketch of a walk cycle, and traced it up to become a loop of Red walking. An interesting thing happened when I line tested the sketch version in that Red's walk cycle had a little kick in it that I hadn't planned on, but I felt it suited her, so I let it stand. I used Dragon Stop Motion to create an animation of Red's looped walk cycle. Since Dragon creates a folder with the taken frames, I could create a Photoshop animation of the frames.
The first job, when I was animating in Photoshop, was simply dragging the frames into the file, turning them into separate layers, then resizing and arranging them properly so that, when going through them, they made the animation.
Once all the frames were there, I opened the Motion window, which appeared across the bottom. I made all the layers except for the first frame's layer invisible. Then, I took the frame, which created the second one. I changed the visible layer to the second frame, took the frame, and continued much the same for the rest of the frames. Once I had taken them all, I set how long they would last while the animation was playing, testing how the changes effected it, until I was happy with it.
Since I was coloring in Photoshop, I decided, to make my life easier, to put each of the layers in a folder in Photoshop, along with their coloring and the cape texture. I did the usual method of actually coloring the image, turning the line-art layer into a multiply layer, then using the magic wand tool and expand to make sure that the color, carefully kept on the color layer, wouldn't bleed over the edges of the line-art.
The last job is to add the cape textures, through a similar method, which I think I may have already documented, but better safe than sorry. First, I copy the texture and paste it onto the photoshop file. This will put it on it's own "Smart" layer. Then, I make it invisible, select the line-art's layer, and use the Magic Wand tool to select the inside of the cape. I choose the texture's layer again, and make it visible, before copying the part that is still selected. Then I delete the texture layer, and paste the selected outline. Finally, I arrange it so that it is below the frame's line-art layer and rename it so that it's easily identifiable.
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