In truly traditional animation you don’t really have to align the frame like that, you already have your framing done, it’s the object that move inside the framing. And in digital it’s even easier since you have the onion mod.

Here I worked it like life drawing, so I had to do that to erased most the imperfections having a real fluidity, that makes most of the illusion with an higher frame rate. Like hiding the hand, the fact that hair are just squiggling line and no true worked hair having my character really solid on his foot

Here, yep, that why the book isn’t constant, I used literally the video reference, put my scan in transparence, and tried to follow as much my danser as i could.

I work with danser mostly with friends, they dance in front of me, they mostly are coming from a contemporary dance background but rework their art to be looking more like a style of breakdance/hip hop. An other friend put the beat, and they go free dancing on the beat, it’s mostly a type of danse that is really visceral, quite acrobatic for some. Nothing is really planed.

I film them, sometimes if I am feeling good enough i just go “raw”, but those generally result in new way for me to confront my line work, than true piece on themselves, and use those accidental finding to better the fluidity in my animation. But for animation like this one I'm essentially resting on one reference, this is why this so fluid, it’s essentially a massive study.

I am neither a dancer or an animator, I am a drawer (dessinateur) I am just obsessed with the line. So animation was a way I had to explore to have more fluidity in my work. I am just amazed by the work of Angelo. This work in particular his thought to be decline in different ways, like a motif like grant wallpaper (still in production) to convey a feeling of accumulation. Like an illustration of my persistant rambling in this animation in particular.

Some extract will be zoom only on his face and will emphasize his facial expression, I will rework them with graphite and create mobile that turn on themselves and create some kind of windmill flipbook.

That animation his really for my final in college so I push myself to the maximum of my capacity, I can only achieve 10 or 12 frame by day working at 8h to the moment I finished at least the tenth. I just wanted to go back at something I used to really like and reappropriate the danse, the notion of animation. The over obsession for little detail, just feel the brush flowing on the paper.

Hope I make sens because it quite late in my country (5:35) and I lack a lot of sleep

Just sent you the proof in mp that I can draw, this isn’t tracing, in that case all people drawing from life are tracing

I didn’t use the tracing method, at first this project, not this animation but the more rough, was to rework my anatomy, and since I was working on dancing I tried to animate it, just using dragon without thinking much of it, and it worked, so I pushed the thing you can find the second try on my Reddit page

When I say “traditional” is that I didn’t use a software to trace each frame, I had my paper my 5 years knowledge in nude classes, my video reference and the notion of animation I learn during my first two college years. What I mean by traditional is that it is not the modern method used in graphics design, it’s more like the way the Disney animator used rotoscoping for Snow White.

I am no animator, I am in my last year of fine art, and try to find ways to rethink an image, so animation was obviously a way to go about it, this one have just more preparation than the other and the experience gotten because of the other try

This isn’t tracing, this is traditional rotoscoping yeah, but this is not traced

Won’t denied the obvious fact, but it was done by hand, using a reference doesn’t make a work bad, doesn’t make go away the work I put in it, many animation studio use this technique

I just go the same way Snow White was made

First, I do a lot of observation at my reference, draw the key mouvement on draft (the one that must have an impact) like a story board animator, complete the mouvement still on draft. The oversized clothes helps a lot with hiding weird anatomical error, I took almost 2 weeks to complete the 430 frame (here I am still at half inking this project currently at the 189, here 133)

And after I clean my mess using a light box, a fine brush, and hold my breath to stop shaking.

And ta daaa !

The work is inspired by a French dancer named Angelo, i try to work with dancer from my region to have a more personal feel to it and push the culture in our little region

Since high school (I am 25 now) me and my friends were always passionate about hip hop culture, I lost contact with them going to college deciding I valued more education than social link at the time. It got me quite depressed, made my art gone quite angry, I did a lot of fighting scene, took great interest in mma sport, my work was colorful, energized but still quite angry looking.

I always was interested in animation, did my first years of college in that field but loose interest because it was to much procedural for me but I wanted to still explore that field. So I decided to go back in in my own terms, go back to the first things that made me took interest in art in the first place, reconnect with my old friends who were still dancing in dancing battle all around my country, and started to join them since last summer.

I found that hip hop danse was the perfect link between angriness and the full creation, and since I can’t danse for shit and find myself quite ridiculous when I choose to perform so I decided to make my drawings literally dancing, giving them the punch, the happiness that I deserve, the angry happiness I want to transfer to other.

It’s some kind of an hommage to my friends, an hommage to hip hop, the way I choose of showing my animation give them a spontaneous feeling, the experimentation feel part that I was missing from traditional animation production. Keep the accumulation feeling I am quite found of, and help me do more “finish” work since I struggle to keep interest in piece to big.

I used a video reference

A month, I don’t really count the hour but probably more than 100h