Inverted greeting card
Well, judging by the comments and responses about our first greeting video card about Gypsy, we can suppose that most of the people liked it. I think that many people would be interested to get behind the scenes and see everything with their own eyes, how is this short cartoon made.
Well, judging by the comments and responses about our first greeting video card about Gypsy, we can suppose that most of the people liked it. I think that many people would be interested to get behind the scenes and see everything with their own eyes, how is this short cartoon made.
You are welcome!
After that idea and the script were ready, the work started in few directions at the same time:1. Main stage- scene selection2. Character preparation for the animation3. Drawing of the colour draft to which is necessary to focus at render and compositing.4. stage of no small importance- sound
A scheme that was developed at the beginning of the “Gypsy” project was tested at work.
A scheme that was developed at the beginning of the “Gypsy” project was tested at work.
Storyboard
The beginning of the scene selection was defining a clear amount of plans in the reel: we got seven of them. After that it was necessary to decide the composition and length of the plans. After all will have an outlined cartoon on the paper, witch then slowly turned into video.
Sketches and backgrounds
Simultaneously with scene selection we draw sketches of locations and backgrounds. In fact, three location take part in the reel, is the location of the gypsy, where he is walking to the village, deaths location, coming out from the forest, and location in which gypsy and death appear together in the sequence. S
trange as it may seem most of the time took the work over the sketch for the first plan. He had enough changes, until began to satisfy our needs. With the rest it was a bit easier: they came out from the very first time.
Animation
Do we have to say, that to work at the cartoon was difficult and interesting at the same time? The first complication was the interaction of the characters.
The keys of animation should concur with time, otherwise we will not get a clear interaction, and the characters will move independently.To get the most accurate result, a video with this scene was shoted. (In the shot everybody is completely sober!)
Without exaggeration this was the most difficult plan in the reel. After drunk Gojo and Death we had great time! The work was interesting first of all because during the process we tried new methods of work with material that allow rapidly getting the wanted result.
As well we improved and upgraded the system that controls the facial expression of the character.
Cloth simulation
After some tests, turned out that characters clothes will cause a lot of headache. Every setting combination didn’t give admissible and predictable results. Generally problems were expressed in too much time spent for checking, and the quality lived much to be desired. If one clothe was acting tolerantly, they interacted with some objects the nightmare began-the clothes tear into pieces. After some hours of torments it was clear that we will not solve this problem so easy.
To solve a big, complex task, you have to divide it into smaller parts, as we were taught at school. Divide and Govern. We marked out the problematic parts, broke them into pieces and simulated them individually. Let say that the checking went separately for gypsies’ shirt and separately for his jacket. Death, if to look under the certain point of view, is just a big piece of cloth. Here we have to cut cords that bind… First of all we cut of the sleeves, then the lower part of the dressing gown (“skirt”). We got three separate parts: the sleeves, “skirt” and the remained to piece. The top piece was divided into parts as well: directly the trunk and the hood (we didn’t have to cut them specifically: we just covered them with drawings where we have to cut them and where we don’t have to cut them).
Now the speed of the work flew up. After producer approved the animation that was given to him in cut form, all that mess was gathered together and we tried to hide all sutures and cutting lines. By this time the “dressed” doll was animated and edited manually for the elimination of remained gibberishes, and of course for the introduction of final strokes of the producer. And at the very final was baked the final cash for the final sequence. All the trash that was accumulated during the production process was thrown away.
Ready! The sequence goes to our visualizer.
Render and composeIt should seem to be finished. I was left just to press the magic button “Render”, and the thing is done. At least it looked like this at the beginning. The most important and difficult part was to assure the highest possible likeness between three dimensional picture and two dimensional picture, that was drawn by the painter. It is a king size job. We had to be sly with lightning; shades in 3D colour compen
sation during compose.
In fact in the program of composing you can do not only color compensation because composing it is a good half in the work of the image visualization. The possibility to use normal pass helped us a lot, thanks to this we got the opportunity to change the lightning at a rendered image already. This allowed saving a lot of time, because every time we move light source we don’t have to enter the 3D editor. This technology was used during the animation of the exposures at our characters from salute in the final part.
Sound
And about the sound. Thanks to the band “Zdob si Zdub” and our audio man the music turned out brilliant. Once in the evening time, three delegates from our company took placinte and wine went to visit “Zdob si Zdub”. Off course, to the studio.
he work till the midnight gave its benefits. Roman Iagupov (soloist of the band) laid out fully: uttered inconceivable sounds, danced, gave out fantastical themes on the run, improvised. To the point, Roma knows gypsies culture and language very well, that is why it was easy for him to get the cartoons mood.
“Zdob si Zdub” are unpredictable and super-professional musicians. It happened this way, the guitarist was playing the violin, bass- was playing contrabass, and the soloist- was beating drums. All tooling and the voice were recorded, and we had to do something with this. Here our audio man got down to business. We needed the wind instruments and accordion to emphasis the sound. This job was handed very well by VST- instruments. As for ambience, we say welcome to the sound libraries! All music was carefully cleaned and assembled to the picture. Cartoon revived!
And now the most important- at the birthday of the studio, 1 st of april we launch a new greeting card with grandad Baro and grandson Tagar.
