It Takes A Village

After being put on the back-burner for a while, picking up on this segment for the Ottawa Signal Film.

It'll be the third in the arc.

The cityscape will largely exist as backgrounds only.

And most of the backgrounds will need much larger scale objects.

I suppose I just wanted to build a city of paper.

The roads will be affixed to the ground, so we won't have rising surfaces.

But the buildings will still be fairly raw as they are here.

Dog Walking Dog: Going For Half A Walk

I don't know if this one exactly qualifies as half a walk.

d01

It is only eight drawings and cycles.

d02

It was used in an ABC/Disney video for They Might Be Giants' Here Come the ABCs video series.

d03

As far as work goes, it would have been "easier" to do a Preston Blair standard walk.  There's less thinking involved, though this was pretty intuitive and went quickly.

d04

This was how we thought these guys walked.  The dog walking the dog.  So there were too many other options and it didn't need any more drawings.

d05

Neither this film nor The Stepford Wives film won anything at ASIFA, maybe the jurists were more attuned to bizarre walk cycles than they are today. 

d06

This is a graphic approach to character animation, trying to find interesting manners of movement (which are simple) that convey an attitude -not to be confused with 'tude -using the body form as a configuration of shapes. 

It's ontologically opposite of "the illusion of life".

d07

It is, rather, the admission of the medium.  Instead of applying laws of gravity and biology to the drawings the animation here allows the drawing to dictate the manner of motion.  

d08

This is a pretty simple little walk for all those big words -but that was the thinking behind animating this character in this fashion.

It's very simple, it doesn't try too much.  It's one bit which, I think, succeeds in what it attempts.  As goofy as it is, I'm pretty happy with this little cycle.

Half A Walk

Michael Sporn has a typically interesting post illuminating a problem of poor craftsmanship being inculcated in today's animation students.

It reminded me of a half-walk we did for The Stepford Wives.

Six drawings B13 through B18.

B 13

Sure this was a big Hollywood movie, but here's the rub: they needed rewrites after a test screening and were hoping to help "fix" it in our sequence because the lab needed the new cut in just over a week.

B 14

Given the timeframe another 6 drawings (times two for clean up, times two for paint) wasn't insignificant.

B 15

Above is the passing point, it's the "trick" drawing where the legs switch.

B 16

Fortunately, this shortcut is stylistically acceptable in the context of the whole piece.  It also makes for funny animation.

B 17

Doug Compton is the animator here, and it wouldn't work without his considerable skill.  It's only a "short cut" if 20 plus years of honing one's skills as an animator is a "cheap" way to do something.

B 18

In the context of what he's criticizing, Michael's point is right on target.

I do like George Griffin's thoughts to put the problem in the larger world of motion study:

Plympton made fewer drawings work and it was not a decision based on narrative or character; it was experimental animation; it did break the rules; it let the scratchy lines move slower and not distract. A cycle is anything that’s repeated. The running Nazi gained some interesting qualities with fewer drawings: his head is obsessively facing forward to emphasize his menace, not twisting to the side on the stride; and the crazy legs give him a loping kind of nutty asymmetry.

Advice to students: Forget about “good” or “bad.” Just think about your objective, your time base, your momentary design and how it will flow or jerk in time.

Here's the animation cycled on twos.

Step One (Sometimes): A Design Concept

These are some designs Liesje worked up for a potential project.

It's a bit too complicated (and unofficial) to go into, but I like the drawings.

And one without color.

Now We're Getting Somewhere

After a few miserable experiments the first part of the first film of our sequence of signal films for Ottawa is coming together.

Using her day off from work to help out, Liesje Kraai, work up some animation which looks like this.

With some luck it'll all work out.

Further Testing

Starting to get somewhere with the first of (probably) eight Ottawa Signal films.

Did an animation test based on a painted model.

This (above) is basically one part of a motion/production experiment.  It would represent one "layer" of activity.

Something like the first will probably integrate with something like the second.  With a little effort it should work.

Some Guys

rug cutters

Triangelo

NASA Man

His Date

The Big Apple

Trois Ouefs

Picture Process II

Here's the next couple steps for the motion graphics illustration of the "The Dove".

After typing the script, reading it a few dozen times and listening to it just as many we did a thumbnail, sketchbook storyboard.

This is a good way to start figuring out what's going to happen.

It's a simple starting point.

This very rough board was transferred into a less rough board.

Since this is graphics, the board doesn't necessarily need to be as precise as a "cinematic" film.

The board can be pretty diagrammatic.

Next, we'll do a rough pass on the animation.

Test Village

As previously mentioned, we're working the signal film for this year's Ottawa Animation Festival.

Since we like to needlessly complicate things, this is shaping up more like a signal cycle.

For the third installment, we're thinking an environment like this.

These are the first models.  Eventually a whole city will be constructed.

There was a time when I'd insist on hiding the edges.

Today, edges don't bother me.  Not that it should look sloppy (there are a few sloppy folds in some of the buildings), but it should look attainable.

The film as a whole should be magical, should come together in seemingly impossible ways.  The elements which comprise the film -whether it's animation, actors, music, photography -don't need to be perfect.  In fact, it's may be more effective if somewhat rustic parts work together to create a piece greater than its sum components.

Another Failed Experiment

We're doing the signal film for this year's Ottawa International Animation Festival.

