Onion Skin in Harmony 17

The latest Harmony 17 has improved their Onion Skin feature with added controls. Click on the Pages below to enlarge them.

Michael Dudok De Wit

This was one of Michael Dudok De Wit's first animated films from 1994 called "The Monk and the Fish". Here is the entire film with a short documentary where the filmmaker explains his process.

Later in 2000, Father and Daughter won an Academy Award, the BAFTA award, the Grand Prix at Annecy, the Grand Prix at Animafest Zabreb and many other festival awards that year. 

De Wit continued making short films and made dozens of animated commercials like these...

In 2016, "The Red Turtle was his first animated feature and was nominated for an Academy Award. Below is a very good review of the Red Turtle won't any spoilers.

And here's a very interesting interview with the director of all three films.

If the real Michael Dudok de Wit would like to contact me for an interview, please email me at heyjimr@gmail.com.

Did you like this post? Where you educated by the animated process show above? Follow this blog and let us know you like it or leave a comment below.

 

Happy Holidays!

What happens when the bad guys mess with Santa?

 
Happy Holidays! 

Share this link with your friends and family!
https://youtu.be/n8-U_LNmeVY

Making an animated Holiday card

My final animation class has ended allowing some free time to animate a Watchcat Holiday episode to send off to friends and family as an animated Holiday card to end 2016 in a fun way. I installed a 21 day trail version of ToonBoom Harmony 14 with a goal of documenting this production and show more about the animation process using Harmony.

To begin with, I made this animatic with final voices and sound effects as a QuickTime file  imported as a movie into Harmony . The bottom layer holds the animatic which I will use to keep my scenes in sync. The layer above holds a white background until I create a final one. The layer above the BG is where I will create my rough poses.

wc03_rough_sc01 from WatchCat Films on Vimeo.

There is only about 6 scenes in this project and I've designed it so that after one shot, the camera will pull away from one setup to reveal something that is happening in the foreground or in the background. You can see the animatic in previous a post entitled "Making Christmas".


By setting up different layers; the animatic, white background card and a rough animation, this will keep everything organized and easier to animated. The rough animation is also made up of several other layers and since we are zooming away from Santa and the Robber,
those drawings are both attached to Pegs.

Harmony allows you to create different layers by clicking on the +  button near the timeline and by holding it down, you will see other layers to choose from. Peg (ctrl + P) allows you to attach a layer and then move the peg, everything on the layer moves with the peg. In this case, Santa and the Robber move away from us on the Z axis. 

By clicking on the peg twice, Harmony opens a control panel showing the Key frames on a graph line. You need to determine which frame you want to set a Key on by clicking on +KF button. The -KP will remove a Key on the timeline. You can add ease ins and outs to each XYZ avis with the Velocity editor which is shown in the video below.
  
Watch this short video to see how it all works and where everything is located.

Tutorial Harmony 12_01 from WatchCat Films on Vimeo.

Each scene is a separate Harmony file that you will export a separate video file. Each file is then imported into an editing software program like Premiere or Final Cut Pro.

Next Posting: Animating Holiday Scenes

CTN animation expo 2016

Its so true, Disney is currently turning all their animated features into live actions ones. Here is a new one coming out this Summer.

But this post is about this year's CTN animation expo which you should attend once in your lifetime...

When I first heard that the exhibit floor would be housed in a tent in the parking lot, I was worried. They have a tent last year which housed a second part of the exhibit floor, since the main exhibitor floor has housed inside. The tent became very hot inside due to the warm weather and extra people. A lot of exhibitors were sweating and some even had small fans going to fight the heat. 

I am happy to report that this year's CTN's exhibitor floor fit nicely into a huge air conditioned tent in the parking lot. They even included the parking lot trees into the interior design as well.

Most of the weekend was dry, however there was rain on Sunday, the last day which caused leak and minor damage. I'm sure next year they will make sure they are prepare every other weather condition. All in all, it was very enjoyable inside.

The main area which use to hold the exhibit area, now held all the lectures or panels.  Not sure how many people attended, Saturday was the biggest  day and the big tent held everyone quite comfortably. 

There were places to sit and talk, surrounded by several lighted trees and even a roller skating creative spirit who dibbled sparkly dust on top of the heads of unsuspecting attendees, like me.

