The “Winner Ideas & Tips ” collection covers sensible workflows and methods shared by winners of the “2022 Animation At Work Contest”. To let customers see the complete spectrum of the Cartoon Animator pipeline, we’re introducing tasks that acquired consideration and credit score from the group. Let’s now check out “Biker” to see how Vivek Rai labored his magic with Reallusion Cartoon Animator (CTA).
About Vivek Rai
I used to be born and raised in India. Kolkata, town the place I grew up is immensely wealthy in literature and cultural heritage. That is the place I discovered my ardour for pencil sketching and studying comedian books. My thoughts was fully blown away after I first noticed my classmate make a flip e book. For many who don’t know what a flip e book is: it’s a collection of illustrations of an animated scene that’s sure collectively on a number of papers in a sequence, to present an phantasm of motion by flipping them quickly; a standard instance is a bouncing ball or early Disney cartoons. This was after I realized that art work is also become animation.
The subsequent 25 years have been difficult as a result of we moved to totally different locations in India because of my father altering jobs—new college, new pals, and the rising weight of lecturers. The educational battle continued until I got here to the USA to pursue my grasp’s in electrical engineering in 2008. It was solely in 2011 after I earned my first paycheck and I felt that I can now ease off and revisit my outdated ardour for artwork.
The recollections of the superior flip e book animation from childhood have been nonetheless recent in my thoughts, so I purchased myself an iPad and downloaded an app that allowed me to create keyframe animation. And identical to that…I bought into animation. Or so I assumed. As a result of I quickly realized that creating a high quality keyframe animation of even one second would take a major quantity of labor hours, like my first animated video on YouTube contained over 1,500 frames and near 200 work hours as a newbie (In 2017, I began my very own youtube channel by the title Saffire Animation the place I might flip sequential comedian e book artwork into animation).
Though my first video on YouTube was nicely acquired by the viewers, as an animator I quickly realized that keyframe animation comes with some limitations, and my job as the only animator can be quite a bit simpler if I may overcome these limitations. For instance, if I can simply rig my character for fundamental motions like stroll/run cycle, soar, and speak, then superimpose the identical rig on totally different characters then it is going to save my time in redoing the identical motions repeatedly. Aside from that, I additionally needed to spend much less effort on creating in-betweens. My google search quickly landed me on some title manufacturers available in the market however that they had a month-to-month subscription charge and have been too difficult with an enormous studying curve. Reallusion’s Cartoon Animator had all of the options which I used to be on the lookout for and so I began off with a 30-day trial model after which quickly bought it for good. I quickly created a video that had an awesome response of 96k views on my channel in only a few weeks. Issues have been all set and good to go, however only one problem remained: time administration.
Now, with a full-time IT job that requires my consideration from 9 am to six pm on daily basis in addition to being a father of a seven-year-old, comes with its personal challenges. So, after dinner, cleansing up, and placing my baby to sleep I don the cape of an animator when everybody in my home is asleep. I had turned a closet in my home into my private studio which additionally has a bit of recording area. I animate three to 4 hours through the evening and not less than two extra hours within the early morning. This fashion, I can spend roughly 5 hours on my interest. I’m comfortable that in a world the place many individuals complain about issues not being beneath their management, I’m able to find time for what I get pleasure from when and wherever I can.
Why I made “Biker”
I used to personal a Ducati Monster throughout my early years, so the topic I selected for the 2022 Animation at Work contest is a couple of biker and his love for his automobile. Preserving the video easy, I needed to inform a brief story a couple of biker’s ardour, drive, and initiative. To maintain the opening dramatic, I used a soothing observe and ensured that every successive shot ups the joy to construct up anticipation for the following scene.
Often, motorcyclists are rebellious and stand for freedom, so I added a bald eagle to the video to indicate its rebellious facet and its high-flying angle as an emblem of freedom that might compete with the biker. I created a number of drawings of the animal and biker that might maintain the complete video dramatic. CTA has an incredible real-time synching method with some photograph modifying software program. I used Adobe Photoshop because the PSD editor and Procreate because the drawing app for hand-drawn scenes.
