Art and Animations

[Aquamentis12]

LOL Sabs, I'd love to see your animations. You can always do the thread whenever you feel ready. Sometimes input from others can be valuable. ;D And there are definitely some very talented people here! :D

 

I JUST finished coloring all 6 frames for the dog pawing the trunk of a tree. I combined them with the lineart for a rather cool effect.

 

 

Reminds me of two videos. The music video for a song by the group Ah-Ha
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=djV11Xbc914

 

And the end credits from Harry and the Hendersons.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aXchPX0FZf8

 

Both way more advanced than my current skill level. LOL

 

There are actually 54 total frames in this animation, though only the 6 uncolored and the 6 colored versions were used, so 12 different frames in total used. XD

[Guest Sabs]

You're right, and I will make a thread sometime! xD I've been amazed with all the talent I've seen from members here!

 

Oh wow, the paws look like they are going to literally come out the frames! lol Great job with the coloring!

 

I watched both of those videos, and your art work really resembles the style. I heard that song from Ah-Ha a lot of times, and I've never seen the official video until now. I had no idea that it was so artistic.

[CookieGoo]

 

I was bored so I decided to draw one of my favorite breeds of dog (An Alaskan Malamute). This was drawn in about an hour on Windows Paint. Considering that, I think it turned out pretty good. Enjoy!

[Raichi]

Oh, I love the synchronised bird-flap one :)

[Aquamentis12]

Sabs, Yeah, it blows my mind what kind of talent WAS out there. I really miss cartoons that were awesome in the graphics dept. I mean, sure, many anime have some awesome art. But the cut-rate stuff from the American cartoon companies still grinds my gears. >( I mean, if you're going to spend the time to draw something, why NOT make it look good? lol You know? ;) Yeah, that music video, and the credits link I shared still blow my mind. :D And Harry and the Hendersons is a good movie. XD

 

Cookiegoo, That's really impressive for being done in MS Paint! :) You should start a thread to show off your art too! :D

 

Raichi, I'm glad that you enjoyed the "synchronized flap" piece! :D

 

Here's my latest pencil test.

 

 

 

Working on part 1 of the Finale sequence. Obviously it involves this test. Still coloring the elements, again, obviously. lol xD I just felt like sharing this pencil test.

It's a bit rough right now. I drew the 4 main frames on a single sheet of paper. So it just stands to reason that there would be need for tweaking the elements a bit as I color and clean these up.

6 frames at 15/100ths of a second each. The final version will be about the same speed, but faster and more frames. ;)

G'night you guys! :)

 

EDIT:

Over 1700 mouse commands later, the color and texture test is ready. How does it look?

 

 

 

 

EDIT 2:

 

I did the neck, and I'm pretty happy with the blending. It's not perfect, but fur isn't perfect either, so. :P

 

There 18 frames in this test, timed at 6/100ths, 6/100ths, and 3/100ths of a second. Total length of the test is, same as the last test, 0.90 seconds.

Got some feedback? I'd love to hear it. I'm especially interested in what people think of the alignment. Thanks!

 

 

 

 

 

EDIT 3:

 

This is an old part of a sequence from an older video I once did, oh about 4 years ago now. I really like the explosion and the shower of sparks. Watch for the reflection in the crystal "floor". ;) Transparency layers are GOOD. lol

 

 

 

EDIT 4:

 

So here is a short, 20 frame animation test placing the Raccoon and Cricket characters against a very UNfinished scrolling Background. Just to see how the timing works out. I’ve only got a little under 5 seconds time to do this first part in, and there are 8 keyframes for background of the whole of part 1 of this final scene. This test is just transitioning from keyframe 1 to keyframe 2. You can even see the break in the sky marking where one ends and the other begins.

I’m changing the background shrubbery a bit to be more detailed. Going to work more on it later tonight. I’m about to head out to listen to some neat music by a near-local group. Should be fun! ^_^

 

[Mouseykins]

Brian you have a lot of talent! Your racoon animation looks amazing! :D

[Aquamentis12]

Thank you!

Since the video is now FINISHED! I hope you like it in the video as well! :D

 

Almost 20 months of work, 1920 individual frames, made from over 3,300 files in something like 218 folders. LOL Enjoy! ^_^

 

[Wildbreeze]

Oh my goodness, that was awesome! Good job. :D I especially love the beavers and the birds spiraling down.

[Aquamentis12]

Hey Wildbreeze! I'm glad you enjoyed the video! ^_^ The beavers were a real trick and a half! I forget how many layers that sequence had! I think the master file, uncompressed in my program, is about 80-100 megabytes when open with all the layers.

