Post by Renato Vargas. Follow me on Twitter.
Hey there, just want to show you some stuff. In my last post I showed you an application called Google SketchUp. Since it’s an incredible tool to develop three dimensional models of whatever you want, I thought it would be a good idea to use it as an aid in the creation of two dimensional backgrounds for animated shorts. I’m still working on the outside shots I showed you before (I’ll post how those turn out in another post) but I’d like to show you how SketchUp is of great help when it comes to drawing perspective. You don’t even have to think about vanishing lines and what not.
We start off with a fairly simple Sketchup cube and with the push/pull tool we create a two wall room (or set). After that we pay a visit to the 3D Warehouse we populate our room with a suitable bed and a nightstand (although here I just modeled this “placeholder” as nightstand). Don’t forget to punch a hole in the wall for our window. We paint everything white, move our view around to get the best shot, and snap a picture (export an image). I’d like to point out that SketchUp is full featured software, so it is capable of much more than these simple things I’m doing. I want to keep the models simple because afterwards, the painting portion will take up most of our time. We end up with something like this:
We then import our image into our drawing software (in my case, I’m using Toon Boom Animate) and put it on it’s own layer. After that, it all becomes about “imaginative tracing”. Use your SketchUp lines as guides and make sure you keep every drawing in it’s own individual layer (you can group things afterwards). How about we start with the footboard. You can color as you go, or you can color everything when you’re done.
Now some courtains…
Now the bed and we improvise a nightstand using our SketchUp placeholder as a visual aid (don’t mind the shadows; that step comes afterwards, but I forgot to take snapshots without them 
).
And we finish with our walls and the window. At this point you can color everything. Your aim is to accomplish a certain atmosphere. After all, we’re trying to tell a story…
Make sure you build up a nice atmosphere with every layer you paint.
I’m falling in love with SketchUp more and more. It’s an incredible tool that can save you a few hours. You should give it a try. How do you like our final product?
Leave a comment.
Love it! Could you do some kind of animated scene with SketchUp and then import the lines into Toom Boom to be painted?
Early in my trials I gave Swift 3D a go, and was fairly happy with a simple scooter that I managed to animate, although the work to reward ratio was not worth it. That was with Studio though, not Animate.
Oh yeah, Will. I remember thinking how great the scooter secuence was. I thought you had frame-by-framed it, though. I think there is a way to export an animated secuence from SketchUp as a series of images, but I figure there’s all kinds of trouble when it comes to wrestling it into your animation software (frame rates, etc.) I don’t know for sure. I will look into it.