Inspiration: Random Little YouTube Animation

This video is gorgeous, and the painting looks liek it could have been done by hand in photoshop or something! I love this aesthetic, it looks delicate which contrasts beautifully with the intense action.

The Making of Beauty and the Beast

Unlike the 'Making of Sleeping Beauty' video, this one delves deeper into the issues concerting the adaptation of a fairy tale to become an animated feature film. It compares the original folk story and the adapted version. The story team working on the film changed the character of Belle by fleshing her out; making her more humble and quirky. They created new characters to expand the story further from the original. Comedy is added to a gloomy story, as well as commentary, in the form of the Beast's servants. the villain, Gaston was added to thicken the plot. He acts as a foil for Beast.
This video focuses a lot more on the character design and development rather than the concept art and background design.

The Making of Sleeping Beauty

This video that I found on YouTube is amazing. The things I found most interesting to learn of were the medieval tapestries and Persian arts used as reference for the art style; and the amount of live action recording used as source material for the animation. each background took up to 10 days to paint by hand! I can't even imagine trying to do something of that depth for my own animation!
Walt Disney mentions being inspired by the classical music piece 'Sleeping Beauty', but doesn't actually talk in depth about the route of the folktale on which the story is based, and about his decision to adapt it in a certain way.

University Work: Lip Syncing

One of the artists who I follow on Twitter and Tumbr is an animation student at Teeside university. She posted this online, as one of the videos she had to produce for her course. In it, she practices lip syncing of characters using 2D traditional animation. Apparently it took about ~5 days.

Styles of Background Animation at Disney

After Effects Electrical Text Reveal

I followed another YouTube tutorial by VinhSon Nguyen yesterday; this time how to create an electrical pulse effect to reveal text on the screen. It doesn't have any of the sort of effects or aesthetics which I would like to use in my animation, but it helps me to practice using After Effects and to get more familiar with the controls and interface.

After Effects Ink Reveal Tutorial

I followed a watercolour reveal tutorial for After Effects on YouTube by the vlogger VinhSon Nguyen, which shows you how to use an ink splat effect (downloaded from http://creativedojo.net/store) to create an opening transition/reveal of an image or video. I practiced just with an image this time, but it has given me an interesting visual option to use for the opening of my animation possibly. The picture I used was one of a lion which I painted nearly a year ago on Photoshop, while following an Aaron Blaise YouTube tutorial.

Link to original tutorial video here

YouTube Tutorial: Toon Boom Interface

Within the next week, I have decided, I want to watch as many Toon Boom tutorials and tips as possible, so that I can competently use it in our week 5 tutorial class of Animation #2, when we will be practicing character rigging and stuff. My knowledge of Toon Boom is hopelessly inadequate for the task I want to undertake at the moment, so the best thing to do it practice, practice and practice. I'll watch all of the YouTube videos I have time for then do simple exercises with the software.

This morning, I'm watching one of the first videos on the Toon Boom Tips page, which teaches viewers about the interface of Animate Pro and Storyboard in three 10-minute long videos. I wanted to pick up some small tricks to speed up my workflow. 

It reminds me of the Adobe creative suite interface, how you can dock and drag and drop windows to customise the interface to your choosing. The storyboard layout and tools remind me a lot of Adobe Illustrator. 

Tip: While using Brush tool, hold down 'O' and click and drag the cursor to set the maximum size of the brush stroke (when pressing hard with the stylus) manually. To set the minimum size (when pressing lightly with the stylus) press 'Shift' and 'O'

Tip: when using the Line Tool, hold down 'Shift' to move the line around in straight increments. If using the Brush, hold down 'Shift' to draw a straight line.

Tip: In Storyboard Pro, go to Preferences > Global UI > Flat Tool Toolbar = enables customisation of the toolbar on the left hand side.

ETA: Since the videos must have been made a couple of years ago, a lot of the information they base themselves on is not relevant to the current version of Storyboard Pro, so I have used strikethrough on the above points which are no longer of use.

The Decemberists 'The Crane Wife'

[1]

It was a cold night
And the snow lay low
I pulled my coat tight
Against the falling down
And the sun was all
And the sun was all down
And the sun was all
And the sun was all down

I am a poor man
I haven't wealth nor fame
I have my two hands
And a house to my name
And the winter's so
And the winter's so long
And the winter's so
And the winter's so long

And all the stars were crashing 'round
As I laid eyes on what I'd found

It was a white crane
It was a helpless thing
Upon a red stain
With an arrow its wing
And it called and cried
And it called and cried so
And it called and cried
And it called and cried so

And all the stars were crashing 'round
As I laid eyes on what I'd found
My crane wife, my crane wife
My crane wife, my crane wife

Now I helped her
And I dressed her wounds
And how I held her
Beneath the rising moon
And she stood to fly
And she stood to fly away
And she stood to fly
She stood to fly away

