Dji - Death fails. The prequel to the cartoon Roma (Making off)
This is our 4th job. We did it for about six months. This is a decent time, and during this time we have accumulated enough material that we would like to share.
Of course, with the idea. In general, it is rather difficult to describe the process of creating an idea, so we will assume that it appeared by itself. And inspired, we began to work.
The whole stage of work on the cartoon can be officially divided into several stages:
Let's start with preproduction
')
At this stage, further work is structured, a script is written, characters are developed, a storyboard is drawn, and animatic is done. In that order.
The script is a bunch of scattered crumpled paper. These are clubs of tobacco smoke. These are red eyes from overwork. This is a broken computer. And one more. Approximately in such an atmosphere a script was written for this episode. You can read it, it lies, it does not hide from anyone, right here .
Now turn for the Persians. According to our idea in the cartoon there should be three:
As Ji was created, we already wrote in our blog , I would like to draw attention to the other two characters.
In general, the work on the character begins with the drawing of black and white sketches. They are drawn as much as necessary to the director said: "Here! I like it! ”In the case of Doc, the situation was similar. And the words "Everything! I like it! ”Flew here on this version.
But how many options were offered to the director.
It is necessary to work out not only the figures, but also the faces of the characters. We have to draw not two and not three options, but much more (the director is fastidious). A lot of material is left behind the scenes.
As a result, when the most suitable character is chosen, he is decorated. Why do it if it is not yet modeled? A painted 2D character is needed to figure out which character will be in the end. In pencil it is not clear, and there is no volume.
The most important criterion when choosing a character is far from the technique of its execution, but emotionality. Those. it is not always important HOW the Persian is drawn, it is important whether he conveys the vision and idea of ​​the director.
Moving on. Bean.
Bob is a workaholic trucker. I exhausted myself so much that I even fell asleep at the wheel. As a result, and met with Ji. This character is harder than Doc. All its complexity is that it is in several, so to speak, states:
By the way, we made Bob in the car at the very end of the cartoon’s production, literally a couple of days before the project’s delivery, since felt that the need to strengthen the beginning of the cartoon.
But in what form do the characters appear to us when we “get acquainted” with them, i.e. those characters that the director chose from all the options.
These are the ones who could become our truckers.
In general, all this needs to be invented, drawn and implemented, and it is also necessary to draw the emotions of the character.
And here is the result of our work
But if, with Bob’s usual states, everything is, in principle, understandable, then with a ghost, you can finally make a complete ambush. As it or he should look like, at that time it was not clear to us.
We tried to draw on paper. It turned out, to say the least, strange. Maybe for a 2d cartoon and it would go away, but for 3d cartoon it’s absolutely nothing. They began to think about what to do next, and, frankly, they decided to do what they did. After a lot of experiments, we came to an acceptable result.
Nothing super unusual, but the whole ghost was going in 2 packets. Body and Vibes - Maya. Refractions for character and color - Nuke.
It turned out an interesting result.
Everything! With the characters finished. Next, you need a storyboard - the next stage of preproduction.
Initially, the storyboard is done in black and white, and then filled with color. At this stage, we can understand in what scale the whole cartoon will be made, what will be the atmosphere in the frame, and approximately what should be the lighting.
Of course, ideally, once you make such a storyboard, you can not bathe about further creative over visual, but this is not our way. In any case, we are reworking, changing, improving. As a result, the result may not be the one that was originally expected.
Initial ideas may still remain “original ideas,” and something else, changed, will appear in the cartoon. That’s how it happened with this cartoon, and the color storyboard you see doesn’t quite match the final result.
Computer graphics is a combination of creativity and technology.
Before you begin to animate any character, you need to make a setup: adjust all controls and make sure that the character can do everything that our esteemed Director needs. We do not use any ready-made solutions and we do all the rigs ourselves.
Having made all the necessary preparations for the character before the animation, it's time to think about where all the action will take place. Those. need to make the environment.
In our previous cartoons, we tried to save time and made all backgrounds painted. Those. the artist drew a picture and put 3D characters on top of it, all sorts of effects and other things. The result was a very interesting symbiosis between 2D and 3D graphics. Everything is great, but this technology implies some limitations: besides the fact that a 3D character has difficulty interacting with 2D objects, we cannot move the camera too much, so you can forget about the spans and turns of the camera.
