The data hamster

[slowtiger]

Painted and animated in TVPaint, assembled in AS. This was a rush job. See http://vimeo.com/71192647 for details and translation.

[neeters_guy]

Very effective and an important message as well. Love that spinning hamster. Thanks for sharing.

[3deeguy]

Did the crowd of animated people @15 secs take a lot of layers? How many layers per person or how many people per layer? I'm wondering how to do a crowd where some of the characters are animated.

[slowtiger]

Interesting that you ask about this.

I started with animating the walk cycle in TVPaint, keeping legs and body separate. Created 4 different bodys, rendered 4 QT clips. Then drew some 5 characters in the same size, appr. 900px tall. These all went into one group layer in AS. I arranged the walking ones by duplicating each, so I had 8 moving characters. Oh, and I changed the playback speed of the clips so they move at different speeds.

From this arrangement I rendered 1 frame and imported into TVP again, into a file which was about 3000 px wide. I drew more characters around the initial crowd, this became 1 PNG which I put into AS and scaled correctly.

Again from this arrangement I rendered 1 frame, back to TVP and repeat. I had 4 different line drawings which got different colours and became 20 different people. In TVP I can stamp these easily.

So the whole crowd consists of 2 PNGs with small people, some 5 separate stills and 4 QT clips. I could now zoom in and out (but not pan) and have characters always be in best quality. I used animated layer order when some moving characters collided with still ones.

Next came some vector layers with circles and lines, separately so I could use different transfer options. Moving circles were individual layers, the lines were on one layer, point animated.

This was pretty much made up as I went. Next time I should plan in advance, to avoid collisions.

[3deeguy]

A few things in your animation got my attention. You did not use AS for your colors. (It would be nice to, at least, create those colors in PhotoShop and import them into AS).
When the vehicles drove into the distance I remembered your tutorial of a couple of years ago. That one I learned. I never understood your 'infinite zoom' technique where you started from a rooftop and ended up looking at someone in a window. Your animated crowd is just as puzzling but I did pick up enough ideas to make a good test. Thanks.

[slowtiger]

If I need to match colours, I just type in the values, RGB or Hex. So far I had no problems between Photoshop, TVPaint and AS, it matched (or the difference was too small to notice). I also can switch between some element as vector, as QT movie (with PNG codec) and as PNG image, and the colours remain the same (as it should be).

[Mikdog]

Nice I liked the colours in his office with all the clutter / no black outlines on some of the background elements. Inspiring.

[slowtiger]

No outlines because sometimes it's faster. In TVPaint: Just drag a colored rectangle or odd shape, set to stencil, and use a broad brush with a slightly lighter or darker colour to create some texture. I also use a lot of textures, but that's something I do in PS because I'm more used to its controls. For the textures I shot about every rusty skip and container around my place.

[slowtiger]

Here's the 2nd data hamster spot. I'm now waiting for them to make up their mind about doing a 3rd.



English translation of text here: http://vimeo.com/71991615

[jahnocli]

You missed a trick with Hams-Pe-ter!

[Maestral]

These are great. Compliments, tiger.
I`ve wondered how does it looks when you combine TVP and AS, but this looks excellent.

[slowtiger]

IMO you never should be able to tell which parts were made in which software. I have a bigger problem with not falling into my "natural" style - people always tell me how easy they spot my drawings.

[Maestral]

Not quite sure if I understood you correctly.
Would the "Season`s greetings" be your "natural" style? And why would you hesitate to "fall into your natural style"? Can`t see anything wrong in being distinctive. Except, if it`s just in this case? ,)

I agree on TVP/AS combo, it should stay invisible for a viewers, but I`ll dare to exclude myself from that group - It`s been a long while since I watched something just as a viewer ,)

[AmigaMan]

I hope you get to do a third one. These are excellent and I love the Hamster character

[kphgraphics]

Well done, animation looks great.