d animation process

So I entered d into the Cartoon Brew Student Film Festival. Unfortunately that means I can't post it online/premiere it online here :[



"GEE JERRY, HOW DID YOU ANIMATE THAT WONDERFUL CARTOON OF YOURS?"

Thanks for asking! :DDDDD

Ever seen Who Framed Roger Rabbit? I followed their production model... mostly. That is, Shoot an invisible man film first, then draw the characters on top later

Phase 1: 3D production

The first step was to build and all the 3D assets seen in the film, from mountain tops to airships to robots. Think of it like building a set for a film or for a stage. Next, all the 3D actors (i.e. spiderbots) were placed on the sets and animated. A camera was placed on the set and the action was shot as if there were an invisible man as the focus of the action. After lighting the scene, I rendered the file and wound up with something that looked like this:



The next phase was to draw in the character. I imported the 3D renders into Macromedia Flash 8 and roughed out the action (if you're wondering why I used blue, it's because black somehow became a sacred color in my mind and I can't ever be messy with it. Blue allows for me to make really loose drawings, mistakes be darned)





With the action roughed out, I cleaned up the blue lines and used the final colors for Dee's o



I duplicated that layer and used that to add in color



I sandwiched another layer below the outlines layer and above the color layer for the shadows (good ol' fashioned painting/drawing techniques used here, if you're wondering how I figured out where to place the shadows)




After this was done, I exported each pass by itself and compiled everything using After Effects.

And the final product!



d is about 5:30, putting it at over 7000 frames. I didn't keep count of exactly how many frames I drew, but I think I was getting carpal tunnel towards the end of production (horray hand stretches!)