The Birdwatcher

It's just a birdwatcher watching birds ...
Or maybe it's an NFT-enthusiast who's spent a little too much time on a certain social media platform ^^

Say Hello to "The Birdwatcher"!!

I'm so happy and proud to have finally realized this idea that has been laying around in my files and in my head for months now.
And I love how it turned out!
It makes me happy and smile and I could watch it for hours :)
So much fun!

The Birdwatcher is my second piece on KnownOrigin.
If you're interested, you can visit my gallery here: https://knownorigin.io/ana-fae

It was one of those ideas that seem to come out of nowhere but make me so very excited, because I find them just INGENIOUS ^^ and feel a great urge to make it happen!

I was so relieved when I found my original sketches again today! I thought they were lost in my chaos of loose sheets and drawings that are flying around everywhere here ^^
I can't say exactly when I first put the idea on paper, but I'm sure it was sometime in winter, like December or January.

Shortly after that I started working on it on the computer, sketching and developing the basic design and color palette in Krita.

As you may know by now I love to use the basic colors red, blue, yellow and green. They are the loudest, the most expressive, and for me also the most fun and happy ones :)
My inner child loves them and I oblige ^^

This is now how The Birdwatcher was waiting patiently for quite a while for me to give him some attention again.
But I knew that the animation would take me a while (I'm still learning) and I wanted to do it right and with a bit of time on my hand. So I finished some other projects first and also had to focus on the house, the garden and life a little more during the last months.

But last week I finally had two full days where I literally did nothing else than working on The Birdwatcher! It was wonderful and I've learned a lot!

I first sketched out the rough animation. This already took its time because I don't have too much experience animating so it's a lot of experimenting, trial and error and test renderings ^^

After I was happy with it I tried outlining the birds and played a bit with colors.

Oh, and on these test gif's you can also see my first animation of the moustache! I changed it later to a more simple movement that suits the overall appearance of the artwork better in my opinion.

I didn't quite like the thick outlining and tinkered around with it until I found a new brush that I had rarely used before ^^
It's actually just a hard pencil, nothing special, but it gives the birdies a kind of sketchy but not too sketchy look, which fits perfectly.

This was now the point where I was happy with the birds and the moustache but something was still missing.

I always like to let my man take a look at it, and this time even my parents were around. Sometimes it's really helpful to get the instant feedback from people that haven't been looking at the artwork for days and hours already, when I feel a bit stuck.

They immediately said that the smoke and the pipe could be a little more noticeable and I agreed.
So I got right on it and made the smoke a cloud and also added some clouds to the background of the right birdie :)

I painted four clouds, each on its own layer and little by little and frame by frame I moved them over the background by hand.

This process took me a while because I didn't know how much further I would have to move one cloud in the next frame in order for it to be at its original place again after 39 frames ^^
A lot of trying, deleting and trying again.
Some clouds still move faster than others or slow down again at some point if you look closely ^^

It's not perfect, not straight, but it's alive and very much like me :)

As you can see I had grey clouds at first but then I decided for a sunnier version with lovely white ones that look like straight from a children's book :)

At last I added some special effects, meaning drop shadows here and there and a nice wavy pattern on the clouds.

I hope I didn't bore you to death with so many Birdwatcher gifs ^^
If you made it this far you probably gonna dream of the Birdwatcher for the next week, and I apologize.

But if you still don't have enough and want to view him in even higher resolution you can visit my gallery on KnownOrigin, where he's minted and for sale:
https://knownorigin.io/ana-fae

And just to wrap it up, have it one last time:

"The Birdwatcher"

all images by me

Links to my art in my Linktree: https://linktr.ee/anafae