 

The birds spiraling was also tricky. I did a pencil test, you can see it on page one of this thread, this entry.

http://www.tdnforums.com/index.php?/topic/37438-art-and-animations/#entry696539

 

I've already started on the next project already, although this will be to: The Star Spangled Banner. Which is a royalty free song, so other than the music source, I don't have to credit anything/one else. I found a great instrumental version online, but no vocals. I'll probably end up doing those myself. Gotta practice though. LOL The All God's Creatures video, is the 3rd video I've done using audio from my Dad, uncles and grandpa's performance back in 1984. The rest of the songs, I have some ideas for some of them. But, I think a break from doing them, and also to practice my drawing people. And there will be people in the Star-Spangled Banner vid. I'm working on a prologue, similar to the one I made for the All God's Creatures vid. One master pic/file is 82 frames. The prologue starts in a classroom. About 22 layers are for scenery, characters, etc. The 60 other layers, are for the Seconds hand on the classroom's wall clock. LOL Yep, I made a wall clock that ticks every second. lol Even put the marks on the clock face. lol

 

I am also going to jump between this new project, and an old one. An old poetry-in-motion project I started a couple years ago. The poem is called "The Maze", and it's got a rather dark ending. People will probably dislike it because of that, but it only needs a few more sequences to be completed. The Maze was the first poem I wrote in highschool. So it's not GREAT anyway, but it's not bad either. ;) The reason that The Maze isn't finished, is because I got the dvd with The Burns Boys' performance, and after I got a copy of that, and finished cutting the video into the 25 songs and uploaded them to my other youtube channel. I wanted to work on stuff based on their performing. William McBride, The Garden Song, and now All God's Creatures. It's funny that the longest song of the bunch, is William McBride (aka The Green Fields of France), at just over 5 minutes. And yet All God's Creatures, about half the length even WITH the prologue, took about 3x longer to make, and something like 500 frames more. LOL

 

If there's still some interest, I'll post more tests here as I've been doing. ^_^ Just need some new posts now and then so I can post some fresh posts with the tests now and then. ^_^

 

Anyway, thanks for the comment Wildbreeze! I am always glad for constructive feedback/comments. ^_^ (btw cute new avatar!)

 

EDIT: Just a little something I'm working on. The sketch is probably from around 2008, but I thought it would be neat to color it up and maybe add some animation to it. Hope you guys enjoy it! I'll post the final version if/when I get it done. ;)

 

[Mouseykins]

That video is awesome Brian! You did a really good job and all the time and effort you put into it was worth it! :D

Your scarecrow is neat too! :)

[Aquamentis12]

Thank you! I'm glad you enjoyed the video and the Scarecrow! Here is something I JUST now finished. It was originally 1 background for a sequence in a project I'm working on. But I realized I needed more, so I added the beige-ish wall, the framed picture, and the background to the left where everything is in shadow. The main focus will be in front of these dual-combined backgrounds. And the Christmas tree on the left in the darkened room WILL sadly be cut out by the window-frame of the animation file of which these backgrounds will belong. Since so much will be cut out, I thought I'd upload the combined BGs for fun. ;) Hope you guys enjoy it! Constructive feedback is welcomed.

 

[Mouseykins]

Goodness that is lovely! Your snowman is missing something... perhaps arms and coal buttons. Whenever I see a snowman I think of Olaf lol. I blame the 3 foot tall plushie in my living room. :D

[Aquamentis12]

Just uploaded to Youtube, a VERY short animation with a few sound effects thrown in for good measure. 3.22 seconds, to be exact.

 

Well, the only sound I couldn't really find readily, was a flute playing the song "The Protestant Boys" that was royalty free and all that to go with the notes the Flute Whistles as it burns. So look up the song and imagine it included into this short clip.


Here are the lyrics from the song "The Old Orange Flute", that inspired this little animation.

Now, the old flute was doomed, and its fate was pathetic
'Twas fastened and burned at the stake as heretic
As the flames rolled around it they heard a strange noise
'Twas the old flute still whistling "The Protestant Boys"

I sketched the elements and scene quite some time ago, maybe within the last year or two. It was quite tricky and my master file has 64 layers to it. I know, it looks pretty simple, but with all the changes it ended up taking just that many layers. LOL

Done in Paint Shop pro 6, animated (and watermarked) in gif form in Animation Shop, and put to the sound effects in Magix Movie Edit Pro 2014.
Full disclosure on the fire, the various flames were available via Picture Tube function of PSP6, I just scaled and modified them.

 

 

 

Anyone wishing to hear the song "The Old Orange Flute", I recommend this video. 'Tis my late uncle performing the song waaaaaaaay back in 1984. ;)

[charelan]

Brian! Your creatures video is my favourite, it was so fun to watch! It is baffling to me to think about how much work was involved. Great job!

