Saturday, March 28, 2009

5 steps in making your character act



There are of course many steps in 2d animation ( don't look at me like that ). I'm just mentioned about animating the character (i.e) making it him/her act from drawing. We may wonder people saying that its a longer process and takes more time and human resources. Yes it is!.

But break down only the animation process.. Let me make it clear for you.

Here it is !

1) drawing your character on paper ( from your mind ).
2) tracing the character ( again and again) to make the character intimate for you so that u can imagine the character actions ( easier to imagine = easier to draw = easier to act ).
3) completing character turn around. ( drawing the character in various rotation angles, usually front, 3/4 front , side, back , 3/4 back )
4) Scanning the character to flash software.
5) Breakdown of character into symbols in flash software.

after that is the process of making the character act according to your command.

Friday, March 27, 2009

2d Cartoon character from rough sketch to colour



Animation is really an exciting world isn't it? From our childhood to adulthood there will be very only a little amount of people who haven't been exposed to animation or cartoons. Luckily we are. But when it comes to the making it is really quite tough for beginner and easy for people with experience ( Means a lot of patience and practice ).

The above pic shows a quick demonstration of the cartoon character being developed at different levels.

(1) the rough sketch (2) cleanup (3) Keycleanup, traced again (4) scanned for animation (5) color filled ( usually called inking in traditional animation ).

Hope this post is interesting to you. Do come again for more fun.

Comments are welcome!

Wednesday, March 25, 2009

2d character animation is not an easy task


After lots of scribbling and rough sketch, the character on mind is drawn on paper. Yet its only a starting point in animation. The character drawing has to be fine tuned again and again using lightbox and traced for final version.

The final version contains the outlines cleaned up and presented as thick and thin lines so to add more beauty and depth to the character.

From here the life of the character is turned on and his / her new world is opened from paper to digital media.

Ya drawing for animation is not easy and it will not come in a day or two.

But if u learn to scribble on paper, now that's easy. So start scribbling something.

Tuesday, March 24, 2009

2d Character animation in flash

I have been doing 2d animations, especially character animation in flash. I use traditional style in drawing and making animatics. The character or the background is studied fully by drawing various poses and the style is developed. The character is then scanned and traced using vector based program Adobe illustrator, fine tuning is done then and there in flash software.

I am posting my works here in my blog and it would be easy for u guys to share and comment your ideas.

I am trying to share some reference and inspirational websites and materials.