Little Bouncy Zelda — an animation diary

✿ This article was featured in Issue #5 of the Atlantic Bulletin

It’s been a week since I’ve posted. Most of that was spent drawing the same thing over and over.

A painting? Please. That’s a day’s work — maybe two. A five second loop of Tzipora jumping in and shuffling over? A week.

It’s difficult to grasp just how much work animation is until you try it. This runs at 12 frames per second (which dickheads will recognise as the anime frame rate). There are maybe 38 unique frames in this tiny animation. It’s a title card for my imaginary studio, MillMint, in case I ever make videos in the future.

The sketch was fun. It comes alive — your precious characters become real. Then comes the inking. 38 lines traced and polished. Then comes the colouring. Good lord, the colouring. It isn’t just labour-intensive – it’s mind-numbingly boring.

This animation has a lot of little imperfections. No, I’m not fixing them :)

Regular post tomorrow to make up for a week of empty suffering. Thanks for looking. Let me know what you think!