Most of the animation projects I’ve done recently have utilized older comic strips that I’ve made or friends have made. I felt it was important to not fuss over drafting the story, character design, etc. and focus on the animation. Just get to business! This was also my solution for killing procrastination. For a while, this seemed like a fun way to generate content and practice different skills (SPOILER: I’m not a trained animator). The drawback has been that the style hasn’t changed much and the type of directing, framing, and pacing were very similar. It felt like I needed to change things up and try a different challenge.

I’m an avid anime and manga consumer. At night, when I have trouble sleeping, I’ll watch anime since with the sound off and the subtitles on. Maybe I’m a bit more focused on what I’m seeing and I absorb things differently. One day I sat down and started making an animatic from scratch of an action sequence inspired by anime (well actually, it’s more like a portion of a scene). No big plan, just winging it. After reading about the movie production process of “Flow” I felt empowered. Here’s the rough animatic so far…