More WIP on my cartoon
Added 2024-08-07 15:05:17 +0000 UTCSeeings as some of you are interested in the process, I thought why not show you what I got up to today.
Now, I should say that my process is not static, this is how I did it today. It's not how I did any of the pervious clips nor is it how I expect I will future ones either because I constantly make little changes to how I work to try and save time, completely failing at that because of all the extra time I spend working out a new process for every clip. I'm such a smart person.
So, First I thought what I wanted her to do; peek the door, run in and fall over. EASY
Then I did some rough frames quickly to get the motion and the timing right. As this is kinda just set up and not especially sexy, I'm aiming to get away with as little animation as possible so I can focus on the sexy bits more, this means a lower frames per second. Animation is typically done at 24 frames per second but mostly animated "on two's" which means you need 12 pictures per second of animation. For the bits I care about I do that, if it's gotta be really smooth I do the full 24 frames per second, here I am aiming to animate "on fours" meaning only 6 drawings per second. HALF THE WORK!.
This step is probably the most important for getting a nice result without having to go back and change everything painfully. I try and think about if there are any frames I can reuse as well while I'm doing this and actively work to make them reusable wherever possible, which brings us to the next step...
Then I pad it out by duplicating frames which I can re-use! I like this because drawing is hard work and time consuming so squeezing as much use out of every frame save a lot of work. I bet a lot of you wouldn't have even noticed I'd done that in the finished cartoon but now you will because I have confessed to it here. So now she does a little peek, then a big peek, then she abruptly runs in and falls over in a hilarious slapstick manner. Horray.
Then the slog, redrawing the frames neatly with colour and then colouring them. This takes AGES and quickly becomes very tedious but it's worth it in the end when you have the nice thing. I haven't finished this part for today's clip but the day is getting on and I want to disassociate so I'll just show you what I've managed so far.
ANY WAY BYEEE
Comments
If you spent time on the sound design, I’m sure you’d be great at it. But it adds soo much work. Maybe you could outsource it? There probably are some musicians or sound guys among your followers 😊
Sebastian K
2024-08-08 12:34:46 +0000 UTCI think in the way you’re working, you don’t need to focus on sound a lot (or at all), in social media sound is often turned off by default or if something is on autoplay and has a lot of distracting noises, people will often mute it anyway. You’re doing all the storytelling visually, anyway, and I like seeing everything progressing in only a matter of days.
Sebastian K
2024-08-08 12:31:06 +0000 UTCyes kind of, but if you animate by hand, you can do all kinds of weird things. I’ve always enjoyed experimental animation like this: Pout Melody (Lilli Carré) https://vimeo.com/49112328 or this: Black Swan (Guy Harlap) https://vimeo.com/13137686
Sebastian K
2024-08-08 12:18:52 +0000 UTCYeah, it's crazy! This is why I'm finding out it's so important to figure out tricks to save drawing as many frames as possible. You can spot a lot of these tricks in real cartoons if you keep an eye out, a classic one would be during speech, you can just draw a character stood in a pose and just animate the mouth, then you put a moving mouth over a still image of the character and you saved yourself an absolute ton of drawing. I'm hoping to finish most of the into scene today if I can and I will explain all the tricks I used when I share it Unfortunately striking a balance is tricky; too much stuff happening means a lot of work and time spent animating, cutting back on too many frames makes it look juddering and cheap.
Alice
2024-08-08 07:22:51 +0000 UTCBtw, have you noticed that pretty much the biggest part of "Consensual" is the word "Sensual"? Appropriately in this case.
Kenny
2024-08-08 04:27:45 +0000 UTCMeanwhile, more WIP, please. And THANK YOU, for all your work for us.
Kenny
2024-08-08 04:24:41 +0000 UTCOmg, that is so crazy. Do you think you are averaging about 10 frames per second? Or like 300 drawings for 30 sec of video? At an hour per drawing?! Maybe I have that wrong - it seems too much. By this time you must have it pretty much planned out and have some idea of the finished length of the video. -- I don't know how long I can wait!
Kenny
2024-08-08 04:23:50 +0000 UTCI'm suddenly painfully aware that I want this toon to have sounds and music and no nothing about how to do any of that 😭 Do you mean something like the music visualisers that used to be everywhere?
