Tradition Animated TVC done in AS

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Mikdog
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Post by Mikdog »

Pic looks good.

I do wonder, though, why you're used AS for this? Its like ... using a screwdriver to hammer a nail in. I'd have used Toon Boom Animate or some other program to do frame-by-frame stuff. You essentially doubled the work with not being able to fill the shapes in directly. Ouch. Yes, it'd be AWESOME in AS had better raster and fbf tools. For years ... YEARS I've been saying it. But the fact is, it doesn't and you could have saved yourself a bunch of time and effort with Toon Boom Animate 2 - its what I use for this kind of thing.
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DK
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Post by DK »

I could have used Toonboom Animate sure.....and blown half the budget at the same time. :) Really, it only took 2 weeks to complete this TVC and I had hired help with colouring so it was'nt too bad at all. I'm looking at buying a copy of Flipbook at only US$700.00 it's half the price of Toonboom and has amazing colouring tools for FBF work.

Cheers
D.K
Patmals
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Post by Patmals »

DK wrote:I could have used Toonboom Animate sure.....and blown half the budget at the same time. :) Really, it only took 2 weeks to complete this TVC and I had hired help with colouring so it was'nt too bad at all. I'm looking at buying a copy of Flipbook at only US$700.00 it's half the price of Toonboom and has amazing colouring tools for FBF work.

Cheers
D.K
The standard "animate" is $699 but until July the 1st everything is 50% off.
I likeflipbook but... the licensing crap (similar to toonz) where you need to contact them if you need to reinstall (perhaps only when changed hardware occurs) annoys me.
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DK
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Post by DK »

Just to add to my previous post. The decision to use AS and shape colouring method was decided at the initial pre production meeting for these reasons.

1. We wanted to use broken lines in the artwork to get away from the common big solid line Flash like look that is so common with modern animation these days. We wanted to hark back to the old Warner Brothers, Early Winnie the Pooh linework style. This meant we could not easily fill coloured areas with Photoshop or any other program.

2. We also wanted the colours to be loose around the artwork so it looked hand done.

Image


The only way we could achieve this was to use Anime Studio vector shapes placed beneath the transparent linework. We knew it would take a bit longer but we got the results we were looking for. This was a decision made by our chief animator and director Warwick Gilbert, ex Disney Australia 18 years and approx 10 years with Hanna Barbera Australia.

D.K
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funksmaname
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Post by funksmaname »

looks good to me, and probably quite fast if you use rotoscoping techniques (overlaying simple shapes to make the whole, instead of tediously outlining exact complete shapes)

Nicely done DK.
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DK
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Post by DK »

Thanks funksmaname! We actually did try to colour each frame in Photoshop and the colours always spilled through the gaps in the linework no matter how much we adjusted the sensitivity on area selection tools. It was much quicker to do it in AS in the end.

D.K
Patmals
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Post by Patmals »

I was gonna say, that if you didn't say that this was don in ASP, i would have thought it was traditonally done.

PD Pro can do very traditional looking animation, but you would have to paint each cell individually. Tb studio and up hav a paint all option.

I am impressed DK ;)

So, HB are still going strong in Aus? My brother used to work for them in the 80's along with all the major studios.
Even Yoram Gros whre he started, i believe.
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DK
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Post by DK »

Hi Patmals.
HB is no longer and also Disney has gone now too. If your brother worked at Yoram in the 80's he would more than likely know Warwick as he also worked at Yoram at one stage I believe. If you PM your brothers name to me and I'll see if he knows him.

Cheers
D.K
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Mikdog
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Post by Mikdog »

The only way we could achieve this was to use Anime Studio vector shapes
Well, I think an easier way would've been to hand-draw the outlines in Toon Boom / some other app with a digital tablet, then (and I'm not a Toon Boom rep I swear - I actually don't really like the program too much but it gets the job done) in Toon Boom Animate Pro (I don't have Pro but I've used it) you have a couple 'layers' per frame - I'd draw the colour behind the outline in a loose style with a digital pen.

So I wouldn't say the AS way the only way ... I'd get the loose style by being loose with a digital pen instead of clicking and dragging vector points around.
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DK
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Post by DK »

Hi Mikdog.
Yes that would work I guess but copying and pasting a shape then tweeking the edges was WAAAAAY faster than redrawing entire shapes by hand. A lot of the times the shapes hardly needed tweeking inareas that did not change. For instance the elephant sitting in the char was composed of elements. A static body and animated elements like eyes head etc....this way the body colour shape just stayed inplace most of the time and the other shapes shifted.

EDIT: The only thing that had us concerned was the scanning time. We used a multi document scanner to digitize all the paper (about 500 pages) and it took approx 30 minutes to scan in all the paper drawings.


D.K
Wena Parry
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Post by Wena Parry »

Thank you DK that peace of art work is great. I often feel that the vector line work is too clean and has no character.

It would be interesting to know more of the technique you used, unlese that is "trade secret" !!!!.

Wena
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digitalartguru
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Re: Tradition Animated TVC done in AS

Post by digitalartguru »

DK wrote:
Image

LOW QUALITY. Please watch small.
http://www.polliefillers.com.au/forum/TradTVCsmall.wmv


Cheers
D.K
Brilliant work D.K!!! I love watching an animation that doesn't fit the usual AS look. Anything from the great artwork to the animation timing and the use of squash and stretch. Good work!

Please share more.
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DK
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Post by DK »

Hello Wena.
The artwork was first skeched out in pencil on an animators table on peg punched A4 paper then traced with a fine felt inking pen. Anything with fast movement was done with a rougher sketchy style ie the Koalas.

Image


High quality pencil test slowed down: NOTE: All drawings were done and framed exactly how you see them on A4 paper in landscape. There were characters drawn coming in and off screen so there were loads of areas where a raster fill tool would not work for us
http://www.polliefillers.com.au/forum/Penciltest.wmv


All drawings were scanned in by a multiple document scanner, per scene, then imported into Photoshop. We then used PS colour range tool to sample the linework. Then we used the refine edge tool to tweek the amount of line we wanted left behind after the background was removed. To speed things up I wrote several Photoshop actions to delete unwanted marks and darken the linework for each image. An action would run a process automatically over an entire image sequence so you just sit back for a couple minutes while it processes the folder. AS could do with something like this. Finally we ended up with a perfectly transparent png sequence to work with in AS. As I mentioned before we attempted to colour the frames in PS before we began and it took way too long to hand paint areas with broken lines where the fill tool would not work so we opted to use vector colour shapes in AS.

The image sequence was imported into AS and a Shape layer was created beneath the sequence. Then it was just a matter of creating coloured shapes beneath the linework. To speed things up wth tweeking the shapes as the animation changed over the sequence we used the magnet tool. A lot of the time we did'nt even need to copy paste the shapes....just created keyframes for the shapes between images. It was still a lot of work though.

Cheers
D.K
Wena Parry
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Post by Wena Parry »

Thank you very much D.K. A fine job.

Wena
Remy
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Post by Remy »

Absolutly amazing work. Just a detail: why has the nice shadow under the seat disapeared in the last scene?
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