Character Shape Sketching with Stickman

Hand Drawn Time Lapse

What the Hell was That?

One Less Creative Person on the World!

The Dutch animator winner of the Golden Bear , Gerrit van Dijk,  died now on December 4th and left us his work of art . I liked his 2D techniques, he used many times the rotoscopy technique with Pencil Drawing Effect having an insight into social injustice.

"You only learn technique. The creativity you learn is no creativity at all. You know exactly what colour socks you should wear and what your hair should look like, but not how to put something on paper"

During the process of the traditional technique, my patience was really put to the test. In the beginning, since I hadn't any practice until then, to make between 3 and 5 different designs on the light table, to create the illusion of movement, I took the whole day. Then, by scanning drawings in pencil trace, It still took half a day, if everything occurred well in the computer prediction, I put the pictures back on the light table and I reinforced them with black pen (of course, it took the other half day). Dude, it was terrible, and the worst wasn't the animating process in itself, but external factors which hindered me. My neighborhood wasn't one of the quietest; there were cars with speakers yelling at people, telling them to buy the most useless things, my mother who told me to get a real job and neighbors who loved reforms, by the way, one of them was maniac; he loved to hammer aimlessly.

In short, to animate 9 minutes and 10 seconds, it took me 2 years and 6 months. For 6 months, in fact, I stopped, because I couldn't concentrate with so many hammers ringing in my head. The sound effects and musical part demanded lots of research. there were also many external factors to hinder, as mentioned above, sound cars and hammerings which forced me to make recordings at night. The story, Between Two Litigants, focused on two characters with conflicting goals. Parrinha, a body shop worker, needed to finish his service at time and there was none to help him. Miss Cloude, however, wanted to spend a pleasant afternoon and to have a siesta without problems watching your favorite TV show.

When I finally finished my animation work, I was drafted into State Military Service and sent to a barracks in the border of the state. I couldn't even see my animation be displayed in my city Short Film Festival. According to two friends spies who were at the festival, the compatriots' reception was extremely cold (except the children's one who laughed at Miss Cloude and Parrinha's fight), They looked at each other with a huge question mark on the face, others shaked the head angrily.

I showed, posteriorly, this short film to my platoon, some people in the barracks and in the town I was living. The result was equal to what had been to the kids of my city; they laughed at my characters' fight.