Freelance

Freelance began as a doodle of me running. At the end of an intense two months of visual effects training at at CG Master Academy, I decided to step away from my computer and practice some drawing. My only motivation was to take a short break from 3D / VFX and practice some hand-drawn animation.  

A few (obsessive) weeks later, I was left with an animated short film that dealt with the passions, challenges, and insecurities I have as a freelance motion designer. I’m in no rush to drop 3D, but I’ve found value and joy in creating art in a medium where I’m not burdened by previous knowledge or experience.

Process

I used my iPad equipped with Procreate and Rough Animator as the main tool for this project. I had to learn some basics of frame-by-frame illustrations as I went, but the iPad made it easy to dive in.

Most of my time was spent in Rough Animator.

The application UI and still objects were created in Procreate.

Procreate has some cool features that made it easy to draw tiny UI elements.

After many failed attempts at hand-drawing the cube animations, I eventually opted to create them in 3D and then add the analog look in post.

Scrapped sketches from my original running concept.

The catalyst for the final concept was this sketch that my brother made of me back in ‘97. Not much has changed.

Now back to Houdini.