First full animation project in AS...

[Kadoogan]

I have puttered around a bit in Anime Studio, mostly doing character designs because I like the tapering line control it offers, but I had never really completed a full project in the software.

Finally I had a chance to recommend animation for a recent project. The scope of the animation was quite limited overall - not Disney style or anything...barely Hanna Barbara style even. The budget was severely limited as well, but we were able to do it and still make some profit.

Some sacrifices were made to bring the project in on budget, but overall it holds together reasonably well.

The video as it currently sits:
http://youtu.be/PqkckZwsncA

Storyboard in PDF form showing discarded character angles and scenes...
http://www.inedmontonab.com/asimages/Storyboard%203.pdf
(executed by Jamie Halloway)

I wound up designing the characters, creating them in AS, animating them, created a few of the backgrounds, adjusted others, edited the audio, did the male character voices (poorly, I know - I was tired when I recorded them) edited the final video and audio together to create the final production.

Character Designs (sketched and colored using a tablet PC with a stylus in Artrage by Dave Stevens - you may have to right click on these to view them fully as they are full resolution for print)



I had two great team mates - one that created the story, storyboarded, and drew the backgrounds, sourced the music, in addition to drawing some of the recyclables portrayed in the video. The other fully rendered the backgrounds in glorious color (Shane Hill).

I learned A TON of stuff about AS, referring to the video tutorials included with the software, in addition to several webinars I found on Youtube. I went on a learn-as-you-go kind of schedule, which didn't serve me well because I was unaware of several time and effort saving techniques that would have been handy to have known from the start.

This is not excellent animation by any means - many possible improvements were left to the wayside due to time and budget limits. Everyone here will recognize any number of repetitious elements and animations throughout meant to save time. There are many flaws, but in the end it is decent work, and the client is happy.

I submit it here as a sample of a real world animation project that, even in it's limited form, represents not quite two weeks worth of animation production created by a small team - often learning as we went along. Take from it what you will - all comments welcome, although we are pretty well aware of where we failed in most respects (i.e. the horses and covered wagon are a little "floaty").

My thanks to Chad from Incredible Tutorials fame for putting up an easy to understand list of tutorials that I took full advantage of. A huge thank you to Smith Micro and Victor Paredes for his webinars. Amazing revelations were contained within! Everyone should watch those. I learned so much about how to use smart bones and actions from Victor!

Hope you all like this!

[ErikAtMapache]

You did a great job.

[AmigaMan]

The final result is excellent. To do it in the time you did and while learning the software is a major achievement I think. Great job!

[Paul Mesken]

With such a small team and in just two weeks this is an excellent result (I think the pacing could have been faster in places though). I like the characters a lot, they're really a nice mix of distinct figures. Good SFX and I like the voices too. Great work!

[Kadoogan]

You did a great job.

Thank you!

The final result is excellent. To do it in the time you did and while learning the software is a major achievement I think. Great job!

Thank you - we worked day and night, and on weekends to get it done. Crammed in plenty of hours. We are all graphic designers and I have been animating on and off in both 2D and 3D for some time, so we had a leg up in many respects.

I have also worked as an internal software support tech for a large telecom company several years ago, so l have a good general understanding of software which helps a lot too.

I have been messing around with AS since it was called Moho so I knew the interface of the software decently enough but had never really used it for anything significant other than character design. Putting it all into actual practice let me know how much I did not know - lol.

Learning how to use actions and doing the smart bone thing was a major set of eye openers for me. Very cool features. I was not terribly impressed with the vector import options. AS would change the colors of everything I imported from Adobe Illustrator, and there was this weird thing where it would duplicate every path imported.

I had to delete every duplicate, then re-apply fill and strokes which did nothing to speed up the process. I tried several file format and version options but results were the same or worse depending on the format. Still, we got through it.

With such a small team and in just two weeks this is an excellent result (I think the pacing could have been faster in places though). I like the characters a lot, they're really a nice mix of distinct figures. Good SFX and I like the voices too. Great work!

Thank you! Our small team is very familiar with tight deadlines generally, and we work on computers daily to create all manner of visual work. So we had a leg up in a couple of different ways.

I agree with the pacing thing - it meanders a bit in spots for sure.

The characters were meant to be a mix of Hanna Barbara and Warner Brothers-styles of character designs with a touch of UPA thrown in. I was really influenced by the Canadian made recent reboot of the Gerald McBoing Boing cartoon series. Very cool character designs and the animation is top notch.

I bought a DVD of the series and discovered more on Youtube and Netflix. I was particularly impressed with how they flipped characters rather than animating them turning left and right. With the right mix of anticipation, secondary animation and timing they make it look like a character is turning to face opposite directions without actually doing the in-betweens required to normally make that happen. Such a simple thing but a great time saver if done correctly.

