Topic: Using backup... Pencil%Paper.sys

Ok, well... I got an interest in Anthropomorphics so I said to myself, "lets go make an animation of an anthro swingin around a sword. So I make a movie of myself, sketch it into pages, and compile it into a huge file... Then fix it up, add color possibly and convert it into a GIF file. Now this thing would be... HUGE! But hey, I'm probably only going to be showing this to a select few people... Maybe I'll get a GIF>AVI tool?

Any suggestions for sketching/animating/scanning/composing/coloring?

---
"The Mystery of Life"
Vol. 841, Ch. 26
"All life begins with Nu and ends with Nu. This is the truth! This is my beleif! ...at least for now." - Chrono Trigger
><>

I'm having problems trying to understand your process here.

You said, make a movie of yourself then sktech it into pages, what exactly do you mean by that?

Movie as in a DV movie?... Sketch into pages as in paper pages?

Where's the GIF file format come into all of this?

Sorry, I think you just lost me completly. Is this going to be a hand drawn animation? A video composit of some sort? You using 3D software? What 2D Video/Raster software?

Remember, this forum caters to a rather massive range of different things. Try and be as specific as possible when you post questions in here including what software you'll be working with, intented forms of delivery and if possible tell us your skill level and experience in the applications you'll be working with.

Ah ok, sorry. Lemme try this again.

I intend to make a movie of myself with a cheapie digital camera (AVI Format). Then take a frame by frame and make a sketch for each frame by making a simple wire frame on paper. Sketch the character and then scan all the sketches in and put them into Photoshop. (Nope, I don't have any fancy video editing software.) Then I color it (maybe...) and animate it with a GIF file. Finally, use a GIF>AVI Conversion tool.

I am fairly skilled in Photoshop, but not as good as some people here like Mahjqa, DL-44... Most Moderators and some other members...

As for sketching, I have little talent but I know I can pull it off some how.

Any suggestions/ideas/tips/tricks etc? Or am I in the wrong forum for this?

[Edit: Excuse my unclearness. Summat I'm workin on.]

---
"The Mystery of Life"
Vol. 841, Ch. 26
"All life begins with Nu and ends with Nu. This is the truth! This is my beleif! ...at least for now." - Chrono Trigger
><>



[This message has been edited by Ruku (edited 09-28-2003).]

Ok, that sounds like a HUGE ammount of work. But I'm still a little confused about some things...

You said pencil on paper sketching after mentioning digital video... what's the video for? I'm assuming you'll be using the video as a reference for the movement. If you'll be using the video and actually compositing the animation over the top then photoshop really isn't what you'll want to use. Photohsop is great for 2D or even 3D stills, but for character animated compositing you'll want a 3D animation package like Cinema 4D, Max, Lightwave or Maya.

Anyways, I'm going to assume that this will be an entirely hand drawn cartoon like animation... if so, then I'd suggest maybe you look into toon boom studio ( www.toonboomstudio.com ). It's a cartoon animation program and might be really helpfull if you'll be wanting to do a lot of this kind of work.

If that's out of your budget or this is simply a one off thing, get a drawing tablet (you can pick these up for under $100 on ebay), in fact, you should get one of these regardless, epically if you like photoshop and you have some drawing skills. This will cut out the whole pencil sketching and scanning process as it's likely to take you weeks to scan and digitally ink your drawings as it is (depending on how big this animation is of course).

If you have a drawing tablet you can bring in stills from the video, story board key frames of your animation on screens from the avi file then sketch over the top of them right in photoshop. If you'll be animating this like a cartoon, you'll be better off using toon boom studio or your could even use flash (and freehand as it has more robust drawing tools than flash), as you can set up onion skinning and tweening in flash which can take you days of drawing time for certain kinds of animation. Then you can export from toon boom studio to a number of different video formats.

But again, I might be over guessing how big this project is likely to be. And I'm possibly not the best person to ask about animation.

Well yeah, you pretty much hit the nail on the head. Tablet's out of the budget, and so's Toon Boom and Flash. (I'm fifteen ) I'm just basically going to be using my movements as a reference for the sketches. Huge amount of time? Yes. But thats summat I have. I'm probably going to print a couple sheets of paper with a small square in the middle and a number so I don't forget what frame it is and just put the paper over the monitor, sketch the ref points, repeat. Then add detail and scan. This probably isn't big enough to do a flash anim with, but its boarderlining it... I think. I still haven't made the movie yet... I'm just thinking.

PS: Eight megs on a 60 buck digital camera doesn't do too much justice for a five minute movie... More like two and a half max. And I don't even intend to make it that long, maybe just twenty seconds... at max.

---
"The Mystery of Life"
Vol. 841, Ch. 26
"All life begins with Nu and ends with Nu. This is the truth! This is my beleif! ...at least for now." - Chrono Trigger
><>

hmm.... TV is just about 30 frames per second. For web stuff, 15 frames a sec does not look *that* bad.

But still, that is a lot of sketches. Even if you did 10 frames a second, thats 200 sketches right there. You could probably get away with less but it will start looking like one of those books that you flip through to see the animation. Sounds like a fun, if tedious, project.

My advice would be to keep the sketches simple as can be, for your own sane sake.

I'm a Bill Plimpton fan. He uses 4 frames/sec.

Slime used a free prog to compile individual files into a movie. I remember him talking about it when he did his Slimie lightsabre battle. This is a good route to take. Might be a little more tedious, but results are generally less lossy.

Slime! What program was that?!
Might have to fire an e-mail his way.

WOAH NOW! Major interested! Who do I contact?

[Edit: I'm stupid...]

---
"The Mystery of Life"
Vol. 841, Ch. 26
"All life begins with Nu and ends with Nu. This is the truth! This is my beleif! ...at least for now." - Chrono Trigger
><>



[This message has been edited by Ruku (edited 09-30-2003).]

Mostly I just muck around with video for fun, and still using my old Pinnicle DC10+, but have been looking to get a different card or new DV video camera. Love Vegas it's realy cool and works well, I have had it a while now, still using version 3, as 4 had nothing I needed, thou the color correction would be nice. But it does a nice job of compositing. I may upgrade upgrade once I get the DVD writer. Just picked up DFX+ with my lightwave 8 upgrade and looking forward to playing with some compositing and titling. I would realy like to play with doing some mock movie credits, or trailers. That's what I have always wanted to do for a living.

DdD DeViL

Mostly I just muck around with video for fun, and still using my old Pinnicle DC10+, but have been looking to get a different card or new DV video camera. Love Vegas it's realy cool and works well, I have had it a while now, still using version 3, as 4 had nothing I needed, thou the color correction would be nice. But it does a nice job of compositing. I may upgrade upgrade once I get the DVD writer. Just picked up DFX+ with my lightwave 8 upgrade and looking forward to playing with some compositing and titling. I would realy like to play with doing some mock movie credits, or trailers. That's what I have always wanted to do for a living.



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