Hand drawing each of the 14 frames of my GIF is hands down one of the hardest things I've ever had to do! It is so hard to gauge whether it's going to look right or not until the frames are scanned in and placed together in Photoshop. If it isn't right, more frames need to be redrawn and scanned in again! SO TIME CONSUMING!I'm not the biggest fan of scanning either, as images need cleaning up due to the pen and paint marks on the scanning screen. Each drawing also had to be manually enhanced in colour levels, hue and saturation and have any marks taken out with the clone stamp tool. Again, time consuming! When planned right and executed well the outcome can look great, so the challenge and hard work is certainly worth it... I had a little bit of an identity crisis as I was doing this long-winded process, feeling more like a Disney animator than an illustration student!
Drawing on the light box is such a challenge for me and I had to take regular breaks after drawing between one or two frames because of the amount of light being emitted. It was flooding my field of vision and giving me eye strain and headaches. This can happen on the computer too, but at least I can lower the brightness and type with my eyes shut! As good as I am at facing challenges with a tiny amount of sight (cooking, cleaning, walking in a familiar location, playing an instrument...) I can't draw in the dark! I persevered though and came to get used to the routine I was undertaking.
Despite the setbacks of my vision, using a light box, manually scanning and cleaning up, the GIF works really well in the end, didn't present any major challenges, and looks like an old-fashioned cartoon - which I LOVE! I much prefer this outcome to the digital because of the time, crafting and labour of love I had invested in the development and process. It isn't particularly perfect either, whereas the digital GIF has a smoother transition, and the imperfections and slight clunkiness give it a hand-made charm.
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