One of the reasons I love animation is the ability to control the mood of a shot through color (both saturation and hue)image , density, focal plane, motion (both camera and character), and, of course, sound.

I have shot many low to medium budget live action projects as well as a feature film. You rarely get the time and never have the budget to get all of the above. The shoots are always a compromise of time of day, shot lists for that day, local environment (rarely have I had the opportunity to build a set), etc.

With animation, I can have my cake and eat it too.

The feature I was director of photography on we did 20-40 shots a day. That’s 3-5 minutes of final screen time each day! Of course that is with a 25 person crew with 5-15 people on site as talent and extras. 

A good day at my animation workstation, I churn out 8 seconds. The 4 second shot on the left took me 2 days. Seems way slow, eh? But if you divide even our indie live action shoot screen time by the number of people it took to get that footage, you end up with a similar kind of progress.

After the Photoshop elements are ready, I do the rough animation. The camera motion and they way the character moves through the shot. This saves a lot of time down the line knowing what parts of the face/body will need to be animated and which will be framed out. 

Then I do the gross (large) character movements: The walk cycle, head tilts, arm motion. Also, any important foreground and background elements.

Then I do the beginning of the subtle movements and facial expressions: eyelids, eyebrows, eyelashes, eyes, eyelids, lips, teeth, etc.

These are done without effects so they can be viewed in real time at full resolution.

Then I start with the effects driven moments. These are done with distorting the Photoshop layer: the sway of the hair, the breathing, the deformation of the lips, the jaw, cheeks, neck, etc.

I have to do preview renders to check these, but these renders rarely take more than a few minutes.

Then comes the lighting, color, contrast, backgrounds and foregrounds. I play with the RGB curves, tint, hue, and add glows for atmosphere or lack thereof.

Lastly, I smile because nothing gives me more satisfaction that seeing my artwork come to life.