Side-Pegger

The cut-out puppets are progressing slowly but surely. I keep reminding myself that I only need to do this once... and that is the beauty of cut-outs. There are 150 pairs of replacement eyes, but I never have to draw them or scan them or color them ever again! Once I begin animation, making a character blink will be as easy as typing some numbers into AfterEffects. Of course cut-out animation is not easy... but it certainly has its perks once production comes along. Speaking of those eyes, here's the spread I drew for Roscoe.



First I printed out a sheet with all 5 angles in which the eyes can be seen. I decided on 10 different sets of eyes and drew them all on the front angle. I did this all on a lightbox with my peg bar... oh how I've missed my peg bar. I hadn't used it since February when I did my "3 Musketeers" animation. Probably the best part though is that I side-pegged because of the orientation of the paper. I think side-pegging should catch on - it's the best of both worlds. After I pencil tested and everything looked pretty solid, I redrew the same eyes from different angles on the other 4 head positions. Then I repeated the whole process for Lloyd and Keaton. Amazingly, it took me less than a week to draw and scan all 300 eyeballs, even with Thanksgiving in the middle. That's blazing fast for me. I'm not done coloring in all the lids, but here's a preview of what the eyes will look like when done. I haven't made the final pupils, but I threw these on so Keaton wouldn't look like a zombie. He also needs eyebrows.