[Aquamentis12]

Thanks! That one was really hard, definitely the hardest and most detailed of the music videos I've made so far. lol Because it involved so many different animals that I never drawn, and I had to come up with the scenes and stuff to go with them. I forget how long it actually took from start to finish though. lol It's still not that great compared to what a real animator could do. But not bad for someone who's only been practicing since about late 2010, without having any lessons in animation. XD

 

I'm working on a piece at present that illustrates, and animates, the ending of a chapter of a story I've been writing, on and off since about 2003. It's the old trap door routine, only while the characters are plummeting, walls magically come out of the shaft walls to separate them. I can't really get my head around the way I wrote it vs making it visual. But I did do a pencil test that is kinda like what I'm envisioning....

 

 

Unfortunately, I'm having to redo most of the things in my art programs with the mouse. The alignment on this pencil test was just too far off. But, this WAS enough to kinda freak out a friend of mine who's got issues with Height/high places. LOL

 

At present I've got the background for this scene figured out. Next will be redoing/enacting the scene in this pencil test. The pencil tests also give me a chance to see things in motion and find mistakes that need correcting and such. I will edit in the current test a bit later. ;) Just looks like an endless falling, so far. lol ;)

 

Thanks for the comment! :D

 

EDIT: This is/was an early test I made to see how the plummeting corridor looks, and how it would look with that bar that's under my watermark. Full info is below the animated gif. Questions/comments are of course welcome. :) This test below, is related to the pencil test above this Edit. ;)

 

 

So, I finally decided to share one of the numerous animation tests I've done for this "project" I've been talking about for about the last week or so.. So yeah, this project is based off of the end of Chapter 13 of a story I've been writing for about 12 years now... Hey, I don't have muses, so I don't really get inspiration all that often for writing. ;)

Behold, my 3-frame plummet test! The bar in the middle is stationary only in this test, because I wanted to make sure that at the odd angle I placed it at, that the plummeting effect would be preserved even with that bar there.

Anyway, I'm actually MUCH farther than this. This was one of the first tests, once I got the brickwork for the plummeting done. The frame-size here is 30% of the original Master File. I have 3 Master Files done so far, minus the character data. Master File 1, is 33 Layers, and When open, sized at 124 Megabytes. Master File 2, is slightly smaller, at 97.3 Megabytes when open, and lastly, Master File 3, has a mere 32 Layers, yet boasts a surprising Open file-size of 169.6 Megabytes.

Just to get the stats up and give anyone who might be curious, how far along things are. I'm also revising my initial estimates of 150-200 frames, I'm not betting the MINIMUM will be well-over 200 frames.

I've done a couple video tests, but those aren't meant to be uploaded. They give too much away. ;P

Characters need to be added, but that's been really difficult, I have the hardest time drawing my own original characters, where as I can do a decent job on redrawing and drawing in general people I have some sort of model or guidelines to look at. Oh well, hope you guys enjoy this little test! :D

 

 

Additional EDIT: With the end of the AC I can get focusing back onto some artwork. I hope I'll have something to share soon! :D

[charelan]

Hi Brian! Looking forward to seeing your next project!!

[Aquamentis12]

Thanks Charelan! I'm working on some Backgrounds for a friend of mine. There are a lot to do, and most of them I can't upload until after my friend's project is done, at least by their rules. lol But this one, since it'll mostly be covered by foreground and characters, I convinced my friend to let me upload this one at least. lol This is Background Number 5. Not in order, but the 5th one I've done/completed. Took a lot longer to do than I first estimated. lol XD My own project is temporarily on hold. I'm trying to improve on some of my ability before I go back to it. ;) And these backgrounds are pretty good practice! I haven't drawn mountains in years. lol

 

 

[androidTurret]

Your animation is fantastic thus far, you manage to avoid a lot of the wobbling that most beginners have in their videos and implemented colours really well. What I can recommend is keeping an eye out for the book The Animator's Survival Kit if you haven't found it already and watching videos at half speed or even slower to study the motion. I can give you more tips from the class I took if you want or tips from the book I'm reading. Might get me off my butt and animating more too.

 

Oh, if you want to try 3D but don't want to or know how to make models Source Filmaker is free on steam with full tutorial videos on youtube and dozens of models and props in the workshop.

