Puppeting Assignmnet- Sophomore Year

Another assignment for Digital Compositing class. I used Niko again for old time sake =) This was a lot more tedious than I thought! Once again I hand drew the model and scanned it in to be inked and colored in Photoshop. Then I copied and pasted the separate joints into different layers. How many layers? A lot. Her tail has 4 joints in it, body has 2, the neck and head moved separately and her ears had 2 joints. The limbs are pretty obvious. It was a lot more trouble than it's worth to make sure the outline matched up at all times so I just got rid of it and ended up liking the vector look to it. After it was all assembled I imported it into After Effects and began animating, joint by joint. At first I thought it'd move a long faster than the traditional way. But now...let's just say my admiration and respect for claymation artists has doubled. You have to have so much patience for it.

Anyway, enjoy this little animation of Niko =) Next week I'm going on a field trip to Titmouse, where my digital compositing professor work. If I can take pictures I will. If not, I'll still share my experience on it!

Prepare yourselves for a slew of pencil tests coming up as well involving Kit playing tennis and another one of my characters, perhaps Ali, cracking a whip. Also, I have another assignment coming up in 2 weeks of a fully colored lip sync (exciting!) There will be a lot more animations to come this year. Lots.

"Take You There" Process

First off, an important thing to mention is I did this in Photoshop CS4. So if you're using Sai...well, it still could be interesting. This is gonna be sort of broad as I was experimenting for the most part. I would like to go more detailed as to how I do paintings and digital pieces as I get more comfortable with the process. But for now...this is basically how I did my most recent digital:

1. I have a very basic tablet so it's easier for me to sketch it out on paper. Sometimes I ink the characters out it if it gets really complex like this did. Just to make it clearer when have to ink it digitally.

2. After re-inking Ali (right) and Kit (left) I put in the flat colors. At first I used the colors they were, then used color balance to get the colors to match the background. (I got familiar with the lasso tool when I got to the grass.)

3. This. Was. Tedious. Particularly the grass. Again, got familiar with the lasso tool for that. I made 2 other layers for both the blue and golden grass. Both with slightly different shades than the first layer. Then for the blue grass I sort of cheated (^^') and copied and pasted different shades into different layers. To show more variety.  

After adding in all the shading I put in golden highlights in everything. For the fireflies that will come in later. Masking layers..becomes your best friend for that. Trust me.

4. Then I put in highlights in the eyes, stars, the fireflies and some glow effects to finish it off. And...ta-da!! It is finished! You can see a full view of it here:

Take You There