If you attend, you will always run into creative people who's artwork will inspire you and is for sale. You can talk to them because this is a place to meet new people, so don't be shy. You will run into people you have worked with or for and even meet new friends as well. A lot of animation studios were there to review portfolios and meet new talented artists. 

Disney was giving away movie posters of "Moana" and I was luckily enough get one of the last. A young lady approached me asking where she could get a poster, but unfortunately they were all gone.  I discovered she was from Denmark and was here to was visiting CTN for the first time and wanted get into animation.

And so, I had to give her my Disney poster and a postcard of our Watchcat Episode 2 to take back to her country. The rest of the day, I met lots of artist and attendees by giving them a postcard about our project telling them where to watch it online. Self Promotion is welcomed.

Meeting some of my previous students again and they still like me!






Meet friends again, like the one and only, Lenord Robinson

And not to mention (but I did it anyway), a chance to stand between the Twin towers of Animation, Tom and Tony Bancroft.

Or reconnecting with our good friend, James Lopez, who is wrapping up his long awaited project, Hullabaloo.

Even meet new people like, Max Narciso. He had a dark and mysteriously looking booth full of his unique characters made from burlap and other fibers. Very organic and whimsical looking creatures.

http://maxnarcisoart.blogspot.com/

We are finally getting a great response from viewers of our Youtube channel, Watchcat Films Episode 2 moved up to 130 views to 225. After CTNX, our video views increased to 342 and are continuing to grow hire. We also began with 27 subscribers and now are up to 69! And each day, the numbers are growing.

During last week of all this excitement, we came with a solution of producing shorter videos in order to complete them in a few weeks as oppose to a few years. 

We want to thank you again for supporting Watchcat and letting us know you are out there and like what you see. Help us share our Watchcat Film youtube channel and subscribe to it if you haven't done so already.

Have a Happy Thanksgiving!
From: Greg, Jim and Watchcat!

WatchCat Episode 2 Premieres

What does an animation teacher do for fun? He spends two years (on and off) making a short film as part of a web series.

Its November and over two years ago, we posted our first Watchcat episode and added our Watchcat Films channel on Youtube. 

That same year, we attended the CTN Expo in Burbank in our Watchcat T-shirts and handed out Watchcat post cards to people including...

 John Musker, one of the directors of the latest Disney film, "Mohana"

After CTNX, we were inspired to finish what we had started and even made this Christmas video card promoting the next WatchCat Episode.

 

Time flies, we have tried to find an audience by posting this weekly blog to show our production process. We also attempted a few Live "Blogcasts", which might not have turned out as well as we had hoped, but we learned alot. Its hard to make an animated film with limited free time and resources, but I learned a lot from this project and how I can improve on the next.

We tried to educated you in the animation process and keep you entertained every Watchcat Wednesday along the way.

We appreciate all the comments we have received and are amazed that our blog has reached the following countries all over the world. Besides the United States at 6639, we had all time viewers of our cat cartoon reach the following viewing numbers!

Russia	604
France	363
Germany	269
United Kingdom	104
India	67
China	61
Canada	47
Ukraine	46
Israel	39

And so, check out the Watchcat Files next Watchcat Wednesday, Nov 16th 2016 to see Watchcat Episode 2. If you are going to the Burbank CTN Expo this weekend, looking us walking around in our Watchcat T-shirt. Say hello and get a free Watchcat postcard!

For Laney

Growing up I don't think I have ever purchased a greeting card, but instead always made cards or flipbooks for friends and family. Being an Animator and a parent, I recently returned to this practice for my daughter's High School graduation by making this very short video.
Enjoy....

 

Your Questions to Andreas Deja

As work continues on our second episode of Watchcat, I wanted to let you know about another animated film in production called "Mushka". This film is being created by Disney veteran animator, Andreas Deja who has animated King Triton from the Little Mermaid, Jafar from Aladdin, Scar from the Lion King, Gaston from Beauty and the Beast and Mama Odie from the Princess and the Frog, just to name a few.

I am in the process of setting up an interview with Mr. Deja and invite you to send any questions you would like me to ask him. So far, I have not received any questions and I know people who are interested in animation and this blog, would love the opportunity to have their questions answered by Mr. Deja. 

The final interview will be posted in a few weeks. Please email Questions for Andreas in subject area and send them to heyjimr@gmail.com or leave your question in the comments section below.