And all the stars were crashing 'round
As I laid eyes on what I'd found
My crane wife, my crane wife
My crane wife, my crane wife

[2]

My crane wife arrived at my door in the moonlight
All star bright and tongue-tied I took her in
We were married and bells rang sweet for our wedding
And our bedding was ready when we fell in

The sound of the keening bell
To see its pain erect
Soft as fontenelle
The feathers and the thread
And all I ever meant to do was to keep you
My crane wife
My crane wife
My crane wife

We were poorly, our fortunes fading hourly
And how she vowed me, she could bring it back
But I was greedy, I was vain and I forced her to weaving
On cold loom, in a closed room, with down wove

The sound of the keening bell
And to see its pain erect
Soft as fontenelle
The feathers and the thread
And all I ever meant to do was to keep you
My crane wife
My crane wife

There's a bend in the wind and it rakes at my heart
There is blood in the thread and it rakes at my heart
It rakes at my heart

My crane wife

[3]

And under the boughs unbowed

All clothed in a snowy shroud

She had no heart so hardened

All under the boughs unbowed

Each feather it fell from skin

Till threadbare while she grew thin

How were my eyes so blinded?

Each feather it fell from skin

And I will hang my head, hang my head low

And I will hang my head, hang my head low

A gray sky, a bitter sting

A rain cloud, a crane on wing

All out beyond horizon

A grey sky, a bitter sting

And I will hang my head, hang my head low

And I will hang my head, hang my head low

YouTube Tutorial: Rough Frame-By-Frame Animation in Toon Boom

Toon Boom Tips #44 Frame-By-Frame Rough Animation

This tutorial is an introduction to frame-by-frame animation in Toon Boom, utilizing the Xsheet. It's a really great simple intro to the techniques used in frame-by-frame, illustrating how to animate a basic head turn by creating two keyframe poses, breakdowns and in-betweens.

SHORTCUTS: F and G keys to switch forward and back between frames

The Fall of the House of Usher (1928)

Constance had to watch two adaptations of Edgar Allen Poe's 'The Fall of the House of Usher' for her filming fictions module, so I offered to watch them with her. The first is a silent short from 1928, which I found on YouTube. It is, of course, black and white, and very experimental and avant-garde. I did not like the aesthetics of it, and the camera moved disorientatingly to come across as 'arty,' the transitions between shots were odd, and the low-key lighting made it hard to make out the images with the poor quality recording equipment, It's quite hard to follow the story as well as the narrative isn't focused on as much as the visuals.

What is this?

YouTube Tutorial: Eyeball Rigging in Toon Boom

Full tutorial video can be found here

• In Drawing Mode, select a box around the whole of an object. It will show the central point in the middle, allowing you to place the pivot point in the direct centre. In the case of the pupil etc, when you want to enlarge the entire object; in Camera View you can shift-drag the object at one of the corners to expand it equally in all directions 
• Usually no need to separate iris, pupil and highlight unless going into great detail.
• To peg together pupil, iris and highlight: add a blank peg layer onto the pupil layer. Open Network View. Connect the 'pupil peg' module to the pupil, iris and highlight. Now can animate all together with peg selected (shown in green below)

• To cut the iris off at the edge of the eyeball: Select the eyeball layer. Go into Drawing View. In the 'module library' > 'effects.' Hold down Alt and drag the 'colour override' module onto the network view, and place it on the line connecting to the 'eyeball/eyelid' (shown on right below)

• Click on the little white box in the left corner of the Colour Override module. The Layer Properties dialogue box/window will come up. Select the colour of the eyeball from your palette, and drag and drop into the 'Render Selected Colours' panel at the bottom. Make sure the check-box is CHECKED.Click 'Close.' In Action View now you will only see the white of the ball, not the line around it.

 

• Open up the 'effects' panel again. Select the 'cutter' tool, and drag it into the Network View box. Alt-click and drag it so that it connects to the Iris module from the RIGHT input, then take the Colour-Override module and connect it to the LEFT input. It should look like below.

• Click on the little white box in the left hand side of the Cutter module. Click on inverted. In the Action View, you should see the Iris visible within the confines of the eyeball.
• To make the same happen to the Pupil and Highlight as well as the Iris, select the 'composite' tool from the effects panel, and drag it into the Network View box. Connect the Iris, Pupil and Highlight all into the Composite module at once. Click on the little white box on the left side of the Composite module, and select the 'Pass Through' option. Close the dialogue box. Plug the Composite module into the right hand input of the Cutter module.

• Remove the plug from the Colour Override module to the Composite module. In its place, plug the Eyeball module into the Composite module. It should now be complete.

NOTES: watch the last 5 mins of eyeball rig video part 2 for swiveling the iris and for making the eye blink.

TIPS: Never make any whites pure white or blacks pure black in an animation - like impressionist paintings, it looks better if it's ever so slightly off-colour.