Bicycle Difficulty

My progress is pretty slow at the moment. I decided to pick the Giraffe on the bike as my first GIF to tackle because I thought that it may be the simplest, but I was wrong.

I found it really difficult to even draw a bike initially, let alone figure out an appropriate position for the Giraffe to ride it and emphasise the awkwardness of the size difficult at the same time.

All of the difficulty in scaling each part of the image hasn't yet included the actual movement of the bicycle and the Giraffe's legs simultaneously.

Knowledge and Understanding

To inform my knowledge about bicycle movement, I have studied this similar GIF of a dinosaur riding a bike, to take in the positions of the legs when peddling-also taking note of the moving background.

Problem Analysis

I also really struggled with the movement of clouds looping within the set number of frames. I tried to use a lightbox to move them along, but they were all so irregular.

Problem Solving

Drawing the clouds out on a separate piece of paper and moving them along, again using the light box allowed me to measure how much I needed to move them in each frame; I discovered 8mm was the appropriate length of movement in order for them to loop continuously.

I also found that the frames sometimes didn't fit to the 500x500 canvas, so I had to use the stamp tool to fill in the white space.

The first giraffe GIF:

I am pleased with the fluidity of the movement of the pedals, and the clouds loop well too. Obviously as this is the first draft of the GIF it is going to have a few flaws; I have noticed that it jutters a little towards the last frame and between the first, so using a wacom tablet I will go over the lines and hopefully smooth things out.

Practical Skills

I used I wacom tablet properly for the first time today! It was really useful to trace over the lines accurately creating smoother curves and allowing extra detail to be emphasised.

The process took a long time due to the amount of concentration required. Looking back at the finished GIF I can see that I've drawn on the same side of the line on the progressing layers, which gives the unintentional illusion that parts of the Giraffe are moving when they aren't supposed to be for example the head and neck are growing thicker.

I am pleased with the results of this GIF. With time ticking by I need to concentrate on completing my other two GIFs, but if there is extra time I may revisit the Giraffe and add some colour.