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...)

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)

21. Animation GIF

This week I'm planing to finish one of the sequence (BE) in line test. It should be quite doable, but I'd like also to finish the shading on this sequence...

It's quite exiting to see a sequence build up shot by shot. It's the moment where you have to hope that the edit is right!

And because everybody like them, here's a GIF:

20. LineTest

Last week I started animation, I did 200 drawings in two days, tough. I'm probably going to finish the sequence I'm working on and then change a little bit the technique I'm using.

I will try to find a way to make animation a bite more... expressive, by animating straight with a pen.

It's going to be harder, but will save tones of paper and hopefully will make the drawings look much more  "alive".

In the mean time let me introduce you to my LineTest, it's a setup that allows you to take pictures of drawings with a consistent lighting and framing.

You can check your animation much more quickly then when scanning drawing. When I say my line test I mean the one my friend Lucas lent me, thanks mate.

I'm using a D80 to take the pictures and icarus camera control to control the camera from the computer (Tethered)

Here it is in action: [vimeo 50990280 w=500 h=281]

13. RIP

My computer died last week... This is not a good news, I'll have to get a new one, which is not going to help the finance of the film.

Unfortunately I wasn't able to edit the little making of I wanted to show you.

I got some secondary characters animated last week, and I was aiming at comping a shot completely, in order to have an idea of the final look.

All this is going to be postponed until I get a new machine. I'm going to focus on backgrounds again.

This is a good opportunity to get lots of them done.

Here is some background characters animation.

[vimeo http://www.vimeo.com/46446181 w=500&h=281]

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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.