EL BAILADOR'S DOTING WIFE

Close-ups:

Before animating I drew out and timed the main poses of the animation, so my main keyframes/poses gave me a strong foundation.

These are drawn with Grease Pencil, in Blender. It's so useful, I could keep everything in the same software.

I animated with no interpolation, so the movement has a more of a stop-motion, traditional feel. This is more a stylistic choice for me, animation with smooth interpolation (the software calculates the movement between poses) feels too busy. (Most likely bc I havent mastered it yet.)

After the main poses are done I start to draw on the nose and mouth poses. These are done with Grease Pencil as well. I parent it to the head bone, that way the drawings follow the head's movement.

The nose is drawn at angle, while the mouth is drawn on the surface of the screen.

These mostly work from the camera's POV, so I have to settle on a camera placement and movement before I start this.

After The main noses positions and the mouth poses are figured out, I just animate the in-betweens. I try to make sure to change drawings on the same frames as the body moves. Otherwise it gives it a disorganized feel.

Because of the parenting, the Onion Skin stays on the head, making the in-betweening easier.

The rest of the magic happened in Adobe After Effects. I gave the animation a bunch of noise, color channel blur, bloom effect etc.

Raw render out of Blender vs Final render with effects