Because stuff happens

Well, Sunday has come and The Deadly Truth is not finished. This may sound like a “my dog ate my homework”  type of excuse, but these past two days were extremely hot where I live (not in the sexy way) and my computer couldn’t take it. Apparently, something overheated (past fry degree) and it won’t start. Now I have to wait until Monday to take it to the repair place and hopefully, it’ll get fixed over the course of the week. I have another computer (an old laptop), but since it doesn’t have an NVIDIA card that’ll satisfy system requirements, it won’t work with Animate. Luckily I always return the licence after every use (due to fear that someone will break in and take the computer), so it’s not locked in there with the broken down machine. Hopefully the hard disk isn’t damaged and my files are still there. If things aren’t fixable, I’ve been toying with the idea of buying a MacBook Pro, ever since I read this post from the one and only Chris Georgenes, who recently “made the switch” from Microsoft to Apple. This might just be the signal I needed. Anyway, this is going to be fixed in the next couple of days, so I’ll move the release date for next Sunday. The idea is to work fast and not worry about little details. Of course, your computer not working isn’t one of those :-S.

The Deadly Truth

Release date: Sunday, June 7th, 2009.

In the meantime, take a look at this character update I posted on Twitter a couple of days ago:

Animating Effects: The Best Form of Procrastination

Post written by Renato Vargas

If you have read some of the posts I have written here, then you already know that I have delayed the completion of my animation project for a couple of years. But during that time, I have found myself procrastinating in great ways. Yes, in not doing what I was supposed to do, I ended up learning one or two cool things, and I have to admit that I love to waste time animating effects.

Click on the image to see it in motion.
(Be patient; it takes a while to load sometimes)

Water is one of the most entertaining things to animate. It is very difficult to get right too (and I probably haven’t yet). I became interested in water animation after I first came in contact with Adam Phillips’ Brackenwood shorts. I could not believe they were done in Flash. I had to find out how he had done them. Fortunately enough, he wrote a post on his blog about ActionScript camera effects in Flash, and he posted a small waterfall scene of Prowlies At The River to illustrate his point (I tried to find the original post to give you a nice link, but I had no luck). The camera was a nice feature indeed, and I used it a lot, but I was amazed by the waterfall itself. It was in that file; all of its frames. I felt as if I had struck gold.

What drew my attention is that the final result looked wonderful and everything was accomplished with only six drawings and a hold for each of the waterfall’s elements; meaning it was done “on two’s”. He was still animating at twelve frames per second at that time (He animates at 30fps nowadays, I think). I tried to replicate the same principles with the fountain you see above these lines and I ended up with a nice result. I didn’t know I was developing a useful skill, which solely landed me all of the freelance gigs I’ve done.

There are other animated effects, besides water that never stop amazing me, like lighting effects, smoke, fire, and moving sand. The thing is that, even if they are important skills to master, they should come last in your list of things to learn, since there’s no effect that can outshine a good character animation. Character animation is the soul of your piece and it is the only thing that will say whether a story is good or not (or finished in my case). What I’m trying to say is… “stop reading and get back to those characters!! Are you done with your model sheets?” But before you go, share your thoughts about animation procrastination in the comments.

Creating Stunning Backgrounds with TBS!!!

Trying to create convincing backgrounds with vector drawing tools is quite a challenge. The problem with them is trying to get rid of the e-card feeling they convey. But why not stick to raster drawing? Raster tools, like Photoshop or Painter are quite powerful in this area and a day’s work will yield impressive results if you know how to use them properly. The only problem is that they are not scalable, so you have to spend a good amount of time planning pixel resolution and size, to get your shots right. Nothing like zooming in on your character, just to find that the trees behind her or him are pixelated. You don’t get that kind of trouble with vector tools.

Background Created in Toon Boom Studio 4

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Tap, tap, tap. Is this thing on? Oh, there you go. Hello everyone!

Hello everyone. After much posting on forums and other websites, I decided I wanted to have a better way of sharing insights with fellow animation enthusiasts and professionals, while I try to tell interesting stories, through animated shorts and illustration. To create my animations I’ll be using Toon Boom Software.

I’ll be focusing on the different stages of animation, as I progress. Although the solution to some problems that I encounter during the process might come across as tutorials, this is not a Toon Boom tutorials website. If you are interested in those, more talented friends like Will Reinhardt and Jerry Keslensky are already doing a great job at that. I urge you to check out their sites. This is more of a personal site that I’m starting just so I don’t go crazy from talking to myself, since I’ve been doing a lot of that lately and my inner me, won’t shut up about this “animation” thing.

I’m looking forward to your comments.

Renato