Alice
2024-08-07 21:44:03 +0000 UTCI tried to keep this animation as simple as possible style wise so it's really fast to draw. The thing is that it's not just drawing the frame. It has to flow nicely out of the last one and into the next one, it's got to be a part of a string of images that make sense together and convey the movement that it's supposed to. I can draw a picture of this character in 5 minutes but factoring in all the planning and consistency and fiddling about, not to mention backgrounds and props like the door in this one, I wouldn't be surprised if I'm averaging over an hour per frame even with this simple style
Alice
2024-08-07 21:40:04 +0000 UTCI guess that means, what you draw is what we get. And for each 4/24ths of a second of you, we get to see in various positions of consensual distress, you work how long on each drawing? What a labor of lust! And love, really!
Kenny
2024-08-07 21:25:46 +0000 UTCOne skill I most definitely do not have is spelling, but even spellchecker cannot save me from my dislexia. I am a huge pervert though, as you will come to see
Alice
2024-08-07 20:24:32 +0000 UTC"On fours" means each frame of animation is shown for 4/24ths of a second, "on twos" means each is shown for 2/24th of a second. There's no infilling of frames or magic "make animation" button sadly, it's just that the animation looks more choppy the less inbetween frames you hand draw, think stuttering lag in a video game. I don't know if I'm explaining this well at all
Alice
2024-08-07 20:22:16 +0000 UTCI'm not an animator, but a fellow artist and very intrigued. So you say that working "on fours" gets a rougher result, is that because the app has to work harder to "infill" the frames and has to make up more of the image on its own, so to speak?
Kenny
2024-08-07 19:41:33 +0000 UTCI see you have decided to include "pervious clips" as well as previous clips, although I'm not seeing anything all that "pervy".
Kenny
2024-08-07 19:34:20 +0000 UTCHaha, yes not finishing something is very ok, too, you’re right :) I guess what I’m most fascinated about at moment is how animation and sounds can interact in a meaningful or interesting way, something I haven’t really done a lot before. That walk cycle really feels just like an exercise. I remember finishing a walk cycle can feel quite rewarding if you put in the time, but maybe I’ll put it aside and finish it later. Anyway I’m happy I downloaded Toonsquid, it’s quite versatile and useful to have. There are some interesting pixel-brushes, maybe I’ll give those a try soon. Cheers :)
Sebastian K
2024-08-07 17:53:47 +0000 UTCThat's a great start! Animating is tedious, but it's worth it if you're excited about what you're making. I feel no shame in abandoning a project if I'm not interested in it, it's supposed to be fun! What is it that made you want to learn? Do you have a fantastical image in your head you need to make into a reality? Also, you could, instead of moving the camera to follow a moving elephant over a stationary background, you could have a stationary elephant and camera and a scrolling background?
Alice
2024-08-07 17:33:02 +0000 UTCThe glow in the dark version: https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/wkj31jmptrt7p1v8yivgf/IMG_2043.heic?rlkey=bjytfnnhx1ryiezb8824rtht0&dl=0
Sebastian K
2024-08-07 16:40:48 +0000 UTCThe walk cycle WIP: https://media2.giphy.com/media/2I1B2JtjmGfVPEjhPb/giphy.gif?cid=9b38fe91boa4puj3tcz8vqjyu82mkl8byu0hg39iizzfda5m&ep=v1_gifs_username&rid=giphy.gif&ct=g
Sebastian K
2024-08-07 16:38:54 +0000 UTCEverything looks great! It’s nice seeing your process. I hope you’ll get to finish this sequence! But taking brakes is just as important, of course. I thought i’d make a little walk cycle that I could move in front of a background so I could crop in with the camera and animate it, but it’s all becoming quite tedious. I only have one or two hours of free time every day which is alright, but I was unsure if I really wanted to finish that walking elephant so I tried to make him look cooler by adding glow in the dark paint. I don’t know whether I like that, but I guess I’ll finish that walk cycle and decide later what to do with it. The learning curve in Toonsquid hasn’t been very steep so far, I really like it!
Sebastian K
2024-08-07 16:37:09 +0000 UTCI believe in you
RedlOmega
2024-08-07 15:20:01 +0000 UTCI work overly fast and overly long hours until I burn out and then abandon the project usually 😎 this is me trying hard to pace myself
Alice
2024-08-07 15:15:16 +0000 UTCWow you've done quite a bit in just a few days
RedlOmega
2024-08-07 15:07:38 +0000 UTC
