50. (Up)Market

The rhythm here has got quite intense, so I didn't have time to post last week. I've been animating a lot and preparing a few thing (for Mcbess x the dudes factory "Dead Ahead" and printing my own stuff)

So This Sunday, Simone and I will be in brick lane's Sunday (up)Market, to sell prints, screen prints, books and T-Shirts! We'll be there all day.

In pure white trash tradition, I'll be stocking beers under the stall, so if you're in East London, this Sunday, come and say hello, have a beer with us and maybe buy some shit!

More about the film, I animated the first shots fully on computer (I'll talk more about why I did it on computer on next week post: brushes part 02) and I'm really happy with the result. It was extremely fast and quite exciting, but I'm glad I'm animating on paper.

48. Brushes! part 1

Allright, so before I decided weather or not it was possible to do any secondary animation on computer, I had to check that I could replicate the drawings fully digitally. For this I would need a brush (in photoshop, or what ever other software) that replicates the way my pen behave on paper.

This actually means that I need to replicate what the drawn lines look like once scanned.

Step 1: What to replicate

I start by drawing various type of strokes: Slow, fast, overlapping, light and heavy strokes.

Step 2: Understanding parameters

The amount of parameters can be overwhelming  but if you take them one by one it's actually straight forward.

- First you need to choose your brush size to match the pen. You won't be able to change the size of your brush once its finished, it will look odd. If you need a bigger brush, youll need to scan a bigger pen and create a new brush.

From now on stroke on the right is pen stroke on the left is "cg"

I've set the hardness to 33% because the pen is not drawing perfectly sharp.

Note: the size of your brush depends on the size of your document (because it's set in pixels) here i'm working at 300 dpi. If I was at 600 dpi i'd have to scale my brush up twice.

I keep it round because it's a classic pen.

- Then lets set the shape dynamics:

The size jitter "randomise" the size of the brush in the range you set (here the brush can be 50% bigger or smaller). The size is also control by the pen pressure and I've put a minimum size so the brush doesn't disappear when I'm drawing lightly. (Here you need to match the diameter of your lightest pen stroke)

The size jitter represent the flow of ink of your pen and the randomness due to the paper, not the wobbliness of your stroke due to how you draw. I am not using the angle jitter and roundness jitter since my brush is round.

-  Scattering moves the brush in different axis, i am not using it here.

- Textures and Dual Brush aren't useful in this case.

- Color Dynamics

Color dynamics gives your stroke a more natural/scanned look. Scanner never scan black as black, it's multicolor darkness. Here my foreground color is a very dark blue and my background color is a very dark red. They are being mixed randomly at 57%.

A brush is just a succession of dots really close to each other. What the randomizing option does is give each dot a different value, in hue, brightness and saturation. The purity seams to multiply the effect. At -100 the brush turns black and white...

Note that if you un-tick "apply per tip" the color changes is applied to the whole stroke. It can give some nice effects.

- Transfer

Here you'll need to set the opacity and flow of your brush. As you can see on the strokes on the left, the pen doesn't cover the paper regularly (more or less ink comes up).

The opacity and flow are both transparency but one is applied by stroke, the other one is applied as you draw. With opacity you need to lift your pen and draw again to have a color twice less transparent whereas with flow if you draw twice in the same place in a single stroke, this place will be twice less transparent.

The important thing at this stage is to play with the pressure of your wacom pen. You might end up really easily with a completely transparent brush when your not putting a lot of pressure on your pen. You need to set the minimum opacity to something that suite you.

- brush pose is some kind of 3d ness of your pen on the wacom. lets not bother with it.

- The next parameters have no options. I change them on/off as I draw depending on the effect I want to give:

noise:

Adds sharp noise to the stroke.

- Wet edge

Makes the center of the brush lighter and the edges darker

- build-up is some kind of airbrush option.

- Smoothing smooth you brush stroke, I wouldn't use it with a tablet if you want a hand drawn feel...

At this point you should have a brush fairly similar to your pen:

red arrows show the cg brush strokes.

The only option i couldn't find is to have more opacity/flow at the beginning of a stroke, I think it would look much more natural. If anyone knows how to do this, let me know!

Sorry for the bad english, this took more time then i though and I need to go back to work...

Cheerios

47. Yiynova MSP19U

After reading Frenden review a couple of month ago I was really keen on trying out the MSP19U, a cintiq alternative at only 30% of the price.

It was out of stock for a long time, so last Sunday, when it was back on Amazon, I ordered one. I just got it yesterday.

Since lots of people seamed interested, I thought I would share what I think of it, here.

My overall opinion is GOT FOR IT. After drawing several hours on it, it's just a perfect tool.

