Barold the Girl Scout

Our next animation project was to make a walk cycle. We had to make a creature and give it it's own personal walk cycle.

We started out with creating our characters and I felt the need to make it unnecessarily complicated. Meet Barold. He is a snail with three legs, or, as I like to call him, not something that should ever exist. Being a Girl Scout is his full-time job and he isn't very good at it. His snail roommate (or his snoommate), is sick and tired of him because he doesn't pay his half of the rent. I don't know why I couldn't have just done something with two legs. Getting through the Photoshop portion was very difficult for me. Something about the way my Photoshop is set up is making it hard for me to make things. Anytime I put something over something it has to be in a new layer. No matter how little it is. It gets super frustrating and time-consuming. By the time I got through that step, I was behind. After Effects proved to be even more difficult. I'm not sure if this was clear, but animating a walk cycle with three legs is a bit more confusing to get down than two. I went through about four different styles of walking and animating them before finally just animating the back two legs like normal and having the front one do its own thing. Turn out, I did that step backward and now his front foot drags on the ground all of the time. By this point, I was a day or two behind and I decided that that was a small enough issue and I was over Barold. I had been mad at him for about a week now. I finally understand, in a way, what he's putting his snoommate through.

If there's one thing I learned during this project, its don't stray too far from the original assignment. I decided to add a body part and that was by far the worst idea I have had to put myself through in school. I'm not sure if there is something up with my Photoshop or if its user error but it's bothering me and I don't know how to fix it. There's something wrong with the paintbrush and eraser and it's really confusing me.

If I could do anything differently I would have chosen an entirely different creature. Preferably one with two legs. That would have made it a lot easier on myself and on everyone that had to endure my rants about my three-legged snail. I would, on the other hand, keep the background I made and the over-complicated backstory I gave him. I really enjoyed creating a whole character with a backstory and a motive. If I hadn't made it clear before, Barold here is on his way to sell Girl Scout cookies.

In the next project, I want to do something a bit more simple and not too weird. I think I got the hang of my Photoshop problem so we will see how that goes down. I'm really excited for our next project, though. My friend gave me a sneak peek and it looks like a very fun project.