Thanks,
Jim

Mike A. Smith Interview

Animated Archaeologist

Independent Animator, Mike A. Smith lives in the Pacific Northwest where he works as an Archaeologist and makes animated films in his free time...

I was wondering if you could let us know how you first discovered the process of animation?

When I was eight or nine years old, I was in a stop-motion class for kids for a few Saturdays. A friend and I made some monsters out of plasticene and shot outside on 8mm film. We didn't know how to have a real story or fight choreography, so this lumpy hero would just waddle up to the monsters and chop them into bits with a toothpick sword. We borrowed a Super 8 camera and made another of those in my backyard. I kept borrowing and re-borrowing that camera in later years, messing around with some hand-drawn animation, cutouts, and more clay. Those little Super 8 experiments were enough to hook me into the process. Even when it's crude kid stuff, there's a Dr. Frankenstein-like rush when see your own animation first come to life.

Could you provide a brief timeline of your animation career so far.

It takes forever. Each of my student films only took me between two and ten months, which in retrospect seems super fast. "Cooped" took me four and a half years from the first story doodles to a finished film. Part of that was due to the learning curve I went through while making it-- I threw away a lot of early work that didn't cut the mustard, and I even switched from Toon Boom to TVPaint between roughs and cleanup.

I didn't get serious about animation until my late twenties, when I took classes from Rose Bond at the Pacific Northwest College of Art. I turned out four student films and then waded into the freelancing trenches for a couple years, mainly doing small-time commercial stuff. It was fine, but nothing to get too excited about. In 2009, I was pulled back into my old day job as an archaeologist, and eventually I saw that this was a good way to fund my own animation. My paying work didn't exhaust me creatively, so I was happy putting free time into my personal work. My animation career (such as it is) is now that of an indie filmmaker. Portland is a good place for this sort of thing. There's a pretty vibrant animation community here, and I keep involved via the local ASIFA chapter and a monthly work-in-progress meet-up.

Are you using ToonBoom Harmony, TV Paint or some top secret animation software you have created?

TVPaint is my software of choice these days. I'm no good at "tweening" or puppeting or any of the other Flash-type shortcuts, so I basically just use the software as a traditional, frame-by-frame drawing setup. TVPaint is terrific for drawing. "Cooped" also has a couple of After Effects shots, like when the camera trucks back to show the world outside.

How long does it take you to make a film? Are you working on it every day or on weekends?

As an evening-and-weekends filmmaker, my schedule is pretty irregular. I have weeks where I'm able to put in thirty hours, and weeks where I put in zero hours. Having a deadline was a big help in getting "Cooped" finished. I was lucky enough to get a local arts grant, which came with a deadline, so I had to be much more regimented in the last year of production. The last few months got pretty manic.

Can you give a little history about each film?

I'll just run through the shorts you can see online. A couple of my student films aren't online, and probably shouldn't be.

"Hominid" came from an interest in paleoanthropology-- human evolution and our relationship with other primates. I wondered where a hominid ancestor would see himself on the scale between human and animal, where we like to pretend there's this unbridgeable gap. It's drawn in brush and ink, and colored in Photoshop.

Hominid from Mike A. Smith on Vimeo.

"Missionary" is about how colonialism leaves its subject people destablized, at best. I could go on and on about this, but I wanted to see if the basic idea could be carried within a slapstick cartoon. It's all in pencil. The drawings sit in a huge box in the basement.

Missionary from Mike A. Smith on Vimeo.

"Cooped" was inspired by a friend's dog-- a big brown shepherd/lab mix that I used to share a house with. He unknowingly provided all the reference material needed for a sort of Looney Tunes throwback-- what animators used to call a baseboard cartoon, shot mainly from viewpoint of the household pet. It breaks no new ground in terms of story or theme, but it was really fun to draw. "Cooped" was my first personal project drawn on a Cintiq. Everything before had been animated on a makeshift lightbox made from plexiglass, butcher paper, a gooseneck lamp, and a plastic pegbar.

COOPED from Mike A. Smith on Vimeo.

"Flight"-- a segment in an upcoming collaborative short with some other animators-- is based on something Neil deGrasse Tyson wrote about hypothetically falling through the center of the Earth, combined with Roadrunner cartoon physics. The full short, "How I Start to Fly," will be online sometime...? I think it's getting sent out to festivals these days.

A friend's dog, Caillou, who served as the muse for the film, "Cooped".

