Eli Thorne Frames

Day 14: Jumping Sack (Squash and Stretch)

Day 13: Jumping Sack (Squash and Stretch)

Day 12: Bouncing Ball

Day 11: Bouncing Ball

The Goal: 365 days of learning 2D animation, starting with digital drawing and mastering the fundamentals of motion. My target is at least 30 minutes of practice every day.

The First 10 Days: I’ve spent the last week and a half getting comfortable with Blender’s Grease Pencil tools, following along with Grant Abbitt’s Udemy course. There's a lot to learn but it has exciting.

What I've been up to:

Navigating the Grease Pencil Workflow: I learned how to switch effortlessly between Draw, Edit, and Sculpt modes to create and refine 2D art right inside Blender’s 3D viewport.

Expressive Drawing Techniques: I mastered setting up brushes and configuring my graphics tablet for pressure sensitivity, allowing me to create dynamic, hand-drawn lines with natural variation in thickness.

Core Animation Principles: I practiced the fundamentals of timing and spacing by creating a bouncing ball, learning how to use keyframes, interpolation, and onion skinning to make movement feel fluid.

Rigging 2D Characters: I discovered how to add bones to flat drawings to "rig" them, which lets me animate characters like the car and the cat with smooth, stretchy motion instead of redrawing every frame.

Blending 2D and 3D: I learned the unique skill of drawing directly onto 3D objects and placing strokes in 3D space, enabling me to mix hand-drawn animation with 3D environments like the clock tower project.

Polishing and Rendering: I gained experience tidying up my strokes, using modifiers for non-destructive edits, and setting up the final scene with lighting and materials before rendering the animation.

The Plan: I am taking a deep-dive approach. Rather than rushing, I’ll be spending roughly a week (or more) on each of the 12 Principles to ensure I’m building a solid foundation. My roadmap includes courses from Aaron Blaise to help me move from basic shapes to character-driven, anime-style action.

Why this blog? This is my personal lab—a place to log my progress, store my experiments, and track the evolution of my skills over the next year.