Lexi's Art Blog

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This animation depicts the evolutionary transition from the soft, exposed fish egg to the hard-shelled reptilian egg. In the end, it reverts back to where it started, the implication being literally that the soft egg remains within and figuratively that evolution is an ongoing process that often repeats itself when convenient. No one creature is rested on too long, as all stages of life are fleeting and continuous drafts. This also contributes to but is not the only reason this animation appears sketchy or "in process."

I have a better hold now on how to use this program. I still have not come to a good solution for how to color the way I want, but in this case, it does not matter since color ended up being a bad idea anyway. This is definitely something I need to consider for the future, though. I went with a much sketchier style - I typically animate loosely, but this is still much more dramatic than how I usually work. It happened to align with the values of what is being depicted, but that part was not preplanned and was realized about halfway through. The big reason I made this decision was that it allowed me to make a more complex and personally satisfying animation without worrying about the time constraints of clean linework. I also really like to work this loose because it adds more personality and perceived movement, in my opinion.

I would have liked to add a background, but I quickly realized over the weekend that what I wanted to do would either look bad or require a lot more time than I had, even without being clean. My animation changed quite a bit from the storyboard, so the flow also changed. When I attempted to add in the wave transition I was initially excited about, it took all of the attention away from the subject and made it much less hypnotic. Cleaning up the lines also made them wobbly and ironically destroyed the smoothness. After spending a lot of time editing it, I decided to keep it the way I presented it on Friday. I did meticulously fix quite a few more minor distractions, though. For example, the eye thickness wobbling on the salamander went beyond sketchy and looked gross. In summary, I have an idea of the potential to continue this, but I do not yet know how to execute it properly.

The color was also not a good idea. I tried filling in the creature loosely, but again it just ended up being an unappealing distraction. I have been gravitating more evenly between colorless and colorful lately, so maybe this is indicative of that shift. Something feels like it is missing, though, so I will continue to play. Something I feel like I could have changed more quickly (and therefore am more frustrated by) is the weird transition between the big fish and the blank background.

I do really like how it turned out in terms of flow. I am happy with my stylistic choices, and I am proud of the timing since I struggled with it last time. This was not necessarily on purpose, but due to the centering, there is also a hypnotic quality that I am a fan of.