What advice would you give to 2D animation students about animation? 3D Animation students?

Work rough, and don't be too precious about it. If you like the drawing but it doesn't fit the scene, throw it away. When you've got the movement and timing down, then you can worry about prettying up the individual frames. 

The same premise holds true for 3D animation, I think. For stop-motion animation, I have no idea. Those people are magicians to me.

On a larger note, animation students should know that being in the animation industry and being an animator are two different things. There are a lot of really talented professional animators who spend their energy wrangling clients for non-exciting jobs while their personal projects gather dust. There's nothing wrong with that-- it's how you build a career, I guess-- but it's awfully freeing to keep your income separate from your art. Some of the most imaginative work I've seen has come from students, because they're not stuck in somebody else's financial machine yet. Fund your own animation! Do it on the cheap if you have to. Whatever you do to pay the bills--whether it's animating commercials or serving up lattes-- doesn't change whether you're an animator, if you're making your own work.

(Disclaimer: if you seriously want a professional animation career, you should find a career animator who can give better advice than that.)

Which part of animating do you enjoy the most? Writing the script? Character Designing? Storyboarding? Voice recording? Animating?

Animating, by far. It can put me in a state of flow, where everything feels like it's firing on all cylinders. Story and design and the other steps are much tougher for me. By the time I get a character designed, I'm ankle-deep in bad drawings. With "Cooped" I actually made a couple Sculpey maquettes to help feel out the dimensions of the man and the dog for the animation process.

I'm working on my next film these days, but I'm still bogged down in story limbo. Working out the story is, for me, a long cycle of thinking about it really hard, then not thinking about it at all. You have to fool your own brain into producing story ideas. Going for walks helps.

There are pros and cons to being independent, but I prefer it. Working outside the studio/freelancer system means that I only work on projects that I'm fully invested in, and my animation is my own. 

See more of Mike's work by visiting his website: tenpoundtoons.com

If you learned something new from this posting, let us know by leaving a comment below. Or throw some change in the digital tip jar by clicking on the ads on this blog! Thank You!

Happy Holidays from Animateducated!

Hey Everybody,

Hope you enjoy this blog and I hope to bring you some new things in the new year of 2016! Until then, here's a holiday card I made to promote an animated project I am working on called, "WatchCat". Its a 2D project which is in need of a crew, since its taking me forever to finish it by myself. To learn more, visit: watchcatfiles.blogspot.com

Enjoy your Holiday!

 

The Leaf Test

After animating a bouncing ball animation, the next animation test you should try is known as "The Leaf Test". This is a fun little test where you will learn more about animation timing,
moving holds and ease ins and outs while you are making a leaf fall from a tree. Here's an
example by Tyler Roberts, a student of mine who animated two different leaves falling in different ways.

This test involves several Principles of Animation beginning with "Staging". Begin by creating a layout of your scene which sets a stage that the audience can understand what's going on and have enough room for your leaf to move about. 

Next you need to create a "Path of Motion" that your leaf will follow during its descent to the ground. You also should determine a simple leaf drawings which you want to keep from changing its shape and volume throughout the animation. No need to use squash and stretch in this test, instead you will be using "Ease ins and outs" to slow down and speed up the leaf's motion. You will also learn about the "Moving Hold", where the leaf might glide upwards and slows down to slightly hover before moving backwards to continue its journey to the ground. Moving Holds keep your character, even a leaf feeling alive.

You should also create your "Exposure Sheet" as you begin generating your Key poses and other drawings to figure out the timing. Here's a great video explaining how to make an exposure sheet.

Make sure you have at least a second or two at the beginning and ending of your scene to allow the audience to see where we are first before the leaf begins its falling performance. In the above example, notice how long we see the tree and its moving leaves just sitting there before anything happens. In the above case, the other leaves are in a leaf cycle created for the tree and repeated throughout the scene as the other leaves fall to the ground. The leaf cycle continues even after the falling leaves have hit the ground. You need to let your audience see the end of an action, instead of ending it right when the leaf touches the ground.

Audience attention spans are getting shorter these days, but good timing needs to be mastered as much as good drawing skills showing the motion in the scene. 

I'm still adding to this posting. Is there anything I need to add? Do you have any questions so far or would you like to know anything else? Let me know in the comment section, I won't post the comment if you don't want me to.

Thanks again,
Jim