Sideshow Character Selection and Photoshop Work

This week I have been mainly photoshopping images for my characters. I have found plenty of characters from old circus posters, from google searching as well as heavily from the website www.circusmuseum.nl which I recently found whilst researching.

I have collated the following characters to be the main circus people in my section:

My first task was to cut them out from the backgrounds of the posters, and then I have set about dividing their key body parts into separate layers – for example all of the limbs on the man's 'growth' – so that I can animate them individually.

I have also been making more decisions on the style of the animation based on earlier research. I particularly liked the works of Terry Gilliam and Phil Mulloy in 2D 'cutout' animation, so I wanted to emulate this. I have decided that the best way to do this is to do the animation in Premiere by sequencing movements together. I will have control over position, rotation and scale in the effects panel, and will set about moving each of the characters and their respective body parts with these tools.

I decided this because the main thing I noticed about traditional 2D work is that there is always a certain 'jerkiness'/imperfection to the animation – it is not perfectly smoothe the way it would be if I just used After Effects' pin tool. There are subtle inconsistencies in spacing etc which add to the feel of this style, which I can best reproduce by using Premiere.

I will continue the Photoshop work on my characters until I am ready to start animating proper next week.