Animation Has Commenced

The coffee cups, cans of V and overall sense that my work area is sponsored by Pepsi Max lets everyone know that I've started animating on Draco. Apparently my panic meltdown last weekend was exactly what was required and I now find myself a lot more focused and have been animating pretty much non stop (except for the odd game break, but that's to be expected lol).

I am aiming to have my roughs completed by end of the weekend, ambitious i know, but I want to have something to work towards. A real challenge for me is ensuring that my roughs are relatively clean, actually the process has been really good practice as I am so used to making my roughs....really really rough; but when someone else may end up referring to them it has been important to keep them readable.

Draak makes fun of Draco

Draco has the ball...

Colouring Draco's World

Once the backgrounds had been imported it was time to set up the PAL safe area template and create a master palette in Toon Boom that could then be repeated throughout the 52 scenes within the film. I'm really happy with the way the colours in the film pay homeage to the vintage cartoon style I love so much but that they don't look drab or too washed out or faded. We worked hard to ensure that the colour palette was complimentary and once the entire film comes together I am confident that it will look and feel unified through colour.

PAL Safe Area template added





Draco Body Colour

Draco Tummy Colour

Draak Body Colour

Draak Tummy Colour

Horns, Spikes, Wings for both Dragons

Tongues

Inside Mouths

Fun in the Background

Had a bit of a panic attack the other day as I worked out how long we have until this film is to be finished......yep BIG panic.....but lets not talk about that here.....safe to say it was a kick up the backside and I am now firmly focused on seeing Draco through to a successful end.

This weekend I imported the backgrounds from Photoshop to Toon Boom Animate Pro, having seen the latest Toon Boom tutorials I thought i would try importing them as grouped PSD files as I was aiming for a multidimensional feel to the environment. This process was less than successful and after an entire day of trying absolutely everything and support from online animators this is what I ended up with, we were stumped:

What ended up being imported



what it is supposed to look like

 So after much Facebooking, it was decided that I attempt a different route. I essentially saved a master copy of the background as a JPEG then took key components and saved them as PNGs to enable the illusion of a 3D envrionment. Many of the outside earlier shots already have a sense of depth and as the camera is not moving through the environment I thought that this was a more than pleasing result. In the latter stages of the film, in particular in the cave, it was important for the characters to appear 'in' the environment rather than in front of it, the use of the PNG objects moved closer or further away from the camera in Toon Boom creates this illusion effectively.

3D illusion in Toon Boom

One More Background

Revised and Finalised Backgrounds

Again, these are the jpegs, the final backgrounds will be layered in ToonBoom to allow for multi plane camera depth:

Backgrounds in Colour

Backgrounds are in jpeg form at the moment, but each object is on a different layer enabling us to convert them in ToonBoom for multi-layer camera movement which will give added depth to the environments. Deeper shadows have been dropped in to add definition to the desaturated colour palette.