Animation is LOOOOOONG and I do mean long, the amount of things needed to keep things organized and consistent is not for everybody but fortunately while it is a copious amount of work it can also be very satisfying if you don’t rely on the buzz of instant gratification.
So I’m currently animating a children’s book called “Chantelle’s new tooth” written by Nicola Tenyue and illustrated by Garion Hayman.
The book is centered around a young girl who has lost one of her baby teeth and is waiting for it to grow back but it simply can’t grow back quick enough as far as she’s concerned. You know how kids can be impatient and want everything now? well that’s what this story is about. The key phrase that is repeated a few times in the book is “All you need is patience”.
I met Nicola Tenyue the writer and creator of this story some time ago through a mutual friend who knew that I was heavy into animation and we have been working on this project ever since. It is actually going to be my first completed project because while I have done lots of animated sequences and posted them online I have not actually done a complete project from start to finish to the standard I want yet but this project has been given my all.
I wanted to avoid doing just the basic cutaway animation that you tend to see many people post online, I wanted to incorporate actual key framed animation where I draw every single frame like this.
This kind of animation allows for the movement to be a lot smoother to watch in my opinion and I just love drawing so I don’t mind repeating the process of drawing images again though a bit of cheating using modern programs like adobe after effects doesn’t hurt.
Now when you look at the actual pages in the book itself and the art style you see that it is somewhat different from my own art style and the images in the book use a certain perspective and angle of the characters that always has you looking directly at their face. Very few times do you see them from the side or from behind so that meant I had to do a complete character design sheet for each and every character in the book. Fortunately there were only four of them which was Chantelle, Mum, Dad and Grand dad.
I also had to storyboard the entire story even though the book has already been drawn and published because as some of you may know, what is written and/or illustrated in a book usually doesn’t translate exactly the same way in the form of moving images like cartoons or film. This is especially true when you consider adding voices and sound as that tends to change the pace of the story completely. Anyone who has watched a superhero film or series based on a comic book or even Game of Thrones which is based on a book will know exactly what I’m talking about.
After reading Chantelle’s new Tooth a million times I ended up adding in a lot of extra scenes with dynamic angles and dialogue so the story could flow well so it could maintain interest.
I am thoroughly enjoying this journey as it allows me show people that I can transform an illustrated book into a cartoon without the assistance of some big corporation involvement and I sense Ill end up being approached by a lot more freelance writers to do the same.
Another fun fact is that animation isn’t just visuals it is also 50% sound. Thankfully Nicola already had the theme track with and without vocals which made life even easier. Fortunately because I have a sound engineering background from my days of doing Grime on pirate radio back in the day, merging my art with the audio was a breeze.
You can also purchase the original book right here
For anymore progress on this project and other work I am doing just follow me on youtube facebook twitter and instagram and of course you know you have to visit www.waynerileyart.com
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