Animation by hand — the old fashioned way
Anyone who has tried it will tell you: hand-drawn animation is hard. The experts agree, and so do I. Every movement you see on screen is the result of drawing each frame individually, one after another. But the technical challenge is only half of it. The real difficulty is developing the eye — the ability to feel the natural flow of movement and translate it into a sequence of still images that, when played together, look fluid, graceful and alive. The characters in these animations are my original designs. I created them using Sketchbook Pro, a drawing software that includes an animation tool built around a concept called onion skinning. Think of it as drawing on transparent layers of paper stacked on top of each other — you can see the ghost of your previous frames underneath the current one, which helps you judge exactly where to place the next drawing to keep the movement consistent and natural. These animations are intentionally simple. But simple does not mean easy — and more imp...