In this cartoon, we decided not to limit ourselves and do everything completely in 3D. This does not mean at all that you no longer need to draw 2D pictures for backgrounds. Pictures are used as samples for lighting, location and color of objects. Based on these references, you can proceed to texturing backups.
When the characters are ready, setups for them and the environment, you can start the animation.
Over this animated cartoon worked 4 and a half animator.
Good animation is obtained when the animator gets used to the role of his character, i.e. we can assume that the animator is a theater or movie actor.
In short, the joke is that each animator understands the movements of the character in his own way. It turns out that the same character moves differently from them. In order to prevent such an ambush, we are shooting video references. What it is? We take a camera, take a few volunteers and make them become our characters: think like them, move like them, and so on like them.
What is this thing for? So that everyone has a single idea of ​​the movements of our characters. By the way, there is a Studio Director or Animation Supervisor in our studio. And for good reason he receives a salary, it is he who ensures that everything is clearly done.
Animation is located approximately in the middle of production. It remains to visualize everything.
Since the author of the article, i.e. I do visualization, I can say that this is the coolest moment of production. At this stage, everything takes on color. How it is done in the world:
1. Artist paints 3D picture.
2. The visualizer repeats the lighting scheme and the atmosphere as in the picture.
How it is done here:
1. Artist paints 3D picture.
2. The visualizer repeats the lighting scheme and the atmosphere as in the picture ... and it does not work. Those. it turns out, but in animation everything looks not so cool as on one frame: some school with additional light sources will come out, then the artist did not calculate the correct lighting scheme, therefore in the next frames, when the camera rotates, the whole picture behaves unpredictably.
Something like that.
But in fact, this is absolutely not a problem. Since in the end, both the artist and the visualizer sit down together and make a product that suits everyone.
Visualization is one of the most resource-intensive stages of production. And when we started counting shots, we realized that we could not do without a render farm. Thus, we purchased a render farm with the help of Kaspersky Lab. Small, only 10 computers, but, despite this, she helped us a lot. Without it, we would probably still render a cartoon.)))
In addition to iron, software that renders is also important. For some time, we thought about what to use for this, and decided, without further ado, to render all of V-Ray. He wonderfully fit into our pipeline and helped save a lot of time.
Visualization is not the last stage in production. She goes hand in hand with the composite. At the compositing stage, everything is going to pile up. Considering that rendering is done at the very end of production, the next thing happens. The first 70% of the time you work on a project, people work more or less relaxed. They see that there is still a lot of time ahead, you can engage in creative search, you can do several versions of the same animation, and so on. This leads to the fact that at the final stage of visualization there is less time than planned, and there is no possibility to make any mistakes.
Composers, especially visualizers, work in a very hard mode. Often there is such a thing, we just can not make any changes to the lighting, the atmosphere of the picture and so on. We have to modify the existing material. So, at the stage of composite we do it - we modify what came to us at the stage of rendering (the color of the jersey fabric of the doctor, it turned out to be dark green in us, but according to the director’s idea it should have been a different shade, I don’t remember what Instead of re-rendering all the shots with the doctor from the 3D package, we just changed the color in all the shots).
In fact, editing a cartoon is not a separate process. It stretches over the entire production process. Only at the end you can correct some roughness.
That's all.
Congratulations, you read it.
And now a little bonus. What the small pieces could not say in the post itself.
In the process of developing characters, we devoted maximum time to the development and drawing of the following items:
1. Watch Ji - worked out in great detail, because this is such a gadget that our hero will have in the next series.
2. Spit - if you noticed, the spit blade connects with the shaft is not a simple "heel". We have this bony hand that repeats the hand of Ji himself.
The same attention to detail is present in the shot where the Dock is in the office. He oooooochen rare books. They were released in small editions - just one copy. Therefore, he saves them and will not sell for anything. One of such books is “Forgotten Recipes for Sandwiches” .
Also in the cartoon there is a HINT FOR THE SECOND MULT. Well, what's the hint? One of the main characters of the second series appears in the first episode. But where he is - we will not say.
And now you can see what happened ...
PS: We thank Kaspersky Lab for help in purchasing a cartoon RenderFarm.
You can watch our other cartoons on our Youtube channel .
So how did it all begin?