I never used a new cintiq so I can't compare the Yiynova (pronounced yinova apparently) and the new cintiq. I did try an older model of cintiq and was not convinced, to much parallax, lag and muddy color, the cintiq was also too heavy and big.

But here is what you need to know about the MSP19U,and what probably justify the lower price.

Pros:

-Price (only 680£ with delivery)

-Size (quite small and light, you can draw with it siting on your lap in front of telly)

-Pen feels better then wacom IMO (smaller tip holder) even though when you open it to put the battery it feels like a kid toy.

- Screen is solid glass and looks better then a cintiq.

- Drawing ecperience is perfect, no lag, no jitter, pression is awesome.

- The tablet seams like good quality, nothing like fisher price or anything.

Cons:

- Set up: It took me a while to figure out how to get the right resolution with the mac. TIP: turn your mac of before connecting it, and then on. Don't just do a restart.

- Viewing angle is rubbish, you can't use it as a proper monitor, it's just for drawing. When you sit back you can see a gradient. But when you draw it's perfect.

-  Cursor jitter when your not drawing and the pen is on the screen, it's not a problem for drawing, but when you use the slider on a browser or highlight something, it's quite obvious.

- No space for keyboard: the tablet touches the desk so you cant put your keyboard underneath. It means that your body is 20/25cm away from the actual screen. A bit like if someone put your plate a bit too far. I'm thinking of building a little stand to be able to slide the keyboard under the tablet.

- The handle to get the tablet up and down is not accesible enough to change the angle while working. Durring 5hours of drawings, I never felt like I should move the tablet up and down.

- I have one dead pixel. And I read of other people having one. While it's not a deal breaker, it's worth noting.

Over all, most of the cons are not related to the drawing experience. So as a drawing tool it's perfect. The difference is the same as getting a sport car and a safe car, they both do the job, but one has leather sits, A/C and buttons to change the mirrors ...

If the choice is No Cintinq or MSP19U, I definitely  recommend the MSP19U. Same if you're wondering between intus and msp19u. The MSP19U is a professional quality tool, not a cheap replacement.

Regarding the film, I will be using the tablet for backgrounds elements like véhicules, for sfx, and probably for the horse. I made photoshop brushes that reacts the same way as my pen. But that's next week topic ;)

In the mean time here is the first drawing I did on the MSP19U, I let you guess witch one is CG and witch one is pen: (it's big, if you click on it you can see the details...)

46. Screen Print

Last saturday at dawn (10.30am) completely hangover, I walked more then an hour in the sun to pick up the screen prints. And man was it worth it! They are brilliant. It's my first screen print and I love it, I love it so much I might screen print some backgrounds from the film.

I will start sending them on monday to a few lucky backers.

I printed with Atom Printing, I highly recommend them, great work, fast and affordable.

Here's the print:

If you wanna get one, they're £20, just chuck me an email.

And here's how screen prints are made, it's pretty rad!

And a video that shows the screen printing process, nothing to do whit atom printing or the film, it's just a youtube video :)

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZxXdndoas94&w=420&h=315]

42. Same old, Same old

Damn, I've been dead busy with playing fancy dressing and drinking (for the live action of the film, obviously - well mainly) that I forgot to post last week! Anyway there is much more black on the character now, and shading takes twice longer... If you want to start a 2d film, hand drawn, here's an advice, make everything white! Damn that black T-Shirt is killing me.

So you can forgive me, here's a little GIF, the walking drunk (it's not the shot that caused me lots of pain):

39. Rewarding

I've got around 150 packets to prepare for the Kistarter, so I'm starting early. (And this as nothing to do with the fact that I don't feel like shooting more live action today, NOTHING) The lucky 15  first fellas that pledged for the book and that sent me their address will receive their book very soon.

I'm sure the post man is gonna LOOOVE me.

And to celebrate this I made a GIF, obviously. (Might take a while to load)

34. Kickstarter Update

Well the Kickstarter had an amazing start! We reached the initial goal in only 24 hours!

The initial goal was to cover the cost of finishing the film animation and the off costs, like festival inscription.

The new goal now includes the compositing of the film (putting all the animation layers together) and the sound recording!

I hope we can make it! So keep sharing the love!

Also I feel like the T-shirts don't get as much attention as they deserve, It's probably because I didn't talk about them in the video, so here we go:

I'm planing to print the T-shirt with the AMAZING Dude Factory, this means that the printing quality will be beautiful.

They print on American apparel cuts, Male and Female!  You can also choose a variety of colors. Check it out, HERE, And it's only £25!

33. KickStarter is READY - Trailer

Ahoy! "Animating Deadman's Reach" KickStarter is ready to go live!

