This is my project Devastation! This was an animation I drew frame-by-frame of one of my favorite scenes in the movie Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen. My project name has multiple purposes: firstly, to pay homage to Devastator, one of the most complex renders in 3D animation history. Secondly, because I knew there was a chance I either overworked my iPad, computer, or both trying to figure out how to complete an insane amount of frames within a four-hour period that is the Hackathon. But I kept getting funny TikToks of Transformers in meme format and I was motivated to try regardless.

For context, while doing a hello world (test run) for this project, I decided to draw a few frames and estimate how long this would take. It took 10 minutes to draw a single frame. With most video types running at 24-30 frames per second, some quick math tells you if I took 3 hours to draw and 1 hour to edit and process the video, I would be able to draw about 18 frames. Less than a second of video. I needed around 5-10 seconds to even show a scene properly.

There really wasn't a way to shorten time besides get faster as I was already sketching as simple as possible, so I opted to prepare all the frames I wanted and insert them into Procreate. It took three separate files as I kept maxing out the memory.

This hackathon was not very eventful in terms of documentation, but I can give my thoughts and feelings as I progressed through the time period.

So at 6:40 I had 25 frames, and was already getting nervous about finishing on time.

7:30 came much faster than I expected, but I was actually ahead of schedule as 60 was near the halfway point in terms of frames needed to draw, and I was at frame 68. It felt as if I was making the same frame over and over to be honest.

This snapshot was taken at 8:03, and I reached frame 90. I was starting to put together the changes in scenery and was noticing that I was getting faster at putting together the frames. Sadly I did keep messing some up and had to remake them, and I lost some precious time to that.

At 105 frames I reached the limit of my Procreate file and wanted to switch to a new file to continue. I exported my animation at a lower framerate to check my progress (see above video). The time was 8:33.

At 9:01 I had reached 125 frames and was getting disappointed because I knew I would have to cut myself off soon. I was close to the end (I had decided that 167 frames covered the scene I wanted by this time - I was still trying to do the math as I drew them out).

By 9:46 I called it quits because I needed time to edit still. I exported my second file, which spanned frames 106 to 141. I also slowed this video down to make sure everything was in order (see video above).

I threw myself into iMovie with about 10 minutes to go, slammed the two files together, tossed the audio file in, and ran the video for the first time with about 2 minutes to go. And I thought it was wonderful. Above is the completed video. At the time of completion, I drew 140 frames in about 4 hours. Which is an insane improvement to my estimated 18 frames in 4 hours when testing if this project was going to be viable. My hands and arms were cramped and numb, but this was surprisingly fun. I understand why there are teams that do this now. 10/10, would do again. Maybe slower though.