Project 2_Matt Gaines

 

My project will be based around an animated 2D bear in a real life environment. I will be using Toon Boom, Premiere Pro, Audition, Photoshop, Sony Vegas, and Firealpacca. 

The first thing I needed to do was crop the audio. The song I wanted to use is 6 minutes long and I really don't want to animate a 6 minute video, So, I took the audio into Audition and cut it on the beats. I took an Audio design class last year so this wasn't too difficult. It took a while but I used a stabilizer to make the song sound more natural with the cuts. I also lowered the decibels because it was incredibly loud and it kept peaking.

before (notice how far up the audio waves go)

after (notice how you can't see noticeable cuts)

Next, I created a ref sheet for my character. I had drawn this guy once in the past, but only from a 3/4 view. He will be seen from many different angles throughout this project so I had to be sure to create a ref sheet I was proud of and could work from easily

Then, I just start sketching. I decided to create an animatic instead of a storyboard, though I've written a story outline out on paper. An animatic is just a storyboard with audio, so you can deal with timing and how long to keep shots. I also like this method more because I can jump into the actual animating quicker.

some sketches and fun stuff

Now, I haven't completed my animatic as of writing this, but I wanted to go ahead and begin the animating process so its not looming over me down the line. 

2/26 I have finished 5 scenes and its looking good so far. I'm using Toon Boom to animate the character on top of real images and videos I have taken around campus

I blurred the background slightly as to not take away from the subject. Blurs will vary based on composition

Someone please get this man a coffee

Layered characters and real world assets. Assets cut out using Firealpaca, my choice alternative to adobe photoshop or illustrator.

Its cool that I can feel myself getting better at toon boom as I work, as well as premiere pro. Visualizing character placements and angles are a lot easier for me now

Another large thing for this project is my glowing and sketchy effects for my "flying" scenes. During the narrative, the bear imagines that he is flying, so I wanted it to look more "drawn" since he sketches wings earlier on. To do this, I redrew each frame 3 times to do my boiling effect. I had done this before in other projects so I was happy to do it once again. However, to do my glowing effect, I went with a new technique I discovered.

As you can see, the bear is glowing!! On a program such as photoshop or illustrator, I would have used an airbrush. However, Toon boom brushes kind of freak me out a little and I stick with vector lines. To create the effect, I did as follows,

First, I made a new drawing layer, titled "glow." I traced over my 3 original drawings 3 different times (to coexist more easily with the boil effect.) Then I added a transparency effect (usually set to 60) and a blur effect (which varied based on how close my bear was to the camera at any given time.) It looks good and it doesn't take long at all. 

So fun fact, this has been the "method to the madness" incase you are curious.

This is my "map" of all the scenes I had to do for this project. There ended up being more than the ones listed, as well as some changes to the story. Hopefully no one minds that I changed up bear lore

In total, I believe that there are 46 different scenes. All scenes average around 200 frames exported, so thats >9200 images exported from toon boom. probably more around 10,000 since I exported multiple segments for some parts.

I'm from Athens and we have a community zoo, and there's a bear there that has a birthday every year on the 19th. I thought it would only be appropriate to visit a REAL bear since I've been drawing this bear every day for the past month and a half. Funny enough, it actually helped a lot to see the bear walk around, sleep, stand up and everything. I'm probably going to go to the zoo again soon to study how different animals move. I actually did this for another project where I had to draw a duck. I went and watched a duck on campus and it helped me with the walk cycle. I HIGHLY recommend going out and watching whatever it is you are trying to animate or even draw 

Note: this bear isn't real

Complete side note, did you know that they sell Chuck E Cheese pizza as frozen "do-it-yourself" pizza? I was so excited, I drew my interpretation of the rat himself while I ate it