I will be launching it THIS THURSDAY, valentine's day.

And it will include Awesome Rewards!

Don't miss it, Thuersday, for 30 days only! I will be trying to raise 7000£.

The preparation was bloody intense, but at least you''ll be able to enjoy making fun of me in the KickStarter video!

32. Music Rights

Ok, where to start with this... So it's xmas and out of self absolution I decided to finely deal with the Music Rights. The film is based on my sketch book witch contains shit loads of lyrics from songs I like. To give the  short film the same spirit, I asked my musical friends to cover some famous songs.

Since I'm planning to get it into festivals and/or on the net, I need to clear the music rights.

I started writing that post and after half an hour it was 3 pages long... Music Rights are somewhat complicated.

I'll try to sum up:

How does it work?

2 différents rights/licence:

-  synchronization licence: is the licence to use the lyrics / partition / writing. It's the right to use a song if you re-record it yourself.

- master use licence: is the licence to use a specific version of a song by a specific artist on a specific album.

Those licences are for using on images/film. To use them on a format (i.e. CD, tape, whatever) its yet another story.

So in my case I mainly need Synchronisation licences since I'm going to use covers.

How to get them?

Publishers hold the rights on behalf  of the artist. So licenses for a same song can be hold by different publishers. Lets say 3 artists wrote a song, and one sang it, the right can potentially be hold by 4 publishers.

To know witch publisher holds witch right you need to go on those 3 websites: www.ascap.com, www.bmi.com and www.sesac.com and find the specific song you want. You need to go on all 3 of them because there repository are not the same... Sweet.

You then need to contact the publishers and ask them for the licence you want. In the case of Warner and Chappell there's an online form to fill, it's pretty strait forward but quite specific. You will need to explain how you're gonna use the music, what is the film about and other stuff.

For some other publishers (for exemple EMI) you need to contact them directly by email or phone.

Why get them? 

When you aim at having your film in festival, it is mandatory . If your aiming at showing it to your mum, at a wedding or to a small youtube audience, you should ask for them, obviously, but it's probably not worth the time and energy  you and they'll spend.

The reason why I'm getting them is because my friends are spending time making covers and I want to be sure to be able to use them.

Usually producers deal with the music rights and I thing that a bit of négociation is involved. I contacted a few publisher and I haven't heard from them yet (Xmas brake I think) I hope the price they'll ask me for will be reasonable, that is between 0 and 50 dollars, but until they contact me, I have no idea what's gonna happen... STRESSFUL!

we'll see.

31. It's Christmas!

I'll be enjoying the Xmas break for the next 2 weeks! I'll use that time to refine the film edit, add some voices and music, and get my KickStarter ready.

But in the mean time:

30. Used pens

Here's the fellas i've used since i started the film, 30 weeks ago.

23. Kick-Starter

I'm seriously considering putting DeadMan's Reach on KickStarter. The main reason being that I'm starting week 23 of a production that was suppose to be 24 weeks. And I can't see how I can finish 7 mins of animation in 1 week... So I need to extend the production quite dramatically...

So what's this Kick-Starter thing?? Well kick-starter is a founding platform for creative projects.

Basically you pre-sell stuffs before  making a project, and you use the money you got from the sell to actually create the project. i.e. For an album, you pre-sell your album, then make the album, then send the album to the people how pre-bought it.

It's a one month process where you need as much word of mouth as possible to reach the amount you need to do (finish) the project. It's a all or nothing. If the amount is not reached you pay nothing and the project get nothing!

It's kind of what I started doing with the sell of the DeadMan's Reach sketch book, but on a completely different scale. (I would have done a Kick-Starter straight from the start but It wasn't available in the UK at the time).

For all of you who bought the book already there will be special, cheaper stuff!

Here are the products (Rewards) I would be selling:

The book, obviously:

T-Shirts:

Original Animation Drawings, like this one:

Original BackGrounds, like that one:

And some more surprises!

As always let me know what you think.

19. Title

I finished the new animatic, and it's getting somewhere now. This week i'll try to shoot as many live action as possible and shade a few backgrounds.

This week-end, Ben Franklin Jr is coming to London to record the main character voices. Fun times!

So far I only have a TASCAM DR-07 to record, no extra mic, so if anyone as a good voice Mic I could borrow that would be awesome!

For this week entertainment here are some title designs I played with:

[vimeo 47525090 w=500 h=281]

Let me know wich ones you like:

Post a comment

18. Animatic, Again

The Backgrounds being almost complete, I spent last week working on the animatic and script again. I added a few shots, changed some timing, and started working on the voices. I'm going to keep on this week.

I'm recording the main character's voices 2 weeks from now, and i'll need everything ready.

