Planning a project

[bupaje]

I'm new to Moho and animation and wanted to work on a project to get some experience. I've decided to try to animate a short story my wife had written some time ago to explain adoption to my son.

Parts of the short would involve walking around the very small town to different locations and I've been jumping back and forth trying to decide if I should make the town in a 3D program and import it -I sort of favor this but want the styles to match. I have some technical difficulties importing stuff right now but figure I'll get that sorted out. I'm not sure how hard it is going to be to make the 2D characters look good walking around the 3D scene.

I guess I could draw lots of backdrops in 2D of all the locations in town but one of the main reasons I thought 3D is because I have no real training and trying to get the perspective right for some of the shots I am thinking about is somewhat daunting.

I thought I might make 'fake' 3D in Moho by lining up layers but I'm finding that a heck of a task so far. My other thought is maybe making the town 3D and then rendering various backgrounds, or even an animation and then add the charcaters in Moho (though I can only imagine it must be very difficult to get the timing and so on right when combining an imported animation?).

Anyhow before I spend what's left of my middle age trying to decide by trial and error which way to go I figured I'd ask. How would you approach this project if you were doing it?

Let me know if you need more info in order to provide relevant feedback. Hopefully your experience will save some of my brain cells -ain't many left up there.

[myles]

I don't have enough real experience to give much useful advice, but that's never stopped me before.
Hopefully someone more experienced will chime in with something better, but until then here's a few off-the-cuff thoughts for you.

Whether you do your backgrounds in 2D or 3D might depend on how comfortable and productive you are in your 2D and 3D programs, otherwise you may end up spending too much time on backgrounds and never enough on animation.

If you want your 3D and 2D styles to match, does that mean you want very simply shaded and textured buildings or complex shading and textures on your characters ? If the former, consider applying simple cartoony textures to your buildings in your 3D program, or use the same program to create textures for your Moho characters as you use for texturing your 3D scenes.

Alternatively, as you're doing 2D cartoon characters, do you need precisely accurate perspective in the backgrounds, or can you use simpler "facades" (like the painted cutout buildings in old westerns)?

Rendering the backgrounds (as stills or animations) sounds feasible - and Moho's image layers support animations so you can line up your characters if you have an animated background.


A couple of tips I've seen used elsewhere:

Consider using some medium or closeup shots of your characters to reduce the amount of exact alignment (i.e. to avoid having to make walking match the ground movement precisely).

Consider rendering your backgrounds bigger than your screen and using camera panning and zooming in Moho to move along/around the background scene, rather than ainmating in 3D. Then use simple cuts from one background to the next rather than following your character through the entire 3D scene.

Regards, Myles.

[bupaje]

Thanks Myles. I have been trying to really 'look' at cartoons now to see how they handle that and will probably have to find a book that explains some of the logic/art of when to zoom, cut to a new scene and all of that. I've seen loads of movies and toons over the years but it is only recently that I am making a concious effort to see how they handle this stuff. My grasp is still very amorphous.

[DK]

i don't know if this is any help to you but i was watching a documentary on how they produced "The Incredibles". It took them 4 years to finish but it was really interesting to me to find that they started the whole thing off with an animatic. Basically an animated storytboard which they gradually built onto. Each time they completed an animated segment they inserted it into the animatic till the movie was complete.

D.K

[Barry Baker]

DK has pinpointed the essential stage of any film- after the script comes the storyboard. Don't start building whole cities in 3D until you have planned the film as a storyboard first. You will waste energy on buildings that are never seen in close up, and maybe not at all.

I like to print out the script as a column down one side of a page, then roughly thumbnail the whole story next to it in the blank right half. Here I can plan how shots will be cut together to best tell the story, and I can see very quickly if there are problems with my storytelling.

Next I draw up the whole film in a fixed size (not very large, but corresponding to the proportions of my video frame), scene by scene, with as much or as little detail as is necessary to guide the next stages (ie. layout and animation). If you are the whole crew, you don't need to get too neat here, but you will find that the process feeds you valuable ideas that will make the final execution of your film much smoother. Here is an example of a storyboard I made for an episode of Bounty Hamster for ITV:

http://www.barrybaker.uk.com/FreeLennySB/index.html

On my computer screen, this is about the actual size I drew it. Each panel about 5 inches wide...

If you can record a rough guide soundtrack, this will really help you with the timing. If there's dialogue or voice over, definitely do a reading with your friends, and get it into the computer as a wav file. Then scan the storyboard into the computer (unless you drew it directly in the computer already) and put it together with the rough sound as an animatic. There are many ways of doing this - cheapest are the tools that come free with Windows or Mac (Moviemaker or iMovie). This will save you so much time and agony in production, that it's just not worth skipping. Then as DK so rightly pointed out, you can continue to cut in new scenes as they are finished.

