"There's a difference between knowing the path, and walking the path."

I decided to try hand drawn animation for my walk cycle. This is a method I have always been interested in and wanted to try. My character is a Neanderthal man. Here's my character:


Here is the first test, initial sketches scanned into the computer. The heads are all different (I redrew all the heads for the final animation).
"The Animator's Survival Kit" has been a real help and is a great book, very detailed and excellent for walk cycles. I drew about 30 frames each a little different than the last and then used water coloured pencils to colour him. Because I used water the tracing paper buckled and gave it a different look to the animation. I was expecting a flashy look as I knew each page would be differently coloured. I could have photocopied each images which I didn't think of, as Hages pointed out, to stop the buckling. This is the Neanderthal Man in colour:



Here is the final animation. This version plays a little fast. The final animation has a distinct style which I like. As Hages said a cave picture come to life (I think that sums it up well). It was interesting and fun to have tried hand drawn animation and I will probably pursue it further later.