I tried to use the technique on the gopher at the beginning of our video, but don't feel I fully pulled it off. I thought I got better results on the following test animation:

http://youtu.be/DfFzkh57En8

We took certain cues from the Gerald McBoing Boing use of backgrounds as well, with regards to texture especially. Ours were a lot less stylized than their art, however.

I would recommend anyone take a look at that series for reference. It is targeted towards pretty young audiences, but the animation is great - often inspiring in it's execution and simplicity to any adult interested in the medium of digital animation.

The SFX were from a set of Hanna Barbara and Warner Brothers SFX libraries that I own (legally). The best SFX available in my opinion. All made for cartoon work. The Warner Brothers SFX in particular are just fun to listen to and always make me laugh.

[chucky]

Very good Killer Kadoogan. Yeehaaaarggh.

[slowtiger]

Really good result for such a short time. Since you're a designer it's no wonder I liked the designs best - the coloured lines on the characters, and the really excellent background style. I especially like the use of textures on the BGs - how did you do these?

The animation needs to be much more snappy for my taste. But still there's good stuff, like the horses - they have such an arrogant attitude!

[Kadoogan]

Really good result for such a short time. Since you're a designer it's no wonder I liked the designs best - the coloured lines on the characters, and the really excellent background style. I especially like the use of textures on the BGs - how did you do these?

The animation needs to be much more snappy for my taste. But still there's good stuff, like the horses - they have such an arrogant attitude!

Thank you - I hope to improve my animation skills over the next few months - now that I have done this animation I have already contracted out for a few more. I'll post them once they are done.

The backgrounds were textured in Photoshop using the brush texture found for free at the following link:

http://www.brushking.eu/311/chalk-brushes.html

I didn't do them, but I know that Shane Hill would lay down flat colors, then use transparent layer effects to overlap a few general brush stroke and sponge textures on the overall image - erasing out and setting transparencies as required. Then he would use the brush to add dark and light patches to finish it all off.

We got the idea from the Gerald McBoing Boing cartoons http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Qly2EaRxbU, although Shane used his own style and finesse. The background linework was drawn by Jamie Halloway using the old analogue pen and paper method, which was scanned and cleaned up.

Shane colorized the lines by lifting them from the white background to their own layer, then locking the transparency of the layer so that he could scribble over the lines without fear of his brush going past the edges of the lines. I used the same technique to colorize the lines on my character sketches. They were drawn in with black lines originally.

[Kadoogan]

Very good Killer Kadoogan. Yeehaaaarggh.

Could it be? A fellow Ren & Stimpy Fan?!!?!

[neeters_guy]

Very nice work and even nicer that it's paid work. Thanks for sharing the behind-the-scenes story. Much appreciated.

[3deeguy]

The result of a mere two weeks work is phenomenal. I stopped it at various points to study it. There is a ton of stuff to learn that will make any animator's work improve. The clip I just posted on YouTube took at least a month and it is only one character. Thanks for posting.

[Joofville]

Awesome work there bud!

[Kadoogan]

The result of a mere two weeks work is phenomenal. I stopped it at various points to study it. There is a ton of stuff to learn that will make any animator's work improve. The clip I just posted on YouTube took at least a month and it is only one character. Thanks for posting.

I am flattered that you think my work could help others to improve - thank you for saying so.

Although it took two weeks to do, it was a pile of hours crammed into two weeks with two weekends and most evenings, in addition to days. And not just me. A single man operation tends to require longer time frames. It was nice to have the backgrounds being worked on while I animated in tandem. I slotted in finished backgrounds as they became available. If we had someone capable of editing the video and doing the sound work on staff, I would have doled that out too.

Plus, I cut out a lot of what would normally be required work creating dope sheets and such. I wound up editing the whole thing in Adobe Premiere which made it all much easier. I was able to stretch out and condense audio on the fly to help voice sync, music timing, and other issues. I hadn't really used sound directly with AS so I avoided it and just figured out the sound frame timing through Premiere directly and Papagayo. It worked but I had a few problems with the cowboy at the end that were fixed with Premiere.

I got away with that because I did the voices but more so because we kept the dialogue to a minimum. Since I was editing, I just added the SFX on the fly as I needed them.

Awesome work there bud!

Thank you! We are proud of it, and I hope to do more. Likely my own projects for the next few - 3 contracted out in exchange for products I want, then maybe a rock video of my own. Just to keep the skills up.

Very nice work and even nicer that it's paid work. Thanks for sharing the behind-the-scenes story. Much appreciated.

I have learned a lot from others here in this forum over the years. I get in sporadically but I always keep tabs on things. It's a good community here! So I am happy to share my experience with you all, as you have with me through the years. If anyone has any questions, feel free to ask.