Today’s UE artist on Tumblr feature - Eno Swinnen!

So please tell us a bit about yourself and your work! How did you come up with the idea to create gifs?
Hi, i’m Eno, an animation student from Belgium. I mainly work with rotoscopy which means that I draw over filmed footage frame by frame (in the age of the internet this can be almost anything). I started by trying to make the source material more abstract which in turn grew to a more computer-like analyzing of the pictures I was drawing. After that, making gifs just made sense to me. that and my animation almost always benefits from the looping nature of gifs. Most of the gifs that are on my blog now will be part of my master project, which will be an animated short that’ll also completely be online in gif form.

Do you need special preparations to make a piece (getting inspired, looking for references and so on) or do you just sit down and make an artwork?
The only preparation that I need is the photocopies I draw on. When I find a youtube vid, or something else that I can record, that inspires me I turn it into frames which I get printed at a copy shop. The next part is just me drawing on the back of these photocopies frame by frame. This part is definitely just me sitting down making everything up as I go.

How long do you take on a single gif? Which programs do you use and in comparison which one is more advanced for which features?
I mostly draw in batches of about 500-700 frames and when I’m doing good I draw about 50 or 60 frames a day, sometimes only like 30. On average I do about 3 weeks on a certain part and then I turn parts that I like into gifs. As far as programs go I use After effects to turn videos into frames and Photoshop to turn the scanned frames back into gifs, basically I almost don’t use software as I’m kind of clumsy with it anyway. 

What gives you the most satisfaction about (your) art?
Watching it move is so satisfying! There’s almost nothing as fun as working on something for 3 weeks day in day out and then finally seeing it move. 

What are you looking forward to at the moment?
Graduating and hopefully being able to get payed for doing what I love. That or just being able to continue making gifs.

Check this artist out on Tumblr / Vimeo / Flickr
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