RDCCDX: Digital PIrates of Dark Water: Episode 3.5: You Are (Not) Loved

Here it is, the second to last installment in the Ronin Dojo Community College DX: Digital Pirates of Dark Water Saga. It's Episode 3.5: You Are (Not) Loved.



This is the first of the RDCCDX cartoons produced with our new digital workflow AKA draw directly into the computer on Cintiqs. However it wasn't completely digital. We were still using our old head library, which had originally been drawn in pencil on paper, scanned, and then vectorized* in Illustrator. The sharpness of the vectorized lines in the head drawings help match them with the body and background lines drawn with the Cintiq, but they're not as smooth, you can still see a lot of bumps in them.

If you haven't read my blog before, Matt and I created a library of head positions, mouths and eyes for each character, which we reuse over and over so save drawing time. And even though we had used these head libraries only several months ago, opening them up for this project was a like opening a time capsule. All of the characters looked slightly off model to me, which is a bit strange because there is no official model sheet we have. The heads looked too long, and their features were spread far apart. It's strange how character designs evolve as you slowly progress as an artist, and just evolve with the repetition of drawing them over and over and getting to know them better.

Shit, looking back on the other episodes I can see the progress Matt and I have made, and I'm a little startled. I would change a lot of things. In Episode 2.5, Jerry's head is should be much bigger, his body look too adult for him. And the backgrounds and perspective are so flat on everything. Oh well, what's done is done. I'm not going to pull some Lucas bullshit and redo them. Only out of laziness though. However if anyone wants to give us tons of money, I'll pull some Anno bullshit and redo them in crazy awesome looking movie form.


*if you're confused about what I'm saying when I refer to the vectorizing pencil lines process, read this.

We clamour onward and repeat ourselves

We recorded the audio for the Ronin Dojo Community College DX: Digital Pirates of Dark Water Saga Episode 3.5 today. There's Tim pouring over the script, intensely- because he's a genius. You can also see my thigh and my forearm in there too- they are also intense.

Interestingly enough, this episode takes place in a car with characters- sort of like in my short She She She She's A Bombshell. Once again, I reprise my role as the annoying dude in the back seat. As you can see in this detailed storyboard, that's my character, Mark, sitting in the back seat. Bombshell was 7 minutes long and took almost a year to make- this episode is 1 minute 40 seconds and we're hoping to make finish it in like three days. The difference is, this time we have the luxory of a head library, Cintiqs, and two sets of hands on the job. It will be an interesting comparison.

So with a freshly cut animatic under our belts we're hoping to have this baby out by Thursday. Should be possible, we just have to stick to our schedules and not do too many extraneous things like oh I dunno, write blog posts.


I better go.

FOR TAX REASONS IS GOING TO OTAKON!

Yep, you read it correctly in the blog post title. July 17th - July 19th, Matt and I will be hitting up Otakon 2009! This time, we won't merely be spectators ready to plant their asses in folding chairs for 80+ hours of anime. Nope, this year we'll be hosting a panel!

It's going to be called "Let's Talk Animation! with For Tax Reasons". We'll be there taking questions and discussing DIY animation; how we do it, how you can do it and how it destroys lives. And to top it all off, we'll be screening the final episode of Ronin Dojo Community College DX: The Digital Pirates of Dark Water Saga. Which we have yet to animate. . . yeah we're cutting it kind of close.

So yeah, I gotta get back to drawing the backgrounds for Episode 3.5, which will be coming out next week. And as soon as we get the exact panel times I'll post them. So if you're going to be at the convention, come to the panel and say hi, or shout derrogatory remarks at us from behind a Trigun cross or something. I dunno, I need to have more recent anime references by July.

How We Animate: Part II: The Software & The Method

Exactly three months ago, I had written a long ass blog post, which I never got to post, about the For Tax Reasons animation process. How we went from paper to digital with out the aid of Cintiq's. But then we ended up buying Cintiqs, and our process was turned on it's heads.

