Nocturna

I remember seeing pictures from this French film a while ago, and a link on the Cooked Art blog recently reactivated my interest. The first clip here is a preview, the second is the real of an animator who worked on the film.

The reel contains some beautiful animation, one minor issue I have is the amount of and level of detail on the inbetween roughs, it may make the linetest look smoother, but adds confusion for the inbetweener. I shudder at the memory of the times I spent staring at a rough (or RUF) at Disney when I was inbetweening and wondering if that thick animation pencil line was intentionally two millimeters to the left of center or if the animator had just quickly sketched it in to smooth out the linetest. I know now that I've animated my fair share that its just vanity that attacks you, a good director isn't swayed by how smooth you have made your linetest, but there is always the chance that someone else might see your test and think its too jumpy, or might not understand the movement from the info in the keys alone. Its a tough call to stick to work that some (the misinformed) may not think is not so good in order to save some other person some work down the track.