Epic tape recorder breakdown

Thought I'd pick one of the last shots to show my thought process making it. The shot is very simple and whilst making it I wanted to reuse as much in the way of drawings as possible whilst also keeping it looking somewhat hand drawn and organic.

I have a tape recording device moving into shot here. The first thing I do is draw a very sketchy rough version of the hand holding the device. 

I then move this drawing into place plotting out roughly where I want it to go with several key poses. I consider the arc it'll move at, having a curvature to the path at which something moves helps it look a bit more organic and less robotic.

I then add in some inbetweens, that's frames of animation filling in the movement between the key frames, and consider that curve of motion in where the inbetweens are placed. The hand and recorder move nicely along that curve now. There are more frames at the beginning and end of this movement which give the impression of the movement slowly starting up and slowing to a stop instead of a more robotic sudden stop as I had in the previous step.

Now with the motion plotted out, I draw the nicer final lineart to replace the rough drawing of the recorder that is moving along the arc. The two frames of the nicer lineart are contained within a symbol which is an asset that has a timeline of it's own and is playing on loop; the looping lineart gives the impression that the lineart is less static, the subtle difference in how the same frame is drawn means that it is always bubbling slightly or boiling as some refer to it.

I have the nice lineart complete now so I add some colour to it, pretty simple paint bucket fill stuff.

Now for the wheels inside the tape recorder that I want to be spinning. I create a looping asset just like the symbol that I created before and I create a spinning wheel graphic inside that. The symbol contains a timeline of it's own again so will play on loop when placed inside the already looping coloured lineart of the main recorder and hand. This keeps things nice and tidy and means I can move animated assets around as I wish. (the looping recorder and hand with the spinning wheel are an animated item I can now move anywhere with all that animation happening inside it no matter where it is placed, very convenient for composition changes etc)

So that was a simple shot where I got some assets made quickly and then got some basic animation on them that doesn't look too robotic or juddery. I just drew one rough sketch, two clean lineart frames and a simple wheel drawing for this, so using symbol/assets for looping lineart and small details really does save a lot of time.

I'll be back tomorrow with some more updates/ bts stuff.

Let me know in the comments anything you want to see from my process specifically.

Cheers 😎