Have a basic idea figured out and have started on some technique experiments -it's going to be a mixed media thing and evolved through several passages.

This isn't exposed or framed or really animated in anyway.





Trying to find bubbly, watery textures. Towards the end of the clip it starts to get somewhere.

Everything is digital these days -with the exception of stalwart holdouts like Don Herzfeldt. To us, there's great value in creating elements of the picture with tactile materials. A computer is a calculator, an accountant. It works towards uniformity. If the starting point is far, far from perfect the design and the animation have the chance to retain some of that chaos in the final piece.

Exposing Extremes In After Effects

Say you're crazy enough to make a film using drawn -on paper -animation.

The standard process is to do layout drawings which lead to "extreme" drawings.  These extremes can be anywhere from 1 to 6 or more drawings apart (3 "in betweens" is typical) and they're the most important drawings for animating character.  If the extremes work, the inbetweens will (generally) work.

If you're going to test the animation, this is the best time to do it -before doing dozens of inbetweens.

After you scan, your folder will look like this:

This is based on this pencil test post last week.

These drawings will be timed out an exposure sheet which dictates what drawings are used on what frame.

You'll want to retain your After Effects project for use as the animation progresses and not have to re-expose the artwork.  This is time consuming and can be prone to mistakes.

Here's the dumb way to deal with that:

Simply duplicate the missing drawings.

Now you have a numbered sequence which will be identical to the numbered sequence of final drawings.

Import this folder as a sequence into After Effects.  Be sure to interpret the footage correctly -we tend to do drawn animation at 24fps (fewer drawings/easier to time), so the footage should import at 24.

Drag it into your timeline and "Time Remap".

Set the key frames to hold and then expose the drawing to the frame.  The number in blue to the left will be the same number as your drawing -provided you've got a sequence of consecutive whole numbers starting from 1.  The timeline frame count can be set to match your dial number.

Got through and expose the keyframes.

This will give you a properly timed out test. 

Once the inbetweens are complete, just replace the files and your exposure will remain.

This is the simplest way of keeping the process streamlined.

Dog Show

In honor of this weeks big dog show, here's a cel level that was cut from a recent commercial we've finished.

This is part of a very complicated crowd scene animated by Doug Compton.

We did a layout test for the client and started animating.

A few weeks later we sent the first half of the pencil test cut into the layout test.  At this time they thought it over and decided against having the dog in the scene.  (we like the dog in the scene, of course, but there are many things not worth arguing for and this kind of thing is a big one)

In any event Doug had already done this level by that point.  Fortunately, he's a discrete part so there was no trouble pulling it.

This isn't inbetweened.  They're just 16 extreme drawings out of 35 total for the character.

The extremes are held for the subsequent undrawn inbetweens.

It's "limited animation" in a sense.  That's how you can make a crowd interesting.

The shot is almost 19 seconds and the 35 drawings play out of the course of that time.

Within the next week or so, we'll post the key drawings and how the AfterEffects project was set up.  It's a good system for testing without inbetweens that is precise and saves work in the long run.

How To InBetween

Things they don't teach you in animation school.

If you have good extreme drawings and thought out charts, inbetweening is easy.  If you consider that inbetween drawings can outnumber extreme drawings by 3 to 1, the whole process of animation becomes less daunting.

Of course that means you need to have a good animator (the guy/gal who does the extremes and usually the keys), a good layout artists, a good storyboard and a good design, but if you can only have one -it's a tough choice, but a good animator does so many things that's the most important position to fill.

Doug Compton is one of the best.  Here's a simple series of drawings to be inbetweened.

Drawing A05

Drawing A05 works into drawing A10.

A10

That means there are 4 inbetweens.  It's typical to be given 3 inbetweens, but 4 is not unheard of.

The chart or ladder which shows how these 4 drawings are to be made is written on A10.

chart on A10

From this we see that A08 is a direct inbetween of A05 and A10.  So that's the next drawing we do.

Doug, being a great animator, has already started it for us.

A08

He's done the broad, important "acting" part of the action and left the rest to be filled in.  This drawing is marked "C. D." (complete drawing).

chart 08 "C. D."

Now back to the chart.

Once A08 is drawn, move backwards to A07.  This is the direct inbetween of A05 and A08.  Then A06 which is again half the distance between A05 and A06.

Next, move forward to A09 which is between A08 and A10.

A11

Note how A11 "pops" from A10.  It's not microscopically inbetweened.  Because of this, the animator draws it as an extreme -right after A10 which is also an extreme.

There's no formula to when or where extremes fall.  There  could be 5 in a row, there could be 2 in 24 frames.  It all depends on the action.

A15

A11 works into A15.  This is a common spacing -three drawings (I'll generally refer to the number of drawings as "space" whereas the number of frames is "time" -although "space" is really the distance between between drawings) -here there's not broken up evenly.

chart 15

In chart 15 you see that A14 is the direct inbetween of A15 and A11.  This spacing builds a natural ease into the animation.  A "regular" inbetween would have A13 directly between A15 and A11.  Though this may be "regular" and eased inbetween is very common.

So you drawing A14 between A11 and A15, followed by A13 between A11 and your newly created A14, finally A12 between A13 and A11.

Note the X between 14 and 15.  Note the height of 14, then 13, then 12.  Note the arcs on the bottom.  This is how animators communicate with assistants.