Saturday, July 24, 2010

Wings - Animation Using Sketchbook Pro and iPad

An experimental animation that took only a few hours to put together. I drew the frames using Sketchbook Pro on the iPad, then imported them through iPhoto onto my iMac, then composited and added music in After Effects.

I have a short film I'd like to do using this production style, and am currently researching funding. I'll let you know how it goes.

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Friday, June 18, 2010

The Computer vs. Paper in Animation Production

While we were working on ‘Three Wombats’ my colorist asked why we weren’t doing everything on paper.  ‘Wouldn’t it be faster?’ she asked.  My first thought was ‘heck no!’ but after thinking through the entire process, using a simple pencil and reams of paper might not be so implausible after all.

 

Put the Pencil to the Paper

Back when animation first began, obviously everything was done on paper.  It was extremely labor-intensive often taking years to complete one film.  The overall process was relatively simple – a group of people would draw the frames, another group would clean everything up into nice neat lines, then the ‘ink and paint girls’ would add color, and finally the cameraman would shoot each frame, one at a time.   No too complicated, but oh, it took a long time!  It took 300 people 3 years to make Disney’s ‘Snow White’.  Not surprising as there were over 60,000 individual frames!

 

“I (heart) my Apple”

When computers arrived on the scene, most people were using them as huge fancy calculators.  It wasn’t until 1961 that MIT student Ivan Sutherland developed the first computer drawing program called ‘Sketchpad’.  Since then, computers have played a monumental role in the development of animation – both 2D and 3D alike.  Computers potentially enable the production process to move much quicker, with greater flexibility for edits.

 

Pencil Pros

There’s no software or technology to learn:  You can get started animating right this minute, with no other skills (other than being able to draw, of course!).

The supplies are easily accessible:  You can get paper, pencils, ink, paint, etc. all from your local convenient store.  It should be said, though, that most traditional animators use pegged paper to help keep all the sheets in proper register.  But, with a three-hole punch and the back of an old three ring binder, you’re right in business!

 

Crayon Cons

It takes a VERY long time: When you have to draw, cleanup, paint and shoot every frame it can take years to complete one project.  Think of every frame as a complete ‘painting’ or illustration in it’s own right.  Most animated films run at 12 frames per second – meaning for every minute of film you see, 720 individual ‘paintings’ had to be created.

Difficult to Edit: With a traditional style animation, it can take weeks in order to see how something turned out.  And if it isn’t right?  Well, then it’s literally ‘back to the drawing board’ for a complete recreation of the scene.

 

Digital Delights

It’s quick and easy to replay a scene and make corrections if needed: With everything right on the computer, creating the frames and playing back your work is a breeze in a variety of software applications.  If any changes need to be made, they can be done immediately, right on the computer, saving valuable production time.  This is actually a HUGE benefit and is the number one reason why most animation is digital today.

You save the rainforests: Creating animation on paper uses up a precious planetary resource – trees!  Moving to a completely digital workflow just makes ecological sense.

 

Tech Torments

Computer Systems can be VERY expensive: If you were to ‘trick out’ your workspace with the latest animation software applications and the hardware to run them, it would cost you well into the range of $10,000 and up.  You also need to know a bit about what the system can do – processing speeds, memory, and especially graphics cards – to make the best economic choices.

The ‘learning curve’ can be steep: Unless you have previous experience with digital editing, learning how to work in a ‘timeline’ and setting ‘keyframes’ can be a bit confusing at first.  It usually takes a few weeks of diligent use to really get a grasp of some of the programs (but of course, it’s well worth the effort!).

 

Other helpful links:

Cartoon Supplies – anything you could need for traditional animation

Toon Boom – one of my favorite 2D animation apps

Wacom – a ‘must have’ for any digital animator

Amazon Reading List – ‘The Three Books You Need to be an Animator’

 

Happy Animating!!

 

 

 

06/16/10 

Posted via email from Kris10 Cartoons

Tuesday, June 15, 2010

The Computer vs. Paper in Animation Production

While we were working on ‘Three Wombats’ my colorist asked why we weren’t doing everything on paper.  ‘Wouldn’t it be faster?’ she asked.  My first thought was ‘heck no!’ but after thinking through the entire process, using a simple pencil and reams of paper might not be so implausible after all.


