Old School Pencil + New School Tools

I've been working on simple action cycles that are entertaining to watch and play with...as in a mobile video game. I created this clip of simulated game play, using a combination of old school and digital methods...animating with pencil on paper, then scanning the drawings into ToonBoom Studio for color and assembly.

Click on the video below to watch it. 

A Future For Traditional Hand Drawn 2D Animation?

I've started developing a 2D video game to be played on mobile phones. It's a basic gather and chase game using one of my studio's animated characters as the hero.

As I develop the game, I'm concentrating on short animation cycles that convey my hero's personality...very much of a throw back to early cartoon pantomime. Makes me think "is this the future for 2D animation?" By the way, I'm drawing pencil on paper and scanning the drawings into Photoshop.

I find myself approaching the project as an early Fleischer cartoon in that I'm not censoring my imagination at this point of development. The characters in my game will perform actions that are eccentric and fanciful, as well as realistic. The overall design of the game will embrace both caricature and cartoony elements. Right now, I'm jotting down all ideas that come to mind. But the most important element is the playability of the game! Without that nobody will buy it!
I'm writing and designing this game as though it were a traditional cartoon short with a sympathetic and relatable character...but with the viewer being able to guide the main character past the villains and obstacles to a successful conclusion. The fun is that it is all action with sound effects and music,etc.

 

1st Pass Roughs, Semi-Roughs, & Clean-ups: Hank the Spider Monkey & Batman

Every animator has his/her own way of creating their animation poses.

I normally make three passes at my animation drawings: Rough 1st pass (focusing on the essence of the pose), followed by a semi-clean up on a second sheet (tying down all the elements of the design). Finally, I clean that pose up on a third sheet, making a careful drawing. I cleanup my own drawings as I haven't had a clean-up assistant in the past ten years.

1st Rough Pass

Semi-Clean-up

Final Clean-up, Scanned with Blue Line Dropped Out

For fast actions, I rework the rough 1st pass drawing on a second sheet with blue pencil, making adjustments to the tilt of the head, thrust of shoulders, etc. Then, I buff down that semi-clean up and apply my final black line on that drawing.

The following are examples of how much I will adjust the thrust of the different parts of my character's body from 1st pass to that final phase on the second sheet. Note, I'm showing the final version of each pose as scanned in color for this posting. Normally, I would scan the final drawing to Photoshop in grey scale, setting my scanner to drop out the blue lines and just scan the black line. Then, I would adjust the Contrast and Brightness settings of the Photoshop file.

I made adjustments to the head tilt, hat drag, the hands, shoulders, mid-section. In this pose, the head is cocking back as a quick antic into the next pose, which is leading into the lift-off.

Major adjustment was twisting the upper torso, leading into the lift-off.

Twisting the upper torso (shoulders, etc.) to corkscrew up off the ground.

Hank's head and left shoulder are now leading the corkscrew motion up off the ground.

Now for those who prefer a more "realistic" style of character, the following are some of my semi-roughs I did for the series of Batman & Robin commercials about which I've previously posted. I'm planning on posting all the semi-rough drawings I did for this particular scene to give all those interested a chance to practice cleaning up an animator's drawings and finishing all the inbetweens. It is more difficult than it appears, as an assistant needs to be able to think like an animator and not lose the vitality of the drawings. This was the old school path to becoming an animator. Post a comment if this interests you.

This pose is an antic into the following pose #37

Animation Drawings: Seen and Felt

Some drawings are meant to be seen (such as attitude poses), while other drawings are meant to be felt. These are drawings that convey movement that are accents and action.

When figuring out how to draw an accent or action, I start by imagining the emotion I want to convey, then analyze what tempo conveys that emotion. Let's take the emotion of enthusiasm. That would be a bouncy tempo...maybe a 4 to 6 frame beat.

Then I imagine what type of action my character will perform to convey his enthusiasm. In this case, he's going to spin in the air, making a complete rotation in 4 frames...and so on and so forth.

The above is all timed out on my exposure sheet before I make any drawing. (Note: I use the old school reference of 24 frames per second.) The reason I time everything out first, is that my analysis of the character's timing will dictate how the forces moving that character affect the body in motion. Thus, I draw the body squashing and stretching based on that analysis.

I offer as an example, drawings from the Hank the Spider Monkey test I posted previously. In creating these drawings, I started each drawing from the area of the body that was instigating that particular phase of the movement: head, shoulder, leg, etc.

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And below is the finished animation in color.

Practice, Practice, Practice

To keep my fingers limber, every now and then I animate a short pencil test scene of action. For me, it's like a pianist doing finger exercises. Here's one of our studio's characters Hank the Spider Monkey sliding into the scene, spinning around into a "magic fingers" pose. I liked it enough to take it color.

I enjoy the more cartoony style of animation.

                                                              copyright Grace Animation Studios, LLC