This whole project started two/three years ago, with a
character who looked a bit like Kenny from south park but in a brown coat and
black skin with large white eyes. I had a simple rotation of him and a walk
cycle. I’ve lost the walk of him but I have the rotation.
The idea back then was different then what it now is, but there’s still some same things.
For the most part the min idea is still there. He needs to get in to the this
large underground place. Back then he was going to find a talking sword that
told him that if he removed him from his stand that the door he needed to get
past would open. But back then I never gave him arms, so he’d be unable to do
this. He was going to get really mad and kick the sword braking it and the seal
holding the door closed.
After that I have no idea what he was going to find. It
changed a few times. Once it was going to be a hot lady, it was going to be
gold, it was going to be a staff, or it was going to be a new world. In the end
I never picked until I made a new character the next year.
The “mage” as this person is often called was going to be in
a short film where he would walk up to a staff that was going to turn him in to
stone. This idea was bad and I handled
working on it poorly. The idea was caned, however I liked the people I made for
this world.
Over the summer I was talking to one of my friends and he
was telling me about his book he was writing. Well I was talking to him I had
an idea to remake the characters I had and turn them in to a comic. He told me I should try, and with that I started
work on rethinking how my characters looked, updating them to look more real
and have more of my new style.
When I first made the characters my drawing level was no
were a good as it is now. The last few years have been kind to me with growing
my artistic skill.
With me bringing the comic back, it hit me that to help get
hype behind it I should make an animation for it. So with the start of the
school year I sat myself down and started work on it. And then life came in a
punched me in the face and kicked me well I was down. We can talk about that at
a later date
I wanted to take what was the first chapter from the comic
and make it an animation out of it. It was going to be set in the same place as
the first, but with its updated look I gave it late last 2013. And it was going
to fallow the same idea of him trying to get in to an underground tomb, but
with the change that he has arms, he’s looking for the mage, and he’s going in
to a pyramid.
How I when about it was the same that I did when I was working on some of my larger paintings. I started of with a small version of the seen to make a storyboard. It’s near gets a 3-4 time zoom to get it to the right shape, if not smaller.
Rather then make it by hand I chose to make it on the
computer so that way I can take what I’ve drawn and make it larger and draw
over it. I did this to try and get the feel for the drawing early on and then
just cleaning it up and making it more real afterwards.
The goal at this point is to get three things down, feel and
lay out, and the flow. If early on I can spot were something doesn’t flow good
together I can stop it before I get too far in to it and find that I spent all
that time on nothing. In the end I still ended up cutting a part out from the
storyboard, meaning that right now I need to make a new one. But at the time it
looked fine.
Once it was all laid out I was able to start cleaning it up,
and re drawing it all to start building the animatic.
First of was the backgrounds, and they also ended up taking
all this time.
I wanted them to not be too simple, and wanted your eye to
be willing to look around the background. And to have it be where I could pause
the video at any time and it could look like a painting or a drawing.
Well doing this I worried about making sure that they didn’t
look too different from each other. The worst thing I could have done in my
mind was to have one background use a different color plate then the last one.
I ended up having to change the skys in all of my backgrounds so they would
look the same as the newer design I was making at the end.
The backgrounds changed a lot, but the main idea I did back when I
did the story bored was still the main focus. Any change I made was for adding more for color, and or
to make things more clear, and to make it straight forward. As I got more done
I found I wasn’t able to make it all as fast as I wanted to. I was getting
behind.
When I was rapping up the backgrounds I was starting to get
in to a art block and I was finding it hard to draw my characters. I wasn’t
able to get fully over it do to the fighting I’ve been having at home. On top
of that I ended up having an illness, there was a day were I couldn’t eat
because I didn’t have any money, and the computer didn’t want to work with me
one day and I had to restart it and reinstall my table in to it (I lost all the
work I did before then.)
I had to draw over 500 frames in two weeks. The frames I had
to make where also very complex. But that didn’t madder either way because of
all the other problems I had. The fact I didn’t do it, shouldn’t really shock
too many people. I wish I could have done it, or tried to find an easier why to
do it.
I will only say that I wish that I chose to have that time stet to something that I could have done in that time rather then reach for the stars.
I was building myself up to fail with it, and anyone could
see if they watched me step by step. I never did something like this before so
I wasn’t used to the speed in witch I had to go. I needed to handle it like
needed to get something fast down, and then got the next drawing. Instead I was
taking time trying to make it really clean and make the lines smooth when they
didn’t need to be.
Knowing what happened I will say that I don’t know if there
was much I could have done differently, other then try next time to get the
idea down faster next time and not have to go back so much because I changed
something well working on it.
When the best I can spit out is a animatic with it’s
backgrounds, One of witch is awful, I feel like I could have done better. But
at the same time I remembered that I had a lot of problems. It was hard for me
because there was no one I could just ask about it without changing the whole
why I wanted to do it.
Linda.com was looked at in the start but I couldn’t find
anything that looked like it would help me.my problems where to narrow, to pin
point. And I wasn’t able to find something that could make it what I wanted
with out it being stiff rigged 2d sprite.
I have to say that I pains me to animate that way do to how the end
produce ends up being. I could have done more things to aid in making it still not
have that stiff look at is done from rigging. it would however mean that I
didn’t have to draw the same thing five million times .
What I liked was that I stuck to my guns with wanting it to
look nice over anything else. If it didn’t look right I would try to change it.
And all though I’m still having to change things I’m happy with when I’m
wanting to make.
I should be noted that, when I showed what I had for the
class is that I didn’t get a lot of feedback. It wasn’t done, some people did
say it looked great even at it’s early state, some pointed out flaws that I
made so now I can go and fix those. Even Mr. Netterville (My Teacher) said it was impressive what I
made in that amount of time. I know he’ll be reading this, but I’m still going
to openly say I think he didn’t mean that and he was just trying to be nice.
That or he was trying to tell the class about what it’s like to work on
something to this scale. Either way, thank you for saying that.
I’m going to keep working on this and I’m going to up date this blog as I work on it in my own time. I want to complete this by the end of my high school year. I’m not sure how great it will be or how often I’ll have time to update this blog. But I’ll be trying to leave hints and short stuff as I work. I hope who ever is reading this will have a good day (may be even a good week) and I’ll see all you peeps next time.