Put the Pencil to the Paper

Back when animation first began, obviously everything was done on paper.  It was extremely labor-intensive often taking years to complete one film.  The overall process was relatively simple – a group of people would draw the frames, another group would clean everything up into nice neat lines, then the ‘ink and paint girls’ would add color, and finally the cameraman would shoot each frame, one at a time.   No too complicated, but oh, it took a long time!  It took 300 people 3 years to make Disney’s ‘Snow White’.  Not surprising as there were over 60,000 individual frames!

“I (heart) my Apple”

When computers arrived on the scene, most people were using them as huge fancy calculators.  It wasn’t until 1961 that MIT student Ivan Sutherland developed the first computer drawing program called ‘Sketchpad’.  Since then, computers have played a monumental role in the development of animation – both 2D and 3D alike.  Computers potentially enable the production process to move much quicker, with greater flexibility for edits.

Pencil Pros

There’s no software or technology to learn:  You can get started animating right this minute, with no other skills (other than being able to draw, of course!).

The supplies are easily accessible:  You can get paper, pencils, ink, paint, etc. all from your local convenient store.  It should be said, though, that most traditional animators use pegged paper to help keep all the sheets in proper register.  But, with a three-hole punch and the back of an old three ring binder, you’re right in business!

Crayon Cons

It takes a VERY long time: When you have to draw, cleanup, paint and shoot every frame it can take years to complete one project.  Think of every frame as a complete ‘painting’ or illustration in it’s own right.  Most animated films run at 12 frames per second – meaning for every minute of film you see, 720 individual ‘paintings’ had to be created.

Difficult to Edit: With a traditional style animation, it can take weeks in order to see how something turned out.  And if it isn’t right?  Well, then it’s literally ‘back to the drawing board’ for a complete recreation of the scene.

Digital Delights

It’s quick and easy to replay a scene and make corrections if needed: With everything right on the computer, creating the frames and playing back your work is a breeze in a variety of software applications.  If any changes need to be made, they can be done immediately, right on the computer, saving valuable production time.  This is actually a HUGE benefit and is the number one reason why most animation is digital today.

You save the rainforests: Creating animation on paper uses up a precious planetary resource – trees!  Moving to a completely digital workflow just makes ecological sense.

Tech Torments

Computer Systems can be VERY expensive: If you were to ‘trick out’ your workspace with the latest animation software applications and the hardware to run them, it would cost you well into the range of $10,000 and up.  You also need to know a bit about what the system can do – processing speeds, memory, and especially graphics cards – to make the best economic choices.

The ‘learning curve’ can be steep: Unless you have previous experience with digital editing, learning how to work in a ‘timeline’ and setting ‘keyframes’ can be a bit confusing at first.  It usually takes a few weeks of diligent use to really get a grasp of some of the programs (but of course, it’s well worth the effort!).

Other helpful links:

Cartoon Supplies – anything you could need for traditional animation

Toon Boom – one of my favorite 2D animation apps

Wacom – a ‘must have’ for any digital animator

Amazon Reading List – ‘The Three Books You Need to be an Animator’

Happy Animating!!


06/16/10

Posted via email from Kris10 Cartoons

Friday, June 4, 2010

My Dogs Are So Photogenic!

Seymore thinks he's a model. And he looks like one, too. All skinny - eat something for cryin' out loud!

Not to be outdone but her brat baby brother, Peanut flashes her classic heartwarming smile.
(No, this is NOT Photoshopped! It came straight from my iPhone - with only minor color adjustments.)

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Sunday, May 30, 2010

Website Updated

Hey, did you see that we updated our website? Take a look!

http://www.kris10cartoons.com

Posted via email from Kris10 Cartoons

Thursday, May 27, 2010

Tuesday, May 18, 2010

Animation Math

A motion spans btwn keyframes 58 - 180. Where would u put keyframes 2,3, & 4 to split it into 4 sub-sections?

