Growth - Pencil Animation

I started the Play and Process project by just going with the first word that jumped out at my from the list on the brief. I chose Growth.

The first idea that came to my head was to make a short animation gif of a hand growing extra fingers. I was inspired by Japanese horror manga artist Junji Ito, who makes a lot of body horror artwork. In his work there are often scenes of the body being distorted, growing and morphing. I used this body horror idea, combined with growth, to come up with this idea. I chose a hand as the subject because it is a part of my body I could see, and use as reference, easily and quickly. 

In order to start making work quickly, I grabbed some paper and a pencil, without thinking too much about the medium I was working with. I did think about the fact that I made quite a lot of work quickly in the Level 5 final project using pencil, and I liked the outcome of those drawings.

Using my own hand as reference, I started drawing my hand over and over, adding bits to the fingers and knuckles each time. I used thin, cartridge paper and taped it on top of each other, so that I could quickly trace each drawing, so the animation frames would be consistent.

 

Below is the gif I ended up making. I edited the frames together in procreate, since it’s a programme I know very well, and I know how to make animations easily in it. I have made gifs using procreate before, but I’ve never used a traditional medium like pencil to do it, so I’m very happy with the outcome. I was able to translate my knowledge in how to make digital gifs, into a physical medium. This medium is different because I had to be careful when photographing each frame, to make sure they lined up the same in each photograph.

The draw backs of using this medium is that it took me a long time, I found it quite difficult to see through the cartridge paper to trace the hand each time. The animation is quite short, and I had wanted the fingers to grow longer. I could fix this in either of two ways. Either I could go and buy tracing paper, or I could try making a digital gif.