In the thick of things...
I'm still working on this biggie. Just one character, but he's constantly moving. Falling a little short of my mental goal, but at least it's coming along nicely.
As you can see, I'm using Macromedia Flash for the animation. The look I'm going for is more "traditional" than "Flash-looking" - I'm going for a hand drawn quality. I take advantage of what Flash has to offer on the inbetweening end (in symbols) for subtle movement that would be a pain to inbetween, but for the rest I try to draw and keep the human imperfections. In this example, you can see I work with the outlines of the vector art so I can see what's going on with the overlapping elements. "Keys" (not pictured) are used to generate main poses, culminated from either already existing symbols from another scene, or are hand generated in the computer. Early on, I did a lot more paper line clean up and scanned them in - but lately the computer is more my friend, and I skip the paper cleanup step. Since I already have a handful of Santa scenes done, I had quite a few heads that I could re-use in this shot. The Aliens at this point can almost entirely re-use symbols from other scenes. That's one of the benefits of being closer to the end of a project. But even though there is all this re-use, the decision making and crafting still takes up plenty of time.
9 comments:
Sounds like a great working process to me. Of course the final stuff that I've seen speaks louder than any amount of words. This scene was one of my favorites when I saw the story reel a while back. Can't wait to see it animated!
The "work in progress" is a piece of art in itself. Your planning and execution certainly seem the basis of this HUGE project actually getting towards an end point. Question: Do you group graphics and symbols into different folders and subfolders in Flash? It would seem quite confusing and frustrating to just have one LONG list of assets in your library. Keep it up, your fans eagerly await each post!
Hi Jason,
The answer to your question is yes. I do have some organization within the library - Usually a folder per character or elaborate prop and another for poses. It does still end up being a long list, but I'm used to it. The only frustration for me is when I make a new symbol, like a hand for instance, I sometimes forget what number to call it. Did I make 7 or 8 hands so far? When you're naming it, you can't go to the library and scroll to check. That's a little insight into one of my pet peeves with Flash.
Thanks for the kind words guys.
Sweet stuff, Dave! I have noticed that the screens you've been posting look less like a Flash animation and more like old-school animation. And working in outlines as opposed to fully colored frames is a great tip!
Keep chuggin' along!
Beautiful work Dave :), great screen!!! Keep posting
Did you try with the the Toon Boom Studio? :)
Virginiajoe,
Flash was an affordable move for me - and a program that I already owned back when I wanted to do an animated project at home. I was skeptical at first that Flash would work for me. After some tests, the tool impressed me with it's versatility and continues to work for me today.
Thanks for the support!
Dave
Glad your posting the "how to" working stages. Very interesting.I love Flash for it's ability to re-cycle and inbetween otherwise tedious things. I think if you are a clever artist you can hide these cheats well.
Ooooh I understand now... ;)
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