(and who said artists don't need to know math!)

1 - subtract 58 from 180 to find the total amount of frames in the motion

180-58 = 122

2 - divide by 2 to get the halfway point

122/2 = 61

3 - divide again to get the quarter points

61/2 = 30.5

4 - add numbers to your keyframe timeline -

A - 58 (start)

B - 58 + 30.5 = 88.5 (89)

C - 58 + 61 = 119

D - 58 + 61 + 30.5 = 149.5 (150)

E - 180 (end)

Happy animating!

:)

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Friday, May 7, 2010

Behind The Scenes - Animating Wombats

Watch, Rate, Fave, and Share 'Three Wombats' on Aniboom

Wombats really aren't that hard to animate.  It's just VERY VERY time consuming.

STORYBOARDS
Everything starts with the storyboards (that is, after a draft of the script is written, of course).  The drawings themselves don't have to be perfect, but it helps. The real focus should be on making all the creative decisions.  How the characters move, how does the camera move, what is the basic idea behind each scene, etc.  Storyboards can end up looking sort of like a comic book version of the movie.

AUDIO
Right after Dan Belleville and I decided on the story (which he wrote), he went off to his little cave and started noodling around with music - a bassoon to be precise.  I loved the idea of using an instrument that was a little out of the ordinary, like our wombats.  And besides, the sound complimented the cute, round, simple wombats. 

I emailed the script to Oliver Darrow, and he was excited to be on board from the start that he recorded a scratch track for us right then and there.  Later, we had him over to the house, and recorded the track right in our living room.  We used a ZoomH4N recorder and an AKG C-2000 B condenser mic. 

Watch the behind the scenes video of Oliver doing his thing here.

ANIMATIC
I've heard that a lot of animators skip this step, but I do one for every production - even the short little ones.  Mostly because I get too impatient.  I want to watch the cartoon as soon as possible.

All I did was take the storyboards, Dan's music, and Oliver's scratch track (the final audio mix was in Soundtrack) and match everything up in After Effects.  I could have used Final Cut, or Premier, but I knew I was going to do the final edit in AE.  Doing it this way saved us time during the '11th hour' because all I had to do was replace each storyboard frame with a nested animated sequence.

You can see the animatic posted up on Vimeo here.

KEYFRAMES & TWEENING
All done in Photoshop using the 'Animation' pallet, by creating an empty video layer.  The process for any 'cell' animation like this is to create the keyframes first.  Those are the 'extreme' frames, and any other other frame helpful for timing.  Then, you go back and do the 'tweening' - draw the in between frames, between your keyframes.  A lot of apps do the tweening for you, but in order to get the old school feel, we had to do it by hand. 

COLORING
After I got a few of the scenes drawn out, Kassandra Fry (recent grad from College for Creative Studies) came by to color in the frames - a thankless task that helped me out TREMENDOUSLY.  She really saved our butts on this one - if it wasn't for her help, we never would have gotten this done on time.

So, what she did was create a new blank video layer in the same PSD files in which I drew the frames.  And then she painted using the standard tools in Photoshop - she didn't even have to stay in the lines.  Simple yes, but again, VERY VERY time consuming.  We all had achey backs when it was all over.

EDITING
First, we had to get the colored frames out of PSD.  There's an export option in the file menu of PSD, so we just used that to kick out individual png files, imported them into AE into timelines based on scene number and bear number, then used the keyframe assistant to sequence everything.  Pretty simple, once you do it a couple times. 

Because I had done the animatic in AE, all I had to do was to bring the frame sequences into my main timeline and voila - we had an animation.  A little bit of color tweaking here, a little audio adjustment there and we were rolling on the export.

That's all there is to it.  Frame animation is actually pretty simple, but just takes a long time to do.  We had a great time doing it, and I hope you watch, rate, fave and share our 'master piece' so we can get to Sesame Street!! (and so Dan can get a blender)

05/07/10

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Monday, May 3, 2010

Behind the Scenes - How you get to Wombats

Watch, Rank, Fave, and Share 'Three Wombats' on Aniboom

I have to admit, I had no idea we were going to make wombats.  It was all Dan's idea.  But, if he hadn't come up with it, we never would have gotten off the ground.

