My Summer Project

[myhatisoff]

Whoop whoop etc. I've finished all my course work for this year so I'm starting on a project to keep me busy over the next few months. I've written most of a script about a young girl who upsets Mother Nature after going on a rebellious rampage in the woods after being dragged away from the TV by her parents to go for a walk. When Mother Nature appears to give her a good talkin' too she unnexpectedly falls into Nature's world on the otherside of the soil. She must then try and figure out how to get back to the otherside while she's drafted into working for Mother Nature to repay the damage she caused earlier.

Or something like that.

Here's a quick concept sketch:
http://img172.imageshack.us/img172/3175/mothernaturefl3.jpg

[Roland]

Well I can't really say a lot about the story, but that's just my opinion. Maybe it's just the way you described it that put me off. But the style itself is quite nice, and seems like it would suit the story well. What method do you use for drawing into the computer? Do you draw on paper then scan? Or just add that look manually in photoshop? I'm curious as I've always used digital, which is starting to bore me.

[Ima Gooner]

yeaaaaaaaa you lucky... My teachers are unleashing hell upon me for the next month. Exams and exams are all we're doing :[... however great ideas from you as always mate, cant wait to see how this thing comes along.

[myhatisoff]

Well I can't really say a lot about the story, but that's just my opinion. Maybe it's just the way you described it that put me off. But the style itself is quite nice, and seems like it would suit the story well. What method do you use for drawing into the computer? Do you draw on paper then scan? Or just add that look manually in photoshop? I'm curious as I've always used digital, which is starting to bore me.

Yeah, I could probably have described the story alot better, rambling away at 3am is never a good idea it seems :rolleyes:

I just draw stuff in to photoshop using my cheap genius tablet because I don't have a scanner to do any real sketches with. Just change the brush settings to about 87 Opactiy and 54 Flow and it seems to give it a nice pencily look.

[Roland]

Yeah I know... While it's really easy to zone out and do jobs like animating basic things that late, I wouldn't recommend giving any presentations either >.<

It's quite a nice effect. How do you bring that into the animation? Do you cut the image up into seperate limbs and joints or do you just draw them one by one and export as PSD without the alpha channel?

[myhatisoff]

In the past for my aniamtions I've used Toonboom Studio to draw the animated elements while using backgrounds from Photoshop but since ToonBoom is mainly vector based all the drawing tools result in heavy black lines and block colours.

I've done various tests in the past though after discovering ToonBoom can import .PSD's and keep transparency. It looks pretty good but it just means all the frame by frame stuff has to be done in Photoshop which is just a complete hassle :(

[Roland]

Urgh, Toonboom sounds worse than flash :S

I would recommend that you take a look at Adobe After Effects for the final editing part of it. I've been using it to edit my movies and it has a lot of cool effects to use. I think Flash can maintain the alpha settings so the animation can be done in that, but then your export as .avi or .mov, something like that and play with it in after effects. Since it's an adobe product it works very well in unison with Photoshop.

[pixelmark]

Sounds like a great idea! As far as the drawings go, have you tried PlasticAnimationPaper? It is not vector based, it's free, has a lightbox feature, and exports as a series of jpegs (or png's). I don't know how TBS works, but Flash gets bogged down with a lot of jpegs so I trace over them, but it helps it look more like I want.