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Blackwing602

Phil Nibblelink's "home-made" feature film

Phil Nibbelink has made an animated feature entirely drawn by his own hand, 112,000 drawings, plus the layouts and background paintings : "Romeo & Juliet: Sealed With A Kiss"

The trailer is viewable here: Romeo & Juliet trailer

An online article talks about how he did it, working on his own in his home studio for five years --

Quote:
Romeo & Juliet: Sealed With A Kiss
A Paperless, Peopleless Studio

"After animating at Disney Studios for 10 years and directing animated features for Steven Spielberg for 9 years, I wanted to break out on my own. I decided to make my own Disney style, 2D, fully animated 35mm feature film…all by myself.

An animated feature takes hundreds of people and costs millions of dollars. I just had me. So I figured if I could make a drawing every 2 minutes, I could make a feature in four and half years. I chose to do Romeo & Juliet as an underwater adventure because aqua dynamics has sculpted marine life into very smooth shapes. And the lack of line mileage on fish and seals enabled me to draw the characters very quickly.

I experimented with animating on paper. But you have to trace and paint cells or scan the paper and paint it digitally. Either way I’d never finish my movie. So I started looking at software. I tried them all. I’d always had a lot of success with Deluxe-Paint on the Amiga. But I was shooting for 2K files. And 2K 24bit bitmaps are big and don’t playback real time on small computers. I had to go vector. And Flash 4 was just the thing.

I did a small test animation with Flash and output 2048 x 1234 bmp’s to my used 35mm film recorder. When I projected it on the big screen I was amazed. No jaggies! No rastering! No banding! Just smooth sub-pixel anti-aliased lines and pure color shapes. What a relief! I was off and running.

The characters were drawn with a Wacom tablet directly into Flash and I did the backgrounds in Painter. Everything was composited in Flash including the camera mechanics. I loved the fact that I could create a digital multiplane, where each character, overlay or background could move independently. And I could get elaborate 3 dimensional effects with 2D artwork. The ocean waves were produced with shape tweening and masks.

I output small avi files to cut with sound into Vegas Audio. And that sound was then burned to a CD and used to create the optical track.

Romeo & Juliet: Sealed With A Kiss is finished and coming to a theater near you! I’m happy with the way it turned out and I couldn’t have done it without Flash."

-Phil Nibbelink



Quote:
The characters were drawn with a Wacom tablet directly into Flash and I did the backgrounds in Painter. Everything was composited in Flash including the camera mechanics.


The clips I've seen of Romeo & Juliet look like traditional 2-D animation, with full inbetweens and real lip-sync (not the standard set of 8 - 10 stock mouth "symbols") . I've never had much success with doing tight clean-up/inbetweens using a Wacom tablet (other than Cintiq). I'm fascinated that he was able to maintain that level of control when drawing directly into Flash with a tablet. The drawing tools in Flash are not very usable to me. I have better success with the drawing tools in Mirage , but the advantage of having the smaller file sizes in vector images is certainly a mark in favor of Flash.
idragosani

Re: Phil Nibblelink's "home-made" feature film

Blackwing602 wrote:

The clips I've seen of Romeo & Juliet look like traditional 2-D animation, with full inbetweens and real lip-sync (not the standard set of 8 - 10 stock mouth "symbols") . I've never had much success with doing tight clean-up/inbetweens using a Wacom tablet (other than Cintiq). I'm fascinated that he was able to maintain that level of control when drawing directly into Flash with a tablet. The drawing tools in Flash are not very usable to me. I have better success with the drawing tools in Mirage , but the advantage of having the smaller file sizes in vector images is certainly a mark in favor of Flash.


That's impressive, to say the least, and quite encouraging also that a single person can produce an entire feature length animation in a home studio...
idragosani

Re: Phil Nibblelink's "home-made" feature film

[quote="Blackwing602"]
Quote:
[color=blue]I’d always had a lot of success with Deluxe-Paint on the Amiga.


Deluxe Paint on the Amiga, now that brings back memories! That was a great graphics package for its time... back in the early 90s, I think it was the only micro-based graphics app that supported onionskinning & traditional 2D animation. Fun stuff.
admin

I can only applaud! Having spent over three years alone on a 10 minute short I can't imagine the work that went into that film... or for how long Phil stuck at it! Bravo!