I had heard of the Aniboom / Sesame Street Animation Competition back in March, but honestly was so intimidated by the idea of working for my 'white whale' that I couldn't settle on one story and move forward.  In the midst of weeks of research, Dan Belleville came to me wondering if we were working on any projects he could write music for.  I told him what I was laboring over, and asked if he could come up with some lyrics or something to help us get started.

6 hours later we had wombats.

Wombats were perfect.  They weren't the traditional 'barnyard' animal (I'm reminded of the Simpson's episode where Lisa is showing animal flash cards to Maggie).  They were cute and cuddly, yes, but different enough to make our animation stand out from the hundreds of other submissions.

I started developing the character designs right away and Dan began fiddling with the bassoon (another winning choice!) to see what we could get.  That was around April 14th.  I forwarded the 'script' off to the infamous Oliver Darrow and he said he would be happy to be a part of our little project.  Oliver came over around the 20th to record the track, and we were off and running, with Kassandra Fry (College for Creative Studies grad) working crazy hours at our kitchen table.

We settled on the concept by on the 11th, tracked on the 20th, and uploaded at midnight on the 26th.  All in all, we got everything done in two weeks - an IMPOSSIBLE time frame I wish never to repeat.

05/04/10

Up next:  'The production process.' or 'How to really piss off your friends when your stressed out'

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Sunday, May 2, 2010

Happy Birthday Baby Wombat (@wombat) #twitdrawing

Special TwitDrawing for a brand new baby! Congrats, @wombat, and thanks for the RT!

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Saturday, May 1, 2010

Getting Wombats to Sesame Street, via WXYZ

Earlier this week, I posted an animation up onto Aniboom as a submission to their recent contest.  If you follow me on Twitter (@sknygrydg07) or Facebook I'm sure you've heard about it.

The contest is an animation competition to work for Sesame Street.  The most popular animations receive $5,000 and are reviewed by a panel of judges - including Dr. Horrible himself, Neil Patrick Harris.  The judges then select the grand prize winner, who receives another $5,000 and the opportunity to work on future animations with Sesame Street.

The day after our 'Three Wombats' animation was up, we hit #2 in the ranks!  I was amazed, to say the least.  We spread the word around and my good friend, Stephen Clark at WXYZ Detroit heard about what was going on.  So, we did a little Skype interview, and our story was broadcast on Friday on the 7:00 news.  You can see the story here.

I am so overwhelmed by the showing of support from not only our friends and family, but the community at large.  It's like everyone needs something to get behind these days, the 'underdog' to root for, and this is a good a story as any.  All my life I've wanted to work for Sesame Street, and it looks like now might be my chance.  Thanks to all the people who like Sesame Street, and wombats.

Watch, Rate, Fave and Share our animation submission 'Three Wombats' to the Aniboom Awards for Sesame Street: 

And thank you, for your support!

05/01/10

Coming Up: Ever wonder how animation is made?  Next blog post, behind the scenes of 'Three Wombats' and the team that put it all together - in under 2 weeks!

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Watch Three Wombats animated video on aniboom

Watch, Rate, Fave and Share! Help us get these Wombats to Sesame Street!

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Friday, April 30, 2010

Watch Three Wombats animated video on aniboom

Watch Three Wombats animated video on aniboom

So, this is our entry to the Aniboom Sesame Street animation contest. It was a lot of hard work, and actually hit #2 the second day it was posted! But it's been fun just to be a part of the competition. It it weren't for Aniboom, I never would have gotten this close to Sesame Street - the 'white whale' of my career.

Watch for future posts of the production process, and the ins and outs of online promotion - which we're learning one day at a time!

Click, watch, rate and share!

04/30/10

Tuesday, March 23, 2010

Sitting Guy

one of the characters that didn't make the cut to the homepage of the website

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Tuesday, March 9, 2010

Animation Screen Test

Download now or watch on posterous
cloudScreenTest01.mov (438 KB)

Screen test for animation currently in production.

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