Why I selected Cartoon Animator
Cartoon Animator is an easy-to-learn software program as a result of it’s designed to supply a really clear workflow and doesn’t include a whole lot of extraneous options to distract you. It’s clear, easy, and simple for novices to make use of this software program the place no prior 2D animation expertise is required. One also can use CTA to make the method of animation intuitive and non-technical. For many who are new to Reallusion’s CTA software program, Reallusion holds stay webinar classes the place animators can get solutions to their questions.
Though CTA is just not identified for creating art work, it could work in tandem with both Adobe Illustrator or Photoshop, which is the second huge issue for me. One can construct a personality with its particular person components as separate objects in Illustrator, or on separate layers in Photoshop, after which use Character Animator to rig these items collectively into an animatable puppet. CTA has a really underestimated function of supporting frame-by-frame animation; I realized about this function by accident after I ready a sequential animation in photoshop, and I imported the frames in PSD format.
The third and most distinguished issue for utilizing CTA is the Reside Efficiency Seize Animation device. Right here, one can use their webcam and microphone to generate stay performances for his or her animated characters and ship them to the viewers or document the efficiency on the mission timeline and refine it additional by hand.
How I did it with CTA
Step 1: Script and Storyboard
I stored the video brief round one minute with solely background, SFX, and music (no dialogue). I selected background music from a common license web site. Then I appeared up varied YouTube movies on bike drifting and created a tough structure of each scene on my timeline. As soon as I finalized the structure of the tough sketch, I began drawing and including colours to my scene. Under is a picture of a collection of snapshots from a number of movies, which I laid over the music as a reference.
Step 2: Character Creation & Sketching
Whereas going by means of varied YouTube movies, I picked up some fundamental 3D biker equipment like a helmet and boots, in addition to a drift animation. With some drawing abilities, I laid out a personality in his early 20s, carrying a helmet and driving a Ducati Monster (my first bike) utilizing paper and pencil. As soon as I used to be assured with the outcomes, I scanned the drawing and digitally imported it into my drawing pill.
Earlier than creating the animation, I like to indicate the drawing to my seven-year-old for a second opinion. His eager to see extra of it provides me confidence that I’m heading in the right direction. The next are a few of the tough sketches through the improvement stage.
Step 3: Characters & Sprite Animation
Each shot had its personal set of necessities. For the shot the place the lead character leaps into the air together with his bike, I used totally different sprites of the character to create a keyframe animation in CTA. Some photographs just like the lead approaching his bike and the chicken flapping its wings required gradual movement that wanted to be clean sans the choppiness that usually accompanies keyframe animation; for that reason, I used the bone-rigging function proven under.
Step 4: Scenes Creation, Composition & Digicam Setting
I used digicam actions to supply dramatic stress through the use of the Reside Digicam function in CTA. With Digicam Operation set to Mouse Choose mode, I used the Alt key to speed up the switching of the cameras: Alt+LMB to pan, Alt+LMB+RMB to zoom, and Shift+MW to zoom in. I performed with these controls to present some depth to my nonetheless photographs, particularly the place the biker lands on the bottom after performing a somersault. To realize this impact, I first downloaded a clip with no digicam motion and one other clip with digicam motion.
To convey depth to the background, I positioned the props in a approach that might give a parallax impact. I mixed each photographs within the video modifying software program and stored the biker within the middle of the body utilizing the “rule of thirds”. The shaky digicam impact is a method that I additionally generally use when the biker is zooming previous the display. This took me barely 5 minutes to supply and it delivered precisely what I needed out of that shot.
Step 5: Sound FX
I consider that music performs crucial half to supply a dramatic impact on the scenes. So, I like to make use of copyright-free music from a web site like EpidemicSound.com the place one can obtain music of assorted moods and tones. Aside from that, I appeared up some SFX (like bike roaring, brake screeching, and many others.) that might give my video knowledgeable high quality.
Conclusion
Cartoon Animator may help me to generate satisfying outcomes with out complicating workflow. Reallusion additionally affords FREE on-line tutorials for customers to entry at their on-line portal, making self-learning doable for customers like me which have to modify between day-job and nighttime hobbies. I hope with my story and demonstration of the entry workflow, extra customers will get impressed and begin creating extra 2D animations!
Observe Vivek Rai
Youtube | https://www.youtube.com/c/saffireanimation
Instagram | https://www.instagram.com/saffire_animation/
