Part I:
[link]Part II:
[link]Part III:
[link]Part IV:
[link]I told people on Facebook that I'll make a progress reel, but taking these pics are much easier.
Storyboard is the first step which people use to plan the story and action out, and afterwards an animatic is made to time said action out. Since I'm the only animator, I can be as loose as I want, even using stick figures sometimes.
Layout is the next step. In traditional animation, this means making clean drawings of backgrounds. For CGI this means placing down the character models in the locations and then use tweens to time their movments. There's another phase called blocking animation, where you get more detailed with the characters movements. I don't know if this is actually done in Flash cartoons, but I thought it would be cool thing to adapt for this project. You can see some block animation for this scene in this video:
[link]Animation is where I put the finishing touches to the character's movements. In CGI and Flash, animation programs automatically do the tweens, but animators have to make plenty of keyframes and rig the character puppets properly so the characters will move right.It's a group effort of man and machine!
Backgrounds are my least favorite things to draw, even simple ones, so I did it last. Depending on the angle, many backgrounds in Flash cartoons can be reused.
Lighting This is a first for a Dtoons production. After watching a behind-the-scenes video of the webcartoon "Lloyd the Rockin' Unicorn", I decided, through trial and error, to add lighting to the cartoon via After Effects, a powerful motion graphics and compositing program. This program is what animators on "The Amazing World of Gumball" use to put all the characters from various art styles into the same cartoon, and is also used in Disney's "Motorcity". I'm hoping that the lighting will help add atmosphere to the cartoon, and really push some scenes.
Will everything come together in the end? I sure hope so!
To see an actual progress reel, here's one from Monsters Inc.
[link], and a more extensive one from Ratatouille
[link]
`anmari has been spreading her infectious positivity throughout our community for over 6 years. Throughout this time Ana has been at the core of all things devious, passionately developing an eclectic gallery, helping organise devmeets, participating in chat events and also recently completed dedicating her time as a Community Volunteer. We are absolutely delighted to bestow the Deviousness Award for May 2013 to `anmari, congratulations! Read More
Sta.sh
Backgrounds I'm terrible at an have decided after watching Captain America that I'll just make all of the backgrounds CG and just some how cartoonify them similar to the closing credits in the per-mentioned film.
I love how they make the old War time posters 3D!
Also keep up the excellent work Alex!
P.S Will you be doing one of those progress Reels like the Pixar ones?
I look forward to seeing the teaser trailer you're making.
All you need to know is the Razor / Splicer tool ( C ) to make cuts and the arrow tool ( V ) to select and move stuff.
I have some training DVD's from when I was learning CS2 years ago from Total Training, you'll find stuff online.