Of course, with the idea. In general, it is rather difficult to describe the process of creating an idea, so we will assume that it appeared by itself. And inspired, we began to work.
The whole stage of work on the cartoon can be officially divided into several stages:
- Preproduction
- Production
- Postproduction
Let's start with preproduction
')
Preproduction
At this stage, further work is structured, a script is written, characters are developed, a storyboard is drawn, and animatic is done. In that order.
Script
The script is a bunch of scattered crumpled paper. These are clubs of tobacco smoke. These are red eyes from overwork. This is a broken computer. And one more. Approximately in such an atmosphere a script was written for this episode. You can read it, it lies, it does not hide from anyone, right here .
Now turn for the Persians. According to our idea in the cartoon there should be three:
As Ji was created, we already wrote in our blog , I would like to draw attention to the other two characters.
In general, the work on the character begins with the drawing of black and white sketches. They are drawn as much as necessary to the director said: "Here! I like it! ”In the case of Doc, the situation was similar. And the words "Everything! I like it! ”Flew here on this version.
Pencil dock
But how many options were offered to the director.
It is necessary to work out not only the figures, but also the faces of the characters. We have to draw not two and not three options, but much more (the director is fastidious). A lot of material is left behind the scenes.
As a result, when the most suitable character is chosen, he is decorated. Why do it if it is not yet modeled? A painted 2D character is needed to figure out which character will be in the end. In pencil it is not clear, and there is no volume.
The most important criterion when choosing a character is far from the technique of its execution, but emotionality. Those. it is not always important HOW the Persian is drawn, it is important whether he conveys the vision and idea of ​​the director.
Moving on. Bean.
Bob is a workaholic trucker. I exhausted myself so much that I even fell asleep at the wheel. As a result, and met with Ji. This character is harder than Doc. All its complexity is that it is in several, so to speak, states:
- Live in the car
- In resuscitation half dead
- And finally, the ghost.
By the way, we made Bob in the car at the very end of the cartoon’s production, literally a couple of days before the project’s delivery, since felt that the need to strengthen the beginning of the cartoon.
But in what form do the characters appear to us when we “get acquainted” with them, i.e. those characters that the director chose from all the options.
These are the ones who could become our truckers.
In general, all this needs to be invented, drawn and implemented, and it is also necessary to draw the emotions of the character.
And here is the result of our work
But if, with Bob’s usual states, everything is, in principle, understandable, then with a ghost, you can finally make a complete ambush. As it or he should look like, at that time it was not clear to us.
We tried to draw on paper. It turned out, to say the least, strange. Maybe for a 2d cartoon and it would go away, but for 3d cartoon it’s absolutely nothing. They began to think about what to do next, and, frankly, they decided to do what they did. After a lot of experiments, we came to an acceptable result.
Nothing super unusual, but the whole ghost was going in 2 packets. Body and Vibes - Maya. Refractions for character and color - Nuke.
It turned out an interesting result.
Everything! With the characters finished. Next, you need a storyboard - the next stage of preproduction.
Initially, the storyboard is done in black and white, and then filled with color. At this stage, we can understand in what scale the whole cartoon will be made, what will be the atmosphere in the frame, and approximately what should be the lighting.
Of course, ideally, once you make such a storyboard, you can not bathe about further creative over visual, but this is not our way. In any case, we are reworking, changing, improving. As a result, the result may not be the one that was originally expected.
Initial ideas may still remain “original ideas,” and something else, changed, will appear in the cartoon. That’s how it happened with this cartoon, and the color storyboard you see doesn’t quite match the final result.
Character setup
Computer graphics is a combination of creativity and technology.
Before you begin to animate any character, you need to make a setup: adjust all controls and make sure that the character can do everything that our esteemed Director needs. We do not use any ready-made solutions and we do all the rigs ourselves.
Environment
Having made all the necessary preparations for the character before the animation, it's time to think about where all the action will take place. Those. need to make the environment.
In our previous cartoons, we tried to save time and made all backgrounds painted. Those. the artist drew a picture and put 3D characters on top of it, all sorts of effects and other things. The result was a very interesting symbiosis between 2D and 3D graphics. Everything is great, but this technology implies some limitations: besides the fact that a 3D character has difficulty interacting with 2D objects, we cannot move the camera too much, so you can forget about the spans and turns of the camera.
