There are times when it’s freeing to just animate, when you don’t have to think about the design or style and just execute the vision. You’d think that someone providing you with the artwork to animate seems great and that it would save a lot of time. That was my initial thought with one of the latest projects I’ve been working on. 

I was given a handful of characters that had been modified a bit but they are mainly just stock artwork that the client has been using in all their marketing. Nothing wrong with that, especially when you can find something that works for your brand. The characters have a really neat look and it’s different then the style I’m often doing. 

Going into the storyboards and animation I thought I’d be moving a lot quicker on this video but it’s been a bit of a headache. The main reason is it’s not built how I would typically design characters to be animated. So working with the files has taken a lot of time to set up and then adjust. I guess it’s selfish of me to think everything needs to be set up how I would work, but I will say I don’t think any time was saved here. This experience has made me recognize the importance of making sure that I spend the time to clean up my own files when building my artwork. 

Although time was saved by not having to develop characters, it took longer to figure out the artwork and make it work for animation… which it was never built for. 

It was nice to work with a different style of artwork but at the same time there is something lost for me in this video. I like how it’s turning out but it doesn’t feel like a LooseKeys video to me. There is more of an ownership when I’m able to create and build everything, or at least work with someone else to build it from scratch. I know that not all jobs can be done that way and that’s fine but I now know that artwork provided by the client does not necessarily mean a faster moving or a smoother moving project.