Hi there everyone,
I'm new here, I've gotten re-interested in animation in the last year or so. (I just posted a piece I did a year ago in show and tell). Anyway, I've been drawing a lot lately and I'm thinking of doing a 2d short film.
I have some animation education but the one thing I'm not sure how to go about these days is how to shoot the final project. I see where there is some nice animatic/pencil testing software out there, which is great.
However, once you have the final cels painted and are ready to go, I need some kind of camera setup correct - unless nowadays you can scan? What is the best cost-effective way to do this when the time comes? I'd like to have it all digital of course, but I don't know what is possible these days.
Thanks,
Tom
These days software like Toon Boom, Toonz, or Flash is used.
You can either draw directly in these programs, or scan and import your drawings.
For finishing and shooting, check out Digicel - www.digicelinc.com
Wow, flipbook seems nice and seems to have some good backing. I do some Flash and can't really see it as the right tool for traditional 2d animation. I assume you need your own scanner to use flipbook?
So the days of shooting with camera and film are over then? I shot my animation project in 1991 at Columbia College with a traditional camera, one frame at a time. (no pans or camera moves or anything, didn't know how).
This year I purchased a nice digital SLR camera (Nikon D50) , a macro lense and a tripod that allowed for side mounting for stop motion work. Also had a remote to shoot from a distance. I was shooting small objects but I'm sure you could rig some kind of frame up.
Scanning is great but I find it really tedious. Maybe a document scanner? Especially if you're going to color it in on your computer. Make sure you have registration marks and you're good to go.
I too find scanning tedious, and registration is going to be important of course. Well, I'm a long way from shooting anything, so I'll keep an open mind about what is available. I can't see shooting it with a digital camera really working unless it was a super high quality camera, and that gets cost-prohibitive. Right now this is just a hobby/creative outlet so I don't have tons to spend.
Caught misusing my student loans ... but it's for school, REALLY. It does start to add up and I went in for a highend point and shoot. Ended up with a "lower" end SLR. I love it. Absolutely love it and it's changed my approach to many things in animation. I can capture a sequence of shots for reference material, I can use it for textures and materials for 3D work, stitched together 360° panaramas, HDR lighting (haven't done this yet, but hope to in my next project) and of course stop motion.
The playback is pretty cool because you can see, in camera, how the movement is working.
But, otherwise, a nice tablet for drawing is probably closer to what you're looking for.
Yep, you'll probably need a scanner. Registration's usually not a big deal; just tape a set of pegs to the scanner and you're all set.
Some animation software has advanced scanning which allows you to use an autofeeder to register, scan, and import a stack of drawings with one click, rather than spending days doing it manually.
Here are the scanning features for Toon Boom Harmony:[LIST]
[*]Auto-feed or manually scan drawings
[*]Register peg holes automatically
[*]Clean scanned lines automatically
[*]Scan your drawings in black and white or grayscale
[*]Auto-assemble your drawings for paint
[*]Color scan pre-colored drawings and backgrounds
[*]Auto-splice pan cels (characters and backgrounds)
[*]Capture nuances of hand-drawn lines (thanks to true-line vectorization and line texture)
[*]Handle complex textures such as crayon or chalk
[*]Maintain scanning resolution based on fielding or output resolution[/LIST]
Wow, Harvey that sounds impressive. This sounds like there is a hardware piece that goes with the software piece, or do I misunderstand? How can it have those features with a 3rd party piece of hardware, I can't quite grasp. It also sounds expensive!
What happens if you want to do camera moves? (Not that I know how yet). Does the software allow for that? I suppose you would do it internally/programatically instead of physically?
I think it's time to push you out of the nest and let you do a Google search on your own. A simple search will reveal all available types of document feeders for scanners.
Any advanced animation program will have moveable cameras. Go to those software sites and also read some reviews.
Please report back and tell us what you've decided. thank you
There is a prgram called frame thief that you can use with even the simplest of consumer level digital video recorders to shoot one frame at a time. Then you would only need some type of nonlinear video editing program to put it all together. Even iMovie would work, I think, if you're looking for the cheapest way possible. I haven't tried to use it with iMovie.... actually I haven't really used either program, but I know some classmates that have and were very happy with Frame Thief. I've used Lunchbox and been happy with that. Now I use flash and find it works well for what I want to do, and makes coloring easy and clean looking. I do the rough animation by hand, scan it, import to Flash, and trace over with the pencil tool. I like it... but maybe it's not for you.
Thanks for the tip!