In September 2024, a friend told me about an animated series that I think is absolutely fantastic: ‘Samuel’ by Émilie Tronche (available to watch on Arte: https://www.arte.tv/digitalproductions/de/samuel/)
Apart from the fact that this animated series is extremely moving in terms of content, I was immediately impressed by the animation style. A truly sketchy drawing style, only 12 fps (= frames per second) and the restriction to black and white, all of which corresponds to this spontaneous, authentic, perfectly imperfect style that I love so much. There are also some great interviews with Émilie Tronche on YouTube, in which she describes the story behind the creation of ‘Samuel,’ which is really characterised by a very spontaneous approach.
– https://youtu.be/K3BCS2bfUn4?si=EBDF5-kIo2khVsXT (French with English subtitles)
– https://youtu.be/98nJVyVEcKs?si=8PmlTL8nHU6nLd2k (only French)
I immediately started looking for a programme that would allow me to try out such animations and, thanks to a tip from Lai Chee, I came across Flipaclip (https://flipaclip.com/). In Flipaclip, similar to a flipbook, you can draw the individual frames and then play them back at different speeds, although I currently set my animations to only 8 fps. Anything else would take too much time.
Since Inktober was just around the corner when I installed the programme, I decided to familiarise myself with the new programme using the Inktober prompts. Consequently, my very first Flipaclip video was an Inktober intro. In Canva, I discovered music by Mica Emory (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCmH8fGZULgXQcEAPZuj-1ow), which I really like and which fits my videos really well. As a result, I chose a different piece of music for each clip.
I had already feared beforehand that the idea of creating an animation every day based on an Inktober prompt would be too ambitious. Even a short video requires a lot of images – and therefore a lot of time. In addition, some of my ideas were quite complex, and I didn’t want to compromise just to be able to publish something on time. The goal was to really familiarise myself with the programme.
This means that there are only six videos available for now, but I have ideas for many more and will continue to use the Inktober prompts as a guide, even if it takes until next Inktober for me to work through all the terms. 😉
In any case, I’ll keep at it and publish new videos here and on my YouTube channel on an ongoing basis. (https://www.youtube.com/@kerstinpaulik)