Animated Chalk Art

Creating chalk drawings on dark paper is my current favorite drawing activity. For me, drawing the light instead of the shadows is a both a drawing technique and a formula for contentment. Converting these drawings into an animated video involved lots of watching and re-watching online animation tutorials. Here’s the basic process along with links to the videos I found most helpful:

Preparation

1. Create thumbnail sketches of actions to be animated.
2. Work out the sequence of events.
3. Write-out notes to the side of sketches to describe camera angles, zooming in or out, sound effects, etc…
4. Photograph models or collect reference images for each major action. (I took photos of my son with a strong light coming from the bottom for this video)
5. Modify the reference images in Photoshop as needed to unify lighting or amplify dramatic moments. Convert to black and white images.

Drawing

1. Print images at medium quality on copy paper (20#) to fit the size of your dark paper and scanner bed. (I use 8″x10″ black card stock which fits on my scanner bed)
2. Transfer image to black paper, tracing only the very basic outlines and shapes.
3. Draw the light values onto the dark paper using a white pastel pencil. Re-establish darkest values and lines with a kneaded eraser and/or pencil eraser.
4. Scan each drawing and save as a jpeg. Improve contrast as needed in Photoshop.

Animating

1. Place jpeg images in a Photoshop document as layers.
2. Select VIEW > Timeline to begin animating. Here are two video tutorials that I found very helpful:
   • Timeline Animation for Multiple Layers
   • Timeline – Zooming in and out
3. Save Timeline animations as mp4 clips.
4. Create graphics in Powerpoint or Keynote.
   • Create graphics for video
5. Combine animated clips, sound effects and music in iMovie.