Here's the animatic for Health and Safety Lesson 3 (Burt, I took the liberty of uploading it to your webspace - but I'm sure you won't mind!):

http://barrybaker.stormvisions.com/HSLe ... imatic.mov

[kdiddy13]

I have an nearly identical way of working (as does every successful studio I've ever heard of). I posted my work outline in another forum:

http://www.lostmarble.com/forum/viewtop ... 03&start=0

The bottom line is that throughout production you've started with a finished film and it's only getting better as you continue to work on it. The real advantage to this type of work flow is that you aren't waiting until you're "finished" to find all the stupid presumptions and mistakes you've made. Throughout the process you're double checking your edit, your timing, and story.

I've seen so many students blindly chug ahead for 20-40 weeks working on projects, without checking how things are clicking together, only to find that their story doesn't make sense because they didn't realize they needed to add a whole scene (or worse, cut one out they worked on for weeks).

I know this is all a bit off topic from you're original question, but it may help you find where you need to zoom, pan, etc. (the layout stage) a little easier. And hey, if more high quality animations keep going out in to the world it will only mean more chance for success for the rest of us. Good luck!
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HINDUISM ADVICE

[bupaje]

@DK - I had of course heard of storyboards but animatic was a new name for me and after searching around I found some examples. Thanks.

@Barry - Thanks for detailing the process and for the examples; after having seen the finished project the animatic you posted turned on my light bulb instantly. I was going of in some wild directions thinking I'd construct the 3D set, then use 3D Game Studio like a Machinma type thing to walk through the scene and film it then add the character in Moho etc etc - (most of which I can't actually do yet). Very helpful example and explanation -thanks.

@kdiddy13 - Great thread. You guys have provided a really useful work flow. I'll going to try to form the habit of working like this -I tend to just jump in and start swinging but as a result I have loads of half finished 'things' through the years when I run out of steam because I ram up against something I didn't think of.

Too bad for me you are in the bay area, I'm in southern cal or I'd check out one of your classes. I am going to try to grab the books you recommended on amazon.

Thanks for all comments -very useful thread.

[7feet]

Umm, I agree. And really nice animatics, Barry. Looks more like a selection of keyframes, especially in some parts, and with more specific movement than most I've seen, but a lovely guideline.

It's not just animation that this progressively more detailed process relates to. It works for any film making in general. I've been considering working on a younger directors film ( I think he's 23 or so ) and was impressed that he had a solid script and had storyboarded the whole feature, as well as doing a lot of the other grunt work. I've always found that planning is everything. In many respects, animation can be easier than some other sorts of films, as you are, in the end, not so subject to the wierdness that the real world can throw at you. But I've still put considerable time into pieces that vaporized, when they didn't need to, because planning for and keeping the end result in mind was overwhelmed by "But isn't this little bit cool!?" Although I haven't seen it, I like what you relate as the process on making "The Incredibles", DK. Setting the compositions and pacing for a film and then dropping completed pieces as they come seems as if it would work well, and from what I've heard about it it did.

But the essence is, I think, that you approach making an animated film the same way you would any other. To flip it around, perhaps, instead of doing a drawn animatic, take your garden variety video camera, recruit a few compatriots, and shoot the scenes in mind with people doing their thing. That'll give you a good feel for the pacing, some invaluable motion reference if you're characters are anything like anthropomorphic, and a vauge sountrack to build on. I've shot a few things on the fly that worked, but more that didn't. Even with the ease Moho offers, I find it to be actual (fun) work to do 2D animation to be kinda huge. So planning, planning, planning is all important.

Hope I haven't drifted too much, I'm bone dead tired, but I felt some reason to contribute when I started typing.

--Brian

[jorgy]

Although I haven't seen it, I like what you relate as the process on making "The Incredibles", DK.

Speaking of The Incredibles, I thought it was a truly tremendous movie:

• - While the plot was a bit predictable, the story was interesting, and the characters exceptional.
  
  - The art direction was superb. The 50s-60s futuristic style is carried throughout the movie and was very effective. From the house, to the office, to the island, to the showdown at downtown, the sets were fun and interesting.
  
  - The animation was outstanding. I don't even know where to begin here.

I believe that there are lessons I can learn from this, even doing 2(+)D animation with moho. As mentioned above, storyboarding, is just the beginning.

What are other moho users' thoughts on the movie?

[Squeakydave]

The 'ART OF' books about Pixar movies are fantastic. The company puts a lot of effort into the pre production and inspirational designs before even thinking about animation. Boy do I wish I had that luxury in my commercial work! That is how it should be done

I recomend these books to anyone looking for inspiration. (though it does leave One a bit on the envious side)

[nobudget]

The Incredibles was originally planned to be a 2D feature before Pixar became involved. The story should come first, the technical part later. This not only applies to 2D and 3D, but also film and animation. The Incredibles turned out so well the creators of the Fantastic Four movie spend a rumoured additional 20 Million dollars to fix their movie. They were afraid the live-action could not compete with the limitless boundaries of animation and they might be right...

Reindert.
www.nobudgetvideo.com