Hey all, Harrison here.
As many of you have noticed from the Welcome Back Video, the animation of Sumwhere is getting a significant upgrade for Season 2, Episode 2.
Why is this? Well, the animation we have been using for the past while is actually quite a few years old at this point and I have excelled past it as an animator. It was really just holding me back from producing the best work I could. So, seeing as we were starting fresh: new season, new website, etc. I thought it was an ideal opportunity to use what I had learned since creating the first style to improve on the old style both artistically and practically.
Why was Pat in Love still animated in the old style? Well, Pat in Love was actually a holdover. I began animating it sometime back in 2009, but never finished it. When we decided to come back and make it the Season 2 premiere, I just finished it before jumping into creating the new animation style.
Now I'm going to give you a little tour of some of the more significant changes in look between the old style and the new style.
The most important thing I wanted to change was the faces of the main characters. In the old style, every character had the exact same head, with only hairstyle and eyebrows to distinguish between them. The heads themselves were also obviously drawn with only a rudimentary knowledge of basic human anatomy. I tried to draw the new heads a bit more proportional with how actual humans are.
It always bugged me how interchangeable everyone looked, especially because in the writing we were actively working on making them all very distinct characters. So that is the first thing I set out to change in the new animation style. Here you can see through this comparison of Brogan and Harrison how extreme I went with this idea. Everything about these two heads is different. The proportions of the facial features, the shape of the face, even the skin color.
I wanted to make these characters distinguishable by more than just the color of their shirts. The unique faces were a large part of that, but I also felt that I needed to give them all different body types. They are all different heights, with Colin being extremely tall and Harrison being extremely short. You'll also notice that the colors of Harrison's, Jori's, and Pat's shirts have changed to be duller and less harsh on the eye.
There are quite a few other things that are different. The lines are thinner. The mouths are more dynamic. Some characters have had to be completely redesigned. Stweets, for example, was last seen in 1x02, "School," with an even older and more primitive animation style. Needless to say, he is one of the most jarring updates.
I think this new animation style is quite a bit sleeker and more dynamic than the old style. I hope you will agree. Check back in a few days, when we will release some images from the upcoming episode, featuring the new animation: Ferris Wheel's Day Off, on October 7th!
