I lied. Technically, this ISN'T the first animation I've ever created. Somewhere back in my parents' house are two little notepads with a cheap little child's drawing on each page. Crude as they were, those would probably have to be called my first animations. Even more recently, you only need to look back at the bottom of my home page to see another, although that one owes more to the genius of Imagine than any real skill on my part.
This, however, is the first hand-drawn animation I'm actually proud to show off. I had been wanting to do a walk or run cycle of my little faeriefox for several years now, and finally, over the course of about five hours on 17 January, I drew up this little 12-framer.
It's a full run cycle, one step for each foot. It wasn't too hard to build the second step from the first; I just copied the first six frames to the second six, then a little erasing and redrawing was enough to set her on the opposite foot. Yes, I did this all on the computer. For all its foibles, Fractal Painter is a marvelous little tool!
The project isn't entirely completed yet. Iris' head has no hair or facial features, for one thing, and her tail is missing entirely. Both of these items I hope to address in the near future. I just didn't want to lose a lot of time on facial detail, and her hair and tail will really need their own treatment to get the proper sense of flow and motion. Of course, there's the matter of colors and maybe a background too, but hey! I just did this to prove to myself and the world that I could actually DO it. I hope you like!