Anyways, so I'm going to post about our old method, because this is the internet- and the internet is for sharing information, and maybe this can help somebody out who wants to work on paper but still produce a sharp and clean animation.

So, with out further ado, the man with a million voices- "How We Animate" Part II. The process of taking animation on paper and putting it into a computer.

HOW WE ANIMATE(D): PART II: THE SOFTWARE & THE METHOD

Teh Warez

These are the programs you'll need.

Adobe Photoshop, for scanning, cleaning and coloring
Adobe Bridge/Adobe Illustrator, for cleaning (you're going to need at least version CS2 so you can use the Livetrace tool)
Adobe After Effects, for sequencing and compositing everything together
Final Cut Pro, for editing together each shot

So this software is kind of expensive, but I found this one website which has some really good discounts on it. So go and check that out if interested in trying out this method.


Step 1: Scanning
So first things first, Windex your scanner real good and tape a peg bar to it. This is how you're going to keep all of your drawings registered to one another. Remember, you're going to have to keep that peg bar taped in the same place, and use the same scanning marquee until you finish scanning a shot. So if you need to use your peg bar for something else, like stirring some lentil soup your making- go do that first, and then tape down your peg bar.

Do a preview scan and select the area which encompasses the entire shot and maybe a little more. It sucks to scan 80 drawings and then realize the last one is outside of your scaning area. Settings-wise. I suggest scanning everything at at least 300 DPI. It helps keep the detail for the Livetracing step later on, and if you ever decide to zoom in with a camera move things won't look shitty. If there are any level adjustments you can do no the scanner to improve your image go ahead and set them now, but most of your adjusting will be done post scanning.

So this is a good chance to introduce ACTIONS. Actions in Photoshop are going to be a huge help through this entire process. Open your Actions window, and click on the little menu thingy on the upper right hand corner to make a new action. Name your action, and then run through these scanning steps. Photoshop will record your each menu item you choose and everything, and later on, when you "play" the action, it will do everything automatically. Actions are big help for the whole process. So here's the scanning action:


a. File > Import > (Your Scanner Name) TWAIN

You'll be routed into your scanners own interface, hit Scan. After it imports the image you'll be back in Photoshop.

b. Image > Rotate Canvas > 90º Clockwise or Counter Clockwise depending what side of the scanner you're using.

c. Double click on the Layer to change it from a locked Background to Layer 0.

d. Then hit ⌘ Shift U to Desaturate the layer- or- Image > Adjustments > Hue/Saturation.

I do this because I don't need any of the color information, and it just takes up more memory.

e. Save your file. Now, to make a Save command appear in an action, you should go to your Actions menu, and select Insert Menu Item. Then choose File > Save.

For you newbies: Save it as a Photoshop file, not a JPEG, which would compress it and not allow for layers.

Now stop recording by hitting that little square stop button, and you've got your Scan action.

Here's what one of our scans looks like:

Step 2: Leveling(sp?)

So, you've got all your drawings scanned. Preferably in folder labeled Scans, in a sub folder labeled by shot number. I like to keep my raw scans around, just in case I screw something up. Now it's time to make those Scans look a little sharper by leveling them. Duplicate the Scans folder, and rename the copied folder "Clean".

It's time to use the Level tool in Photoshop. ( ⌘ L - or - Image > Adjustments > Levels)
Drag the Black and White input arrows back and forth, and try to get the white of the paper to be white and the line to be as black as possible with out crunching the image like this:

Click on the image for the full effect.

When you think you've got a decent level which will work for the drawings- make a Level Action with those settings.

Now you can go to File > Automate > Batch and you can Batch level a whole folder of Photoshop files using the Action you just made.

Step 3: Cleaning

This is where things get a little crazy. We're gonna use Bridge and Illustrator to vectorize the lines of your drawing. This is to get rid of the gray half pixels and make your lines more defined and solid black. This will really come in handy when you're at the coloring stage. When you're lines are sharp and solid black, you don't have to waste time zooming in and coloring over white specks by hand. I made a confusing post about this before, but I'll explain it again here.