I'm using an A/V script, A for audi and V for video (Duhh). Really useful:

15. Win a Book!

I just finished this background, and it's quite weird, so I thought it would be fun to give a book away to someone that manage to guess what it is.

Like the facebook page (Deadman on facebook) and then Send me your answer HERE (quentin.vien@gmail.com), and I'll randomly selected the winner on sunday night,

and announce it on this page on next monday.

You have until Sunday midnight!

The winner will get the book number 99, signed with it's donkey post card and access to the deadman's mailing list that gives access to special secret shit.

Spread the word, on facebook, twitter, google + (do people use that?), smoke signals, etc...

And if you can't wait until monday, because you really really need to have the book, you can buy it here: Help Finance the film.

Or simply read about it. (you should buy it though)

For those of you who already have the book, It would make a good present for your grandmas, so I'll be happy to send it to whoever you ask me to.

post a comment

10. Change in Plan

So last week I did a proper schedule, and as expected, It freaked me out... It came to 45 days of work at a pace far from the one I'm at. So I had to re-think the way I work.

I was drawing one Background at the time. The process was, Print the storyboard on an A3, look for references, Draw a detailed pencil drawing, Ink It and then shade it.

Each process is fairly easy and relatively efficient. However by working this way I was loosing a lot of time, wondering what to do, looking for things on the internet, getting distracted by facebook etc.

I would also lose time in between each steps, out of procrastination or lack of motivation. If It was 8.30 pm and I wanted to work till 9, I wouldn't start a new drawing, other wise it would easily end up being 11...

Plus It meant that I needed to finish every background completely to be able to animate every shot.

The new plan is more efficient because I have lots of task to choose from, and I can turn off the computer during a whole day if I want to.

The new process is print lots of BGs (maybe 10), look for all the references needed for those BG, then draw and ink all those 10 BG. I keep the shading for later. The shading process will run until the end of production.

This way in a few days I should be able to have the outlines of all the background, and so I will be able to start animation at any time.

My animators friends also recommended to keep other things to do while animating, to have something to relax my head with.

I managed to do 8 backgrounds in one day an a Half!

This week I'm in the contry side, without electricity, internet, or even cell phone coverage, so I will focus on shading those 8 back grounds.

Hopefully I'll finish all of them!

Here are this week 8 inked Bg:

As always feel free to comment HERE

7. Time-lapse and Animation test.

Exciting post today as I finally have a drawing that will appear in the final film! I finished a first background and did a little animation test last week.

Here is me drawing the BG:

[vimeo 44107554 w=500 h=375]

I have to animate up to 6 minutes of animation in a very short time,

this is equivalent of 4320 drawings in pencils and 4320 in pen...

Lets say A LOT. To be on schedule I had to find a quick method to animate.

Since I'm not a proper animator it needed to be easy enough and reliable.

The obvious choise was rotoscoping, i.e. Drawing on top of video.

The problem with this technic, is that it doesn't feel right, you're missing the artist interpretation.

I decided to tweak this technic. I needed the Rotoscop to be able to draw easily, not to guide the movement,  i needed only the poses and not the timings.

So this is what I do:

I film the subject in slow motion (this is usually me moving slowly), with very specific poses.

Then I re-time the animation by keeping only the frames that are relevent to the animation I want.

Giving you a video close to Pixilation. But with the ability to film it on your own (quite important in my case)

Finally I trace the drawing on top of the video.

Here is the result, obviously a drunk skeleton:

[vimeo 44118553 w=500 h=281]

This week plan is to start the bigest BGs, and maybe animate a background animation to a final state.

6. Thank You

I just got back from Berlin, where I spent an awesome time with the guys at the Dudes Factory. You really should check their website!

In the mean time I didn't work on the film, but did manage to finish the THANK YOU page,

have a look at who bought the book so far, and discover great art works!

This week plan is a bit hard-core, I need to get the studio ready for 2D animation and Rotoscop.

Plus finish at least one Background to production level. And ideally have an animation test ready.

I'd better get to work then...

This is a preview of my rotoscop device, HIGH TECH believe me!

Deadman's coffee: Raven's brew interview

Well it's moving fast. Here is an interview I gave for Raven Brew, makers of the Deadman's Reach Coffee, the coffee that inspired it all.

I hope my answers will give you some insight into the Deadman's project and build up excitement. (I kind of have to make the movie now. Damn!)

Have a look at their websites and other brews, those coffee makers have just the right spirit.

Awesome art works too.

Enjoy it!

Stay Tuned

This is it, after a few month of writing, I'm happy to anounce that I am planing to start the production of my short film around April 2012.

I will log the progress here, so stay tune!