I've finally uploaded a "higher quality" video to YouTube - and I like the results. The upload is my abstract animation texTTure (2008) which was screened at Quickdraw Animation Society's GIRAF 4 animation festival.
I made this movie by saving sequential frames from Photoshop 4 and Photoshop 7, then processing images with Photoshop filters and compositing elements together. I animated the wipes that make the transitions between the "looks" by hand as well.
Saving sequential frames and naming them manually would be a real drag and very slow - if I hadn't written a helper program, StopMotion FrameCollector. I set up a Photoshop action to save a copy of my image and assigned the action to a function key. c watches a target folder, and every time one of the Photoshop saves shows up, FrameCollector renames it as a six digit sequential number. Animating in Photoshop (or any paint program, for that matter) becomes just like clicking the shutter button on a single frame movie camera. Quick!
And speaking of quick - Quickdraw Animation Society is holding an Animation Lockdown - a 48 hour animation challenge on May 15 to 18, 2009. I've submitted my entry as an individual and plan to animate using my FrameCollector method. It'll be a challenge - especially since I intend to post small reports on what I'm doing to this blog during the Lockdown.