This to me is the reason why Michael Eisner's foolish claim that "2D is dead!" will never be true. For some of us, drawing, storytelling and filmmaking is in our blood. People like Eisner may kill a studio but he can't kill our passion.

Congratulations Phil... let's invite even more independents to the party and truly make 'Eisnosaurus' eat his words! Smile

By the way idragosani... isn't the new "Pro Motion" (designed specifically for sprite animation and game pixel art) very much like the old 'Delux Paint'?

Best wishes,
idragosani

admin wrote:

By the way idragosani... isn't the new "Pro Motion" (designed specifically for sprite animation and game pixel art) very much like the old 'Delux Paint'?


Just checked out, looks quite similar to what DPaint could do with sprite animation (the Amiga had the benefit of having hardware based sprites to make this even more effective).
admin

OK, so this is where I reveal my ignorance! What exactly are 'hardware based sprites'. I may already know... but just know them by a different name. Smile

Best wishes,
idragosani

admin wrote:
OK, so this is where I reveal my ignorance! What exactly are 'hardware based sprites'. I may already know... but just know them by a different name. Smile


It's where the graphical data for the sprite is controlled directly by hardware rather than a chunk of memory controlled by software only -- I think the mouse pointer on Intel-based machines is technically a hardware sprite. I am rusty on my Amiga architecture, but I think the Amiga had 4 hardware sprites.
DavidN

More information and an interview with Phil Nibbelink over on Cold Hard Flash. "One Man, One Movie, 120,000 drawings" .

Besides drawing most of the movie directly into Flash using a Wacom tablet, he also used
Moho/Anime Studio to animate certain shots. (we were discussing Moho under the thread here titled "Grey Kid" )
magicpencil

From Brian Mitchell

Hi everyone. David Nethery told me about this site and I think it's pretty cool to have a forum devoted to 2D in the digital world.

As some of you know, I am an avid supporter of traditional cartoon animation and am sticking it out actively working on 2D projects. However, that doesn't mean that I don't support technical advances that have helped improve the medium. IMO, programs like Digicel, Flash and others, have made it relatively simple to produce a film in your own walk in closet of a studio, with all the technical power of the Disney Studio 30 years ago (and more).
That's pretty amazing.

Back in 1993, I produced a 35mm short subject. Although it was only 1 minute long, I wanted to learn about the entire film process through this experimental film. Well, it took me roughly two months to produce it and everything cost money because I had to hire people for all the different job functions. I spent money hiring an animation cameraman, a sound studio with technician, a track reader, a negative cutter, a mixer, an editor, a cel zerox service and a service to transfer my sound track to 35mm film. Even with Discounts, I ended up spending over $3000 on supplies and services.
With today's digital technology, I can basically do all these job functions with my trusty Hewlett Packard Desktop computer with some animation, editing and audio software.

When I used to post on a steady basis at my old haunt (Anim nation), I wrote something about the possibilty of one man doing an animated feature (semi limited animation) and being able to produce it in two years.
That may sound pretty ambitious, but knowing Phil Nibblelink did it in five years for full animation, I know that two years for a semi-limited animated feature is very do-able. I worked on a Yogi Bear/UPA style short subject a year ago where I was producing two minutes a week of finished color animation. A feature can be animated in 35 weeks!

Ward Kimball did some limited animation in the 50's and 60's with great success. Chuck Jones did some interesting things with semi limited animation in the 60's and 70's. My point is that if you have a good story to tell with good design, you can do long form animation in your basement studio and it doesn't have to take five or ten years to produce.
If money is a problem, create a sample trailer, find some investors and raise a couple of hundred grand to keep you afloat.
Mr. Nibblelink is a living example that it can be done!
tonymation

As one 'traditionally trained' animator to another... the scary thing to me is that not too long ago I worked out that if I added together all the work I have personally created over the years it would amount to well over two entire movies of full, highly finished animation! Mind you, this has been a career of over 30 years duration so far (an equally scary statistic!) and so it doesn't strictly speaking fit-in with the theme of the topic here. Nevertheless, if nothing else, it does show that if the love for what you do is there, anything is possible! Smile
stickman

2D and 3D ???