Open up one of your leveled Photoshop files in Illustrator. Select the layer with the image on it, go to Object > Live Trace > Tracing Options.

Click the "Preview" button so that you can watch how Illustrator traces your image as you change the settings. These are two of the settings I use.

This for a more rounded approximation, but smoother line.
And this for a closer match to your pencil line, but rougher.

You might have to tweak these settings to fit how you're drawings look. It's not perfect, but it really helps the quality of your final image, at the sacrifice of some details. Like these little Flash looking lines the computer makes.
Once you've figured out a setting which works with your scans. Open up Bridge. Select your Clean folder. Go to Tools > Illustrator > Livetrace

Select your Preset, Basic RGB and Choose your Destination.

And BOOM Bridge will Livetrace the whole folder for you. See, not that hard.


Step 4: Almost Coloring

Now you've got a Clean folder full of AI (Illustrator) and PSD (Photoshop) files. Copy those AI files into a new folder called "COLOR". You're going to bring these Illustrator files BACK into Photoshop to color them.

Open up Photoshop and import the .ai files. Make sure you're importing at atleast 300 DPI, and using the Media Box, not the Bounding Box as your selection area. I dunno, Illustrator is weird with it's boxes. Sometimes you also have to rotate your page set ups in Illustrator too if things are like coming in tall ways and they should be wide ways. You'll figure it out.

Save, these new PSD's. These are what you're going to color and stuff. But coloring of course is another post, because this one is all ready way too long.

THE END FOR NOW

So, that was our process for getting a scanned drawing to have a clean sharp line for easy and quasi-professional looking color. This was our work around for both: not having the skillset for drawing directly into the computer using Wacom tablets, and not having the advantage of the more expensive Cintiq, where you can draw directly onto the screen. In some upcoming posts I'll talk about how we color, and how it's been working on Cintiqs. Until then, I'm gonna shut the fuck up cuz this is way too much writing.

Previously on X-Men...

The latest post I had drafted out for this blog was about my process from paper to cleaning and coloring digitally. Then things got kind of crazy. And now it's like two months later, and everything is upside down. I've left my job, am working freelance from home, and own a Cintiq. What happened?

Well, it has nothing to do with X-Men, I can tell you that much. I just bought the series on DVD and like to walk around saying "Previously on X-Men" in my best Cyclops voice. Anyways, Matt and I got hired on to do a couple of projects so we've been working on that stuff. But Jebus willing, we'll be turning out RDCCDX 3.5 in the next month or so. I don't know how, but we will. And I'll be posting weekly on this blog.

I hope our YouTube fans don't hate us too much. Oy vey.

How It Goes

So I took a trip to Boston this past weekend, if you can't tell by the HUGE DROPKICK MURPHYS MURAL that I'm standing in front of. I was also in Allston, and was hoping to see somebody from Big D in the Kids Table wandering around. But I just heard rave music instead. That's all I know about Boston the music scene I guess. Dropkick and Big D and that everybody there was or is in a hardcore band. I gotta find that city where everyone was or is in a ska band. When I do, I shall look upon that city and I shall whisper it's name into the dusty wind- Skaheaven. Or I guess it would be Skeaven. I don't know. But yeah, Boston is a pretty sweet place.

Anyways, like I had written before, the people at the Boston Underground Film Festival had been kind enough to invite me up to screen some of my materials with animator Patrick Smith. It was lots of fun, always interesting to see people react to all the For Tax Reasons material in real life. So I have to give a big thanks to Anna and everyone at BUFF and Amy and everyone involved with Space 242 for showing my stuff and putting me up. I hope they'll have me back someday.

