After seeing a few of my first pass Lilo rough animation drawings online, someone asked me, why some of them look clean while others are drawn in a sketchy way.
The answer is simple. Every time I am dealing with slow, subtle movements there is no need to draw in a rough manner. Very little motion comes into play, and the key drawings are very close to each other graphically. The first image is an example of this.
Whenever Lilo is excited, and she is gesturing a lot, I feel the need to explore those broader movements in a loose, more exploratory way. Here there are more things to figure out, like fast arm gestures, quick angle changes on her head etc.
Also the fact that faster motion requires more key drawings leads me to draw quicker in order to get all those keys done. And it is easier to feel the character's emotion that way.
It's funny when I look today at the way I drew Lilo's hands. Way back I had studied art from the European Rococo period. Lots of cherubs in those paintings. Subconsciously I gave Lilo those hands.
Clean or rough, after my first pass it was always important to add detail in graphite, in order to give as much information as possible to the clean up artist.
