While research into ToonBoom and watching tutorials, I realised that rather than straight forward drawing every frame, I might be able to use rigging to some extend.
I feel that considering I'm far from being an expert in this, there is definitely an easier way to do this, without the amount of bones and joints I used.
From there I tried the range of motion, only to immediately realise that it literally works with a range of motion. Considering it is only 2D that's fairly obvious, but I clearly didn't think it through. Either way, below are some images of the range of motion the joints have.
For the pull at the hand there, I just quickly extended the bone a bit, putting the joint slightly higher and eliminating the problem:
Mainly the legs and the left arm were what made me realise it wouldn't work. They were too close together to be distinguished.
So what I did after was draw out a more spread out version and rigged that:
.... and tried replicating the pose.
Obviously that didn't work out as planned. Clearly a sign I probably shouldn't use this without extensive research and experimentation on my part. I did briefly consider using it as reference when moving characters, as a separate layer which I would then draw over. However, I quickly decided that that would be more work with very little benefit and decided against it.
I also looked into the 3D options ToonBoom has. There is a possibility to put layers in different distances to the camera and while it's not visible looking at it from the front, if there is a camera move involved it would look like the 'foreground' would move faster than the background. This feature took my interest because of the pan in the second scene. If there was a possibility of putting layers on the side (effectively making a rectangle with the camera in bird's view) that would make the pan a lot easier to execute. However, I did not find any indication that that is possible and couldn't find anything in the ToonBoom documentation or tutorials either.
Again, I briefly considered to 'unfold' the room and use it in that way, but again, a lot more work for a result that probably wouldn't look any better.
And so, after my brief excursion to Fancy ToonBoom Land I still decided to stick with good old, straight forward drawing every frame method I am more familiar with.
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Right after my decision to change to working on Reading Light I started watching Aaron Blaise's Character Animation Course that I downloaded from his website (Blaise --). Aaron Blaise is a former Disney animator and so I thought it might be helpful to study with as it would probably cover both application of animation principles as well as pointers on the workflow of a professional animated piece.
Going through the course what I took away from it most was not necessarily character design, although it was unbelievably helpful in that aspect as well, but more so an approach to drawing for animation. I felt that most of all, it got me to draw in a way that is useful for animation. It helped me structure my thoughts as I was drawing and understanding the process behind it better. So this was a good basis for me to start the project from.
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After the first few days of working on this, I also realised that I hadn't actually properly animated anything since my first year, so about a year ago. Most other things I'd done in animation just didn't at all reflect any animation basics I had learnt during that 1st year. Therefore, I decided to go back and look at a few books. The first two I got were (as should not be a surprise) Preston Blair's Cartoon Animation (1994) and Richard Williams' The Animator's Survival Kit (2001, 2009). I'm still not completely through them, but it's unbelievable how much reading them has already helped putting this all in perspective.
I found that especially The Animator's Survival Kit is helpful in finding a system to animate that works for me. I probably won't set that down until finishing this project completely, so it'll be a learning curve right up until the end, but it's helped in understanding certain steps of the process better.
Unfortunately, because I started on this project so late in the game, I had no time to actually immerse myself in the books and structure my process before getting started, so all of these light bulbs are coming to me a bit late. That being said, I find that I feel much more comfortable about going into the actual production stage (although I'm still left with bits and pieces of pre-production to complete), with both of these books as back up. As soon as I can, I also plan on giving myself a few animation exercises to do so I can spot basic mistakes early.
I also watched a few tutorials on animation systems of other people. Not about how to animate, but the process other people use to get there. While that was quite interesting, I found it didn't really give me as much as having animation explained in these books and putting the stages together myself.
Blair, P. (1994) Cartoon animation. Walter Foster Publishing, Inc.
Blaise, A. (--) Character Design with Aaron Blaise. [Online] Available from: https://creatureartteacher.com/product/character-design-course-aaron-blaise/ [Accessed 11 January 2018]
Williams, R. (2001, 2009) The animator's survival kit. Extended Edition. New York, Faber and Faber, Inc. An affiliate of Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
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