Blowing Bubbles Animation With Procreate

This spring and summer we’ve been spending more time in our own yard since we can’t go many of our normal spring and summer places. Bubbles have been hard to find at local stores, so we’ve been rationing ours. My son chases them as they float sporadically around our patio and backyard garden. This animation was inspired by that moment of joy and calm, sitting in the shade in the grass, watching the bubbles carry away on the breeze, their different colors dancing on their surfaces.

I made this sketchy animation using Procreate (not affiliated). The basic sketch didn’t take very long, since I purposefully left it sketchy. I’ve been enjoying this “unpolished” line art style so much lately and want to keep using it more. The color palette in this animation is the same one I used for this animation, and the sepia-toned, mostly rough line style with a few choice patches of color for this bubbles animation was directly inspired by it, as well.

I think my biggest critique of this animation would be that the bubbles are a little too small overall. You can see them fine if you’re watching on a desktop or laptop, but I originally posted the animation on Instagram and you’re unable to see much of the detail in each individual bubble’s colors. I even had to crop down the overall size of the illustration to try and make it a little smaller so the bubbles would be bigger and more easily seen (this actually helped me have more layers/frames which made animating the bubbles much better). I think the movement of the bubbles looks pretty great, though.