In this cartoon, we decided not to limit ourselves and do everything completely in 3D. This does not mean at all that you no longer need to draw 2D pictures for backgrounds. Pictures are used as samples for lighting, location and color of objects. Based on these references, you can proceed to texturing backups.
When the characters are ready, setups for them and the environment, you can start the animation.
Animation
Over this animated cartoon worked 4 and a half animator.
Good animation is obtained when the animator gets used to the role of his character, i.e. we can assume that the animator is a theater or movie actor.
In short, the joke is that each animator understands the movements of the character in his own way. It turns out that the same character moves differently from them. In order to prevent such an ambush, we are shooting video references. What it is? We take a camera, take a few volunteers and make them become our characters: think like them, move like them, and so on like them.
What is this thing for? So that everyone has a single idea of ​​the movements of our characters. By the way, there is a Studio Director or Animation Supervisor in our studio. And for good reason he receives a salary, it is he who ensures that everything is clearly done.
Animation is located approximately in the middle of production. It remains to visualize everything.
Visualization
Since the author of the article, i.e. I do visualization, I can say that this is the coolest moment of production. At this stage, everything takes on color. How it is done in the world:
1. Artist paints 3D picture.
2. The visualizer repeats the lighting scheme and the atmosphere as in the picture.
How it is done here:
1. Artist paints 3D picture.
2. The visualizer repeats the lighting scheme and the atmosphere as in the picture ... and it does not work. Those. it turns out, but in animation everything looks not so cool as on one frame: some school with additional light sources will come out, then the artist did not calculate the correct lighting scheme, therefore in the next frames, when the camera rotates, the whole picture behaves unpredictably.
Something like that.
But in fact, this is absolutely not a problem. Since in the end, both the artist and the visualizer sit down together and make a product that suits everyone.
Visualization is one of the most resource-intensive stages of production. And when we started counting shots, we realized that we could not do without a render farm. Thus, we purchased a render farm with the help of Kaspersky Lab. Small, only 10 computers, but, despite this, she helped us a lot. Without it, we would probably still render a cartoon.)))
In addition to iron, software that renders is also important. For some time, we thought about what to use for this, and decided, without further ado, to render all of V-Ray. He wonderfully fit into our pipeline and helped save a lot of time.
Compositing
Visualization is not the last stage in production. She goes hand in hand with the composite. At the compositing stage, everything is going to pile up. Considering that rendering is done at the very end of production, the next thing happens. The first 70% of the time you work on a project, people work more or less relaxed. They see that there is still a lot of time ahead, you can engage in creative search, you can do several versions of the same animation, and so on. This leads to the fact that at the final stage of visualization there is less time than planned, and there is no possibility to make any mistakes.
Composers, especially visualizers, work in a very hard mode. Often there is such a thing, we just can not make any changes to the lighting, the atmosphere of the picture and so on. We have to modify the existing material. So, at the stage of composite we do it - we modify what came to us at the stage of rendering (the color of the jersey fabric of the doctor, it turned out to be dark green in us, but according to the director’s idea it should have been a different shade, I don’t remember what Instead of re-rendering all the shots with the doctor from the 3D package, we just changed the color in all the shots).
Point ten - installation
In fact, editing a cartoon is not a separate process. It stretches over the entire production process. Only at the end you can correct some roughness.
That's all.
Congratulations, you read it.
And now a little bonus. What the small pieces could not say in the post itself.
In the process of developing characters, we devoted maximum time to the development and drawing of the following items:
1. Watch Ji - worked out in great detail, because this is such a gadget that our hero will have in the next series.
2. Spit - if you noticed, the spit blade connects with the shaft is not a simple "heel". We have this bony hand that repeats the hand of Ji himself.
The same attention to detail is present in the shot where the Dock is in the office. He oooooochen rare books. They were released in small editions - just one copy. Therefore, he saves them and will not sell for anything. One of such books is “Forgotten Recipes for Sandwiches” .
Also in the cartoon there is a HINT FOR THE SECOND MULT. Well, what's the hint? One of the main characters of the second series appears in the first episode. But where he is - we will not say.
And now you can see what happened ...
PS: We thank Kaspersky Lab for help in purchasing a cartoon RenderFarm.
You can watch our other cartoons on our Youtube channel .
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/162943/
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