[Aquamentis12]

Thank you Androidturret! I'm pretty much self-experimental with animation. I DO have the revised edition of The Animator's Survival Guide, but I haven't been reading much of it lately. Been too busy with other things. :( Most of what I've done is through trial and error, as well as eyeballing a scene and making little changes/tweaks, until it looks good, or good enough. LOL My sketches aren't always that great, so I sometimes redraw lines with my mouse after the sketch is scanned to help clean the lines up. I use an ancient program, Paint Shop Pro 6, which is about 16-17 years old. Amazing it still installs and works on newer versions of Windows. ;) I also have Paint Shop Pro 7, which has Animation Shop bundled with it, though I only use that one now and then, such as for the sun in both the below pics. I prefer the interface in 6. :D Animation shop, is fun though, and all my gifs are made through that. Some of my hand-done animations do jitter a bit. But I am just an untrained amateur.

 

I'd definitely be interested in hearing some tips. Typically, I sketch things on paper, scan them in, and then color and edit them. The above Mountain pic would be a pretty fair example of that. A friend of mine is working on a project and they asked me to do the background art. That's the only one I've gotten "clearance" to share publicly. lol At least before the project is done, which will still be quite a while. Because of stuff they have to put together and do on their end of the project.

 

I've been working on a project lately, crossing over Snoopy from the "Peanuts" comic, by Charles Schulz. And some from the original Thundercats cartoon of the 1980s. I'd forgotten I hadn't shared the still pics here. I'm nearly done with the series. 8 sections, but 10 pics. I'm also working on a special way of presenting them that I'm still figuring out. But here are the first 2 pics in the lot.

 

 

 

As we all know, and as the Flying Ace, Snoopy's nemesis is The Red Baron. This is pic one depicting Snoopy, hot on the trail of the red..... Feliner?! Has he made a mistake? Or for what reason might he be demanding the Feliner land?

 

 

In this 2nd pic, The Feliner pulls away, probably to get some maneuvering room and find a safe place to land.

 

There are 10 pics in total. I'm still tweaking a few of them though. ;)

[hriven]

OMG! (✿☉｡☉) I really like your animations! they go really smoothly!

[Aquamentis12]

17 hours ago, hriven said:

OMG! (✿☉｡☉) I really like your animations! they go really smoothly!

@hrivenWell THANK YOU! I've still got a LONG way to go. In art and animation. I'm nowhere near Pro-level, and I've still got a lot of improvement to do compared to some people I'm acquainted with who also create animations. I'm definitely one of my own harshest critics. Always trying to improve. It'd be nice to have a mentor or something that could teach me more about art and animation as I've had no formal training in either. lol (I think it kinda shows. LOL) And since there's a reply here now (thanks again) I can do another post with some stuff I've worked on in the last year.

This is a background a friend requested for a project of their's. I only had about 2 weeks to do it. Though I didn't find out when it was due until about 5 days before the due date from the friend. LOL

I had been out of the groove for BGs by this time, but it still turned out fairly well. Creating the store fronts AND filling them was really a pain, and a challenge. lol

This next pic, an animation test, is for a new music video I started for my Youtube Channel. It's STILL only in the pencil test phase right now. Got a wee bit out of ideas, or needing to learn and practice more before I can do more parts for that vid. ;)
Come to think of it, I think I added a couple more frames after I had uploaded this test. Oh well. LOL

Ok, and LAST pic I'll share in this post. While I'm kinda stuck on the music vid for the above animation test, I started some scenery for another vid. It's a sunny day in olde Downtown Dublin. lol No characters inserted into THIS scene, I wanted to just show the BG for now. But I've got the characters for this scene mostly designed and colors are on my mind. I did this one very recently.


I'm currently trying to learn more about a free program called OpenToonz.
https://opentoonz.github.io/e/index.html
A POWERFUL program that is now free and open source. Toonz Harlequin would be it's pay version. Anyway, it can also convert Raster pics to Vector! I'm not very familiar with Vector, and the program has some odd layouts, names for tools and terms. So it's taking much longer than I'd prefer to learn and experiment. But hey, can't beat the price. ;)

I don't have an Easter pic for this year, but Happy Easter to anyone, and everyone, who celebrates it!

[hriven]

You are welcome dear, I know it's kind difficult to learn on your own, I learned that way, and the idea of the mentor is a good one. 

The background looks amazing, I really love it, the perspective is so good. Happy easter for You too!

[Acesty6]

Animation and arts are so good talents it is  pencils and modern technology can lead into a successful artist someday both animation and arts can give you awesome idea on how to produce next inspiration to others practicing and focus is needed  professional tutorials must be a good start basics and ideas are a must thing to remember good luck everyone i hope i help a little 

[Aquamentis12]

Thanks guys, been awhile since I last posted in this thread.  Haven't had a lot to share lately/sadly.

But here is my Halloween project for 2018! Didn't even know I was going to do one until last Friday night! LOL

Enjoy!

 

[Duma]

It's cute Aquamentis! With some nice picked music/sounds it would make a nice Halloween e-card!