How would you go about producing this animation?

[Walter Soyka]

You can do it with a couple weeks of planning and a day or two of shooting if you hire the right talent [link].

Here’s a good thread we did on this topic a couple months ago with some other alternative approaches:

https://forums.creativecow.net/thread/2/1001563

Walter Soyka
Principal & Designer at Keen Live
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
RenderBreak Blog – What I’m thinking when my workstation’s thinking
Creative Cow Forum Host: Live & Stage Events

[Olly Lawer]

Hi,

I would very much like to progress this idea.

There was a post here from Walter Soyka with a link to helping me find the right talent for the job, but I guess it was deleted for some reason?

Walter, if you read this can you email or direct message me instead if it breaks the rules of the forum to post it here.

Kind regards,

Olly Lawer

[Walter Soyka]

It’s still here:

https://forums.creativecow.net/thread/2/1011097#1011131

Walter Soyka
Principal & Designer at Keen Live
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
RenderBreak Blog – What I’m thinking when my workstation’s thinking
Creative Cow Forum Host: Live & Stage Events

[Olly Lawer]

Hi,

OK, so my test hasn’t gone as well as I hoped!

I recorded a 2 minute voice over and then separated that into segments. I used an A2 white board in a studio with 4 Lowell Tota lamps with softboxes. I over exposed a little using F Stop 4. I started with white balance 2900k, but decided to change it to 3700k. This was a mistake as it change the animation to a yellowish background.

There were 7 segments and after each one I rubbed the board clean and started again for a new segment.

In FCP, I speeded up the drawings (I called them drawings, but I am no artist!) to fit the voiceover. All fine so far apart from the white balance error.

Then I created 7 new sequences and rendered out a QT file for each along with a still image for the last frame of each segment.

In AE, I laid out all the 7 files one after the other and placed the stills after the mov’s so the last segment will stay on screen. I also masked each pre-comp and jigsawed the footage all together so I could animate the camera to go from one to the next and eye dropped the background to the white board.

However, although I can zoom in somewhat, I get two main issues:

– Slightly different shades between drawings, although no settings were changed and camera was locked off.
– When my hand comes in to draw, the shadow creates a nasty contrast from the other segments

To solve these problems I could possibly:

– Colour correct to make sure they are similar shades enough for people not to notice
– Shoot without the softboxes and try and minimise shadow even more

BUT – even with these things, I cannot see how it will get close to the animation I put in this post.

Here are some pics for clarity. Any help, much appreciated.

Olly Lawer

[Olly Lawer]

Ah, thanks for that thread link Walter – looks good to see some other ways of doing it.

I’ve posted in that thread to see if Amanda picks up the thread and lets me know how hers went. Seems she was having a lot more success then me.

So i’m thinking I change my approach completely and go with this instead:

I’m thinking:
1. Draw the whole thing. Take a high resolution picture (still SLR camera).
2. Animate a hand doing some motions over an evenly lit green screen (tho not sure wether to draw a faint version of the drawing in green pen first or just some strokes)
3. Animate the drawing appearing using an animated mask
4. Animate the hand over the animation, possibly using a Write-On effect?

Does that sound feasible?

Olly Lawer

[Mike Moon]

Came across this just recently and was hoping someone else had something better than what I had planned. I haven’t done this but thought of it too late and wished I did.

First we used non-reflective glass over green. However, we had some trouble with the refraction and the shadow doubling effect the glass gave. So we finally went with acetate over green. It was ok but the shadow the hand left was pretty harsh. Also it didn’t key well and I’ll tell you why.

With all green screen shooting, you want to make sure your subject is as far from the green as you can so you don’t get as much spill and you can blast the green with light. Also no shadows. If we use this same concept to the hand drawings, it only makes sense that the artist should be drawing on a non-reflective glass table with the green on the floor. I imagine the table should be fairly large. I haven’t exactly tried this yet but I’m betting everything that it would work perfectly.