How to create cartoons. How do cartoons? Weekdays Animation Studio TouchFX

How do cartoons?

It is generally accepted that a cartoon is an entertainment for children. However, beautiful cartoon stories are loved not only by kids, but also by adults. Today, animation has ceased to be just fun. This is a real art and a complex technical process. Want to learn how to make cartoons? Let's look to where the animated pictures come to life, and they learn to speak plasticine characters - in the artist's animation studio.

How it all began

Few people know that the animation appeared even before the cinema. The founding father of the cartoons is considered to be Emile Reynaud. He in 1877 presented the first moving tape to the public, on which the pictures were successively replaced. However, before him there were attempts to revive the pictures. As early as the 15th century, books were distributed in Europe, which, with rapid flipping, created the illusion of character movements. Actually, this is precisely the principle of animation itself.

Create a simple cartoon in the forces of either of us. We take a notebook, draw on each of its pages the same character in different poses, simulating a sequence of movements, then quickly turn over the pages. Our eye perceives this as a single video.

By the way, initially the animation was an adult entertainment. To make children's cartoons began only in the XX century.

What are the cartoons?