Making a Fortune

I animated this in Adobe Animate, and damn, it took some time and effort, as I’m still a novice animator. Here are a few things I learned since my last cartoon, ‘Apples and Oranges’, and applied to this one:

Created a scene with an atmosphere, rather than just characters standing in front of a blank background.

Used a glow effect to create the fire, the purple smoke explosion and the darkness surrounding the two characters.

Animated the fortune teller twiddling her fingers.

Used the camera layer to zoom in and out of the crystal ball.

While animating the guy talking, I focused on drawing the overall gesture of the word, rather than drawing each letter. When animators draw each letter, the mouth movements look choppy, as if the speaker is over-enunciating everything. I saw this weakness in ‘Apples and Oranges’, so this time I focused more on words, which makes the movement more fluid and believable.

Apples and Oranges

A Happy Couple

I study Russian. In Russian, nouns have gender, which is determined by the last letter of the word. That is why Russians call a chair (стул) “he” and a staircase (лестница) “she”. This feels weird as an English speaker because it seems to be anthropomorphizing inanimate objects. I can think of no other reason to call a chair “he” and a staircase “she” than arbitrary grammar rules. Animals have gender too, but it doesn’t matter whether the animal is actually a boy or a girl. It’s still just the last letter of the word. “Pig” (свинья) happens to be feminine and “moose” (лось) is masculine. This puts silly images in my mind of anthropomorphized animals, and I thought I’d draw one for you.

Joy

A moment of pure elation and gratitude for my existence

Don’t walk and text

Frosty the Stoner

The Lion Czar

Quit Bugging Me.

Got My Eye on You

Just thought I’d make a creepy, unsettling cartoon since it’s almost Halloween.

Troll Under the Bridge

This was my first time drawing a character doing a face-hoof.