2Dee
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QUESTION: TV Animation ProcessHi, everyone, I got a view question about the creative process in the animation series like "PowerPuff Girl";"Danny Phantom" or "Fosters, My Imaginary Friends". Are these series made by traditional hand drawing then vectorize later in the software like ToonBoom or are they made by cut out technique and animated and drawn in the computer? Thank you for your kind response
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idragosani
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Re: QUESTION: TV Animation Process | 2Dee wrote: | | Hi, everyone, I got a view question about the creative process in the animation series like "PowerPuff Girl";"Danny Phantom" or "Fosters, My Imaginary Friends". Are these series made by traditional hand drawing then vectorize later in the software like ToonBoom or are they made by cut out technique and animated and drawn in the computer? Thank you for your kind response |
I don't know about the latter two, but "Power Puff Girls" was originally done by traditional hand drawn techniques but later switched to digital post-production, from what I've read.
I imagine very little stuff on TV these days is hand-drawn -- deadline pressures and rising costs make hand-drawn animation unfeasible (I do think, though, that the quality of the animation these days is better than the cheap limited stuff from 70s Saturday morning cartoons).
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DavidN
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As mentioned, Power Puff Girls was traditional hand drawn (on paper) animation, with digital coloring , probably digital camera moves and compositing (AfterEffects?) .
Foster's is done in Flash .
Not sure about Danny Phantom because I haven't seen it .
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2Dee
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thank you David & idragosani!
Does it means that Foster's was drawn frame by frame in a computer? Or they make some library for all of the action that needed, then re-use them? The reason for my question is that our studio had been working for the test scene of Nelvana's 6 Teen series.
And from the file, they're(Nelvana) using ToonBoom Harmony and animate in limited cut out style. They provide us all of the drawing needed for the action, and we animate it like a puppet. Some of my team pretty sure that all the series that I've been asking on top are using Harmony and they all are cut out style just like 6 Teen, so they are pretty sure that small amount of animator can do animation like that easily. We don't need other artist like designer, colour stylist, background artist and other things that not
too often mentioned in animation but vital. Well, I disagree. Would you share me your opinions?
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DavidN
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| Quote: | | Does it means that Foster's was drawn frame by frame in a computer? Or they make some library for all of the action that needed, then re-use them? |
Over a period of time a Flash animated series will build a library of assets, standard movements, walks, expressions . I didn't work on Foster's so I don't know for sure, but I expect they started off with a certain number of characters pre-built , with standard eyes, mouths, expressions, walk cycles ,etc. and as the series has progressed they have been able to add to the library. Most of what I've seen on Foster's doesn't look drawn to me , but they may animate some scenes using a tablet (cintiq?) to add bits of fully inbetweened frame-by-frame animation , in addition to the standard Flash way of animating ("cut-outs").
I wouldn't be surprised to find out that shows like Foster's use a variety of softwares and techniques to accomplish the needs of a particular shot , but everything I've read about their production process mentions Flash as the main tool they use to animate.
It seems to me that ToonBoom/Harmony may be challenging the dominance of Flash (for broadcast shows like the sort of things on Cartoon Network or Nick) , especially with major studios like Nelvana having adopted Harmony as their main production tool . From what I've seen of Harmony it is much more versatile for animation production than Flash . (however, also MUCH more expensive ) I only had a 30 day demo of Solo (which is the single-user license version of Harmony) and I was testing it for a very specific purpose , not for cut-out or Flash type of work.
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Nancy Beiman
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All of these series are 'hand drawn'. They just aren't drawn on paper, that's all.
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