Since I plan to animate a lot of actions I've never attempted to draw before, I got one of my housemates to film me acting out several of the more tricky scenes I have in mind so I could get a good feel for the movement and use the videos as references for my work later on. This turned out to be even more beneficial than I planned; a lot of the actions proved more difficult for me to do properly than I origianlly thought, so I ended up doing a lot of retakes as I figured out exactly how I wanted my character to move on screen through my own trial and error. Thanks to this I think I am about ready to fully draw and plan out my storyboard, as prior to this the direction I wanted my narrative to take was rather fuzzy.
Despite my hair being far longer than average, its still too short in comparison to my character's hair (which touches the floor) to make a convincing reference alone, so I tied a blanket around my neck and wore it as a cape to create a similar effect, making sure to over exaggerate my movements to make them easy to read even through the mass of hair and blanket. I found this particularly useful as it helped me get a feel for how cumbersome having something floor length attached to you can be, and I insantly felt more clumsy and exasperated while moving around in it, which is exactly how I expect my character would feel in her situation. I made sure to do plently of 'tripping over/slipping on the hair' attempts with the blanket to be sure I understood the movement and the weight of the hair dragging against me.
Hauling myself up to desk level was fun to do; I imagine my character would be exhausted from dragging her hair across the room/falling over it and such, so much so that simply moving from her bed to her desk would be a huge effort for her, especially when she's just woken up. To emphasise this, I made sure to do one hand at a time on the desk before slowly pulling myself up to show anticipation, and then added an extra jerky flop to my head once I managed to do so to demonstrate the 'follow through' animation principle. I always try to act like I'm going to animate, as this helps me exaggerate my video footage accordingly when I come to use it as reference.
I tried to exaggerate pulling my hair through into pigtails as best I could, allowing my arms to flop lifelessly to my sides afterwards to show my annoyance and how little I can be bothered with fighting with my hair.
A test shot of me climbing out of bed and 'standing on my hair', causing my head to jerk down painfully as I try to stand up straight. Naturally I had to fake this, but I tried to keep the movement clear and over exaggerated to easily show what's going on. I also tried throwing my hair out of my face to show how annoyed my character is of it hindering her.
Easily the most fun I've ever had video referencing, this is one of my attempts at showing my hair strangling me, complete with hair wrapped around my neck! I tried to make it as interesting and diverse as possible, staring standing before working my way to the floor as the hair gets the best of me. Since I wanted the action to be spontaneous like it would be if my hair really did come to life and attack me, I didn't really plan this before hand and just winged it, which I think made it turn out a lot better.
For these two I used a scarf to represent the hair wrapping around my wrists, and I found it really useful for limiting my arm movements which I wouldn't have been able to show convincingly if I'd simply left my wrists free and pretended.
And last but not least, the tumble-turn! This was my first time doing one with hair down (I have to confess, I was a little scared of it getting caught in something and me winding up in a tangled heap), so I found it very useful to see how my hair reacted to the roll and followed my head (which I will exaggerate further to demonstrate the follow through principle in my animation), as well as how it landed when I sprawled across the floor on my front at the end.
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