It has been a month since my last journal. And what a rollercoaster of emotions it has been. I feel almost dead on my feet. Turing my story boards into an animatic was one of the most draining processes of my life. I should have written something about it at the time. but when it was done my desire to ever think about animatics again was non-existent.
I needed a lot of help just getting started. Morgan had to scan the story boards in and turn them into PNGs. Over time I got involved in this process and even learned a little bit about how to do it. But then we had to put all the PNGs into Adobe Premiere and crop them, and this is where the pain started.
Premiere is the worst program I have ever used. It is counter-intuitive. Impossible to navigate. It can become unusable. And it crashes all the time. I needed constant help from Owen, Tom and Morgan to get anything done. The second they left the program would do something new that would leave me unable to work. I felt like bursting into tears. But in the end I got everything into the timeline in the right order. Now I had to time each still to see how long it had to be on screen to read right. manipulating the timing to get all the right length was a fresh hell. The program was very fiddly unless you were doing everything just right. But I started to get the timing right, and then the problems started to emerge.
I had broken a big rule of filmmakimaking, I had broken the circular line. A complex subject still don’t really understand. But boils down to only showing characters from one side in a scene. I flipped some drawings around to address this. But there was still a linebreak and Tom and Owen were not happy with it. At least Morgan didn’t mind too much. And it was clear that my animatic wasn’t fully reading. I need to draw new panels for my storyboard. I wanted to die. But I did it, and uploaded the new stills to Premiere. But now i had extra stills I had to adjust the timing for all the other stills to make it all fit! It was pain. I hated my own drawings by the end. But in time I had an animatic.
After this I fell into a depression for two weeks where I barely worked. Only making small efforts. I had the timing. But Now I needed to turn my storyboard drawings into animation keys. Not only is this hard work, but I had drawn my storyboards in square panels, but the animator’s paper is rectangular. Meaning I have to change the composition for each one. This taught me a painful lesson. Draw your storyboards at the same aspect ratio you mean to animate at! It means you can scale up with ease!
Weeks passed. But eventually I started animation again. And I started to feel better.
I had to animate a seascape first, I decided to try to make an animation loop. The result was crude, but gets the idea across. This one was hard as I redrew the whole thing everytime, Winsor McCay style. I knew I’d have to get smarter.
I had to film it now and I couldn’t get the camera to show the whole thing or stop it from showing too much. It turns out the camera was in the modern aspect ratio, widescreen or 16.9, but classic handdrawn animation was made in 4.3 ratio. Owen had to change the program setting for me. I must remember this for when I make my own films. Draw in the ratio you mean to film in or it will throw the composition of the whole thing off. I’m just lucky the program I use had a 4.3 option. At least I have been told this technical side of the process wrongfoots a lot of newcomers. Clearly you need to be up on how you mean to film your animation before you even think about drawing frame one.
After that I had to draw my fox, Ezekiel, staring out into the distance. At last all the reading I did paid off. I remembered reading about a technique called “The Boil Line” where you redraw something a few times and film the few drawings on a loop. The tiny differences between the drawings mean that even though the figure is motionless it still looks alive. I talked to Morgan about using this and he said it was a good idea. He said three drawings would give me the boil I wanted. It is a sign of what a bad place I was in that it took me two days to just get the three drawing. But when it was done the boil did look good… okay it looked passable. But seeing your own work animated does a lot to make you feel better.
Next I had to show my amazon, Hestia, looking at Ezekiel from a distance. I decided to apply what I’d learned and opened the shot with a boil and it works. I also started animating on 3s (8 frames per second) I had Hestia draw her arm into her for comfort. Animating it was slow. But I started to get my groove back. I wouldn’t say the animation is good but it works. And I found a method of being able to make my work contestant from frame to frame. You would not know from looking I redrew the background every tim. I did it by making master frame and drawing of them each time rather than creating each new drawing based on the last one. You can see the shifting background if you look for it. BUT if you are looking and Hestia it works seamlessly.
This not only made my work more consistent but also quicker. But Morgan thinks It can be improved. For the next bit I will have the background on a totally separate layer using a boil to give it live. This has saved me a ton of work in the current piece. I hope it looks good.
As I have worked on the current shot, of Hestia deciding to walk over to Ezekiel, my output has exploded. I’m nowhere near my past peak but It’s felt like a blast. I’m even enjoying my work a little. I hope that the quality of the work has picked up two. But the process put into this will have to wait for another journal.
Peace be with you.
John's Learning Journal 