I started reading an animation book that was originally written in 1948, but was updated in 2020.

Cartoon Animation with Preston Blair. There was a section where he had drawn a squirrel skipping. The 10 key frames were shown and the book suggested tracing these key frames and then adding the ‘in-betweens’, to make it 24 frames.

So that’s what I started to do. I thought I’d be further along and that I’d post when I finished. But learning will take as long as it takes. And sometimes life gives you a curve ball. Which is what happened. I got sick. I went to the clinic on Sunday, and now I’m dealing with the effects of the medication, which TMI are upset stomach and not really being able to concentrate on a thought for long. But I’m feeling better in general, so there’s that. Anyway, I decided to show what I have so far, hence the ‘WIP’ title.

Here’s the original image from the book…

In Procreate, I took the drawing from the book, ‘cut out’ the separate frames and made them each a layer. Then I ran the animation assist and changed the timing based on the number of layers I had…

And here’s what it would look like without the inbetweens, I drew the tail in the new place for frame 12 & 24 (creating 12 frames)…

Here’s my WIP… I’ve gotten to frame 9, this has frame 11… I need to draw frame 10…

And for funsies… here’s my 5 inbetween drawings (frames 2,3,5,7, & 9), plus the ones I traced (frames 1,4,6,8, & 11), plus the original frames (12,13,16,18,20,23,24) at the end.

I can see a little hiccup of the squirrel’s face in the middle of the animation, hopefully when I draw frame 10 that’ll smooth out.

What I found interesting about placing the original drawings on top of one another in layers and running the animation, was that the tail moves too. When I was just looking at the page of key frames I noticed the arms and legs moving and the lift… but I totally missed the flowing tail. Too cool. Drawing inbetweens is usually what the interns have to do, the ‘artist’ just does the key frames. I’m finding it harder than I thought doing the inbetweens, which excites me because I’m learning while I’m playing… which is always the goal.

Oh, I have one more thing to show… the book also mentioned that you could draw a squirrel, chipmunk, rabbit, and a mouse from the same base… so I gave it a go.

That’s all I have for now.

Until next time…

~nic