So, we've been getting some pretty good reactions to the new short which is real nice considering the stress we had put ourselves through to get it done and uploaded. In fact, just uploading it was a like 6 hour ordeal. We had been rushing through the whole process, trying to get it done early that week; didn't have the time to go over each shot with a fine toothed comb. The result- a whole lot of rendering, realizing we had missed something, and then going back to rerender. I give you the actual gchat conversation between Matt and I the day we were trying to upload the short to Youtube.
What you see is me rendering out the final shots from After Effects, putting them into Final Cut, exporting the full short from Final Cut to a Quicktime, compressing that Quicktime for upload to Youtube- THEN realizing I had missed something and going back to After Effects. And of course complaining to Matt about it the whole time.

This went on past 8pm. As you can see, at some point around 5:50 pm I had thought this whole thing was pretty amusing and started taking screen caps of the conversation, but the novelty quickly faded away. Even after we had settled on a render, we were having trouble with Youtube because the several uploads that we had cancelled had mucked up the system, preventing our final upload from fully processing.

But whatever, we got it up there eventually and people really latched on to it, which was great. I mean, as far as the content was concerned, we thought it was pretty good. And as I've said before, Tim Martin and Emily Tarver, who provided the voices for Hank Henderson and Agent Wilkins, both did an awesome job. Their reads and improvisations is what made this short funny.

Visually however, we thought we had fallen short. We had spent so much time with Episode 2.5 crafting these backgrounds and trying to really utilize the great perspective possibilities of a parking garage. But when we moved forward to Episode 3, we had arrogantly decided "Oh, this is simple, it all takes place in a small room, no problem". The boards we really rough, and I ended up just eyeballing most of the background drawing. The result was some wonky shots that had to be reworked into these very boring, straight laced shots. Some garbled perspective. And a general disappointment with our lives and what we had become as human beings.

The room was small, but the scene was supposed to be dramatic and intense. We could have made the angles more interesting, and given more depth to this thing which would have better serviced the dialogue and voice acting. But you know, the good thing about making mistakes is that you learn from them. And we've learned, twice over, that you have to make decent storyboards, and pay attention to composition and perspective.

Hopefully we will impress ourselves with the next short. I don't know why I wrote all this, I just wanted to post that gchat conversation. Anyways, because this was a long rant, I leave you with a drawing I made of a girl trying to get her jeans off her foot.

This Is My Life (And It's Ending One Minute At A Time)

FINALLY. Episode 3 of Ronin Dojo Community College DX: The Digital Pirates of Dark Water Saga is DONE!

In this installment, the Fed's have Mark and Barry in a corner with enough evidence to put them away for however long they put you away for pirating a shit load of movies. But a special guest inadvertently comes to their rescue. Nobody puts Barry in a corner!

This one had a lot of trouble behind the scenes. The past three days have had Matt and I up until 5 and 6 in the morning, trying to rush this thing together. I'll post more on that later, but for right now I have to thank the peoples who made this cartoon more awesome than we could.

Big thanks to Tim Martin and Emily Tarver for doing the voices of Hank Henderson and Agent Wilkins. They both have been real good sports about recording in our shanty town style bedroom studio, and always help us come with good lines on the fly. That porcelain city bit- all Tim.

Thanks to Darrell for offering his help in scanning and cleaning all of our shitty drawings. It's one of the lesser glorious tasks in animation but his help made all the difference.

And thanks to Dan for helping us pull some SFX and Andrew Kudlick and Jonah Beram- we're going to keep reusing the animation you made for us- FOOOREVER.


And to repeat my previous post, Matt and I will be in Boston this Friday and Saturday for a screening the Boston Underground Film Festival is putting on. It's called "New York Spawned A Monster" and it features the animation of famed indie animator Patrick Smith and- me. There's a screening from 6pm-8pm at Space 242, and a Q&A at noon on Saturday at the same place. It's free but you have to RSVP. So come on down, or up, depending on where you live.

Ok, done hocking shit. Here's the Indiana Cat poster Matt put togther. Click on it to get a huge version for your desktop.