Find myself too scared to use the traditional setup, for fear of wasted resources. Need to build confidence first, so I'll probably shake off the rust digitally first. This is an untimed, unfinished animation I did just on a whim. This is the first time in an animation I've paid attention to the lead and curved motions. Feels nice though of course timing and breakdown drawings would help immensely, but this is just practice.

What worries me the most about shifting to traditional is the rough layout process. In digital it is very straightforward and you don't have to worry about wasting resources. It's fast and basically everyone enjoys it for the iteration ability. I'll find a way to get a good mix of digital and traditional work in my process, I just hope the positives of digital don't out-weigh the joy of traditional work overall.

Since there aren't too many traditional animators out there on the web, much less traditional layout artists, it's been hard narrowing down a process that works for me. I've been studying the scraps of traditional work I could find for at least half a year now, building my setup. Ideally I'd go all in traditionally to limit test and such, but paper has become a problem for me due to a lack of registration punches for acme holes. There is one I found for pretty cheap, but only in comparison to the $1,000 ones every other company sells. I'm trying to avoid jerry-rigged setups with single punches because money is fickle and my craftsmanship is shoddy.

I still think I can complete one of the animations I've had storyboarded for a while, though my paper can dwindle fast if I waste too much on roughs, guides, and the like.

Definitely been improving fast lately though. All I need to do is improve my visual library, so I'll make sure to pull up references more when making practice animations and such. Ideally to improve my library I'd travel more to see the world first hand, but that's not an option. Also been working in Blender a bit more. It's a pain, but something I desperately need to learn. Considering where I'm at now though, it's probably best to make my layout drawings usable, then polish up my draftsmanship, and then consider learning more Blender.