Landscape Fly Thru Pencil Composite test

After 3 long weeks, I now have come to understand why 90% of Animators avoid producing shots like this. I was on the verge of loosing my mind...just figuring out HOW to do this took a week in it's self. I mapped out time on two planes and drew a topographic map in two dimensions so I would know the position of an object in space at a particular time. My biggest problem was figuring the velocity of the inert objects as they grew closer to the camera. I know this is not perfect, it is a bit jerky in the movements due to my mid-point cluster rendering technique, but for my purposes it will suffice... HOWEVER if you are a professional hand animator and know a better way to do this, PLEASE let me know...Richard Williams wrote many things in the Animators Bible, but the movement of a camera through space and time (of which he was a master of) was NOT written.

The Hand-Drawn Revolution Continues!

Category:

Film & Animation

Tags:

• Pencil
• Test
• Animation
• Hand
• Drawn
• Landscape
• 2d
• fly
• camera
• spear
• cluster
• bombs
• britney
• slaughter
• farmer
• hunter
• socialism
• capitalism

[saeho90]

Repetition,,,,,,

but nice

[rod2155]

When you are doing a pencil test you repete the sequence a couple times so your animation director can look for any flaws without rewinding the media. The final draft will not look anything like this of course.

[museumoftechno]

That's incredible. Could you... make rough models in 3D Studio... animate the camera angle like that... and then maybe trace out some keyframes? Or... animate trees etc as ultra-simple shapes (lollipops) in 3DS, and fill in the detail by hand afterwards?

Thing is though, it's awesome as it is, no computer required (well, other than to watch it of course) :)

Kind regards

Mr Braidy

Technician, Museum of Techno

[rod2155]

Well I could...but the point is to show that a hard working hand animator does not need the computer (so much) in order to make complex shots.

This particular peice is a pencil test for a major animation project that I'm currently working on now in my spare time. A completly hand drawn peice which only uses the computer for coloring and compositing. All the timing work is done, by hand on an exposure sheet designed to mimic SMPTE 30fps timecode... A heavy handed hybrid of animation.

[aquelescaraaaaaaaaaa]

impressive!

[rod2155]

@Zukan Just saw it... It does not really count because I think it's Rotoscoped. I think they built a wooden model and moved a camera through it, then they drew over every frame to animate it.

None the less, it's an effective shot and well thought out so cudos to Disney.

More people need to try it, it's a great brain exercise!

[Zukan]

@Niffiwan There's a short but impressive 3D scene in the old Mickey Mouse short "The Mad Doctor". I believe it was the first of its kind (?)

[Niffiwan]

I salute your efforts! This is very impressive.

It would be nice to gather a list of films that have "3D camera movement" scenes like this. Here are some others that come to mind besides "The Thief":

"The YuYu" by Adam Phillips

"The Box of Pencil Crayons" by Vladlen Barbe

"The Cat Who Walked by Herself " by Ideya Garanina (has a number of scenes like this, one of which is 5 minutes long)

"Welcome" by Aleksey Karayev

"August, the Month of Winds" by Rim Sharafutdinov

[LaukkuTheGreit]

Incredible. You should have worked on The Thief And The Cobbler!

Only flaws that I notice are that it seems to unnaturally slow down twice at 0:09.