Hello! Great forum topic.
I'm a 3D guy, but comitted to NPR - or non-photorealistic rendering - techniques. I'm convinced that there will be a software revolution that will bring the efficiency of 2D (or a hybrid "all-D") back into the control of an artist or artist team. Things like stroke analysis and recognition for automatic tweening. The time shall come!
I'd be interested how many people work digitally - and with what. (PAP, Flash, Aura, etc.)

David
DavidN

Re: 2D and 3D ???

stickman wrote:

I'd be interested how many people work digitally - and with what. (PAP, Flash, Aura, etc.)


I started at new thread here :

http://2dornot2dforum.myfastforum.org/sutra45.php#45

so we can discuss what tools we're using for our 2-D animation in a digital world.
idragosani

Collaboration?

You know, we got quite a few people on here who are obviously passionate about 2D animation... would it be possible to start a collaboration project (under the auspices of the Animaticus Foundation) showcasing the talents of the folks here (we even have a couple of composers who are members of the forum)? I know there have been music and similar multimedia projects developed across the Internet, by people who have never met in person, why not for traditional 2D animation? It would be a wonderful opportunity for newcomers to the field (like me) to learn from the more esteemed elders in the industry -- a 21st Century version of apprenticeship! The benefits of digital technology allow us to almost instantaneously share work and collaborate. I do this on an almost daily basis in my "day job" as a software engineer with colleagues in other states and even other countries.

Obviously something like this requires a lot of planning and organization, and probably to start off with, a short "proof of concept" production would be in order, like maybe a 10-15 minute short.
tonymation

Yes, internet productions have been done before but very few of them have either held together for long, or have made any impact in the community or industry. The main problems are (i) deciding on what single project everyone is prepared to work on, (ii) finding enough people of equal capability in keeping a design style that is upheld througout the project and (iii) simply the 'burn out' factor where most people drop off after the 'honeymoon period' leaving one or two people to pick up the strings and hopefully pull then together.

However, your point is a good one. My proposal from an "Animaticus Foundation" point of view would be to produce a kind of 'organic', 'round robin' kind of project. This would entail my starting off the film with a short sequence, concluding in a specific last frame. This last frame would then be picked up by a second person and they would work on from the frame they have received and take it to a point where they to can pass the sequence back to me, so I can give out their last frame to a third person. This third person would do their thing and send me their material, after which I could pass on their final frame to a four person... and so on, and so on. That way, a film could be completed that is totally unexpected and, as I say, 'organic' in its production process. Maybe the final film could be premiered at the next "2D OR NOT 2D Animation Festival" in November, 2007... or entered into other festival competitions?

I actually did something like this with all the animators at the Richard Williams studio in London in the 1970's. We did this over a few days for ex-Disney 'great', Art Babbit, who had given us an intensive training program over the previous weeks. We all wanted to say 'thank you' in our own way, and show him that we had truly learned the lessons that he had taught us. The final film, all shot on film, and amazing in its invetion and unpredicatable storyline, delighted a tearful Art when it was presented to him.

Anyway, its a thought that you guys might like to consider. I would happily co-ordinate the process and produce the starting and concluding sequences. Maybe if we had 12 animators producing up to around a minute of action each, to the best of their capability, we would have a film to be proud of? If anyone dropped out along the way, I would simply pass the last frame given out to a new animator, and the link in the chain would be re-established.

Anyone up for it? We need a solid, commited team to make it work though. Smile
idragosani

tonymation wrote:

Anyway, its a thought that you guys might like to consider. I would happily co-ordinate the process and produce the starting and concluding sequences. Maybe if we had 12 animators producing up to around a minute of action each, to the best of their capability, we would have a film to be proud of? If anyone dropped out along the way, I would simply pass the last frame given out to a new animator, and the link in the chain would be re-established.

Anyone up for it? We need a solid, commited team to make it work though. Smile


I like this idea... yes, organization and commitment is the key!

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This site is hosted and moderated by "The Animaticus Foundation", a non-profit organization commited to 'preserving', 'teaching' and 'evolving' the art of traditional 2D animation in a digital world. http://www.animaticus.com