CartoonSmart.com is holding an animation contest and the first prize is a full working copy of Animate Pro. All you have to do is recreate 15 seconds of your favorite non-animated movie with ToonBoom Animate and add it to this Vimeo group. (you can also use the Personal Learning Edition).

I am entering this contest and I’ve already chosen a clip from a movie I love. Here’s the animatic, although the final version might end up surprising you. Connect with me on Twitter for more updates.

Rough Animatic – CartoonSmart Animate Contest from Renato Vargas on Vimeo.

(Update: Of course that I need a better looking Jules Winnfield, and this is what I came up with. I hope you all like it).

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Now that things are back to normal, here’s a quick update of The Deadly Truth. This link takes you to a facebook version of the video that looks better than Youtube’s. While you are there, you can always befriend me.

Here’s the Youtube one, which for some reason is one second shorter than it should be. Just a taste:

Note: I’m thinking of releasing the Toon Boom Animate source files for this animation once it’s published so that everyone can learn from my mistakes, so stay tuned!

“The Deadly Truth” will be released on Sunday, June 7th, 2009.

Edit: For those interested, I will post more quick updates through Sunday on Twitter. You can follow me here.

I decided today that it is time to become Toon Boom Animate literate, and there’s only one way to do that: animating. For that reason, I decided to make a clip, under one minute in length due next Sunday, May 31st. No excuses. I am aiming to do it as fast as possible, and to use multiplane, some symbols, couple of effects, and frame-by-frame character animation. It’s going to be called The Deadly Truth.

So far I roughed out the setting, set up the multiplane shot, and drew some poses. I hope I have some fun making it. Afterwards, I’ll write a couple of posts about the experience. For now, check out the rough BG:

Title: The Deadly Truth
Release date: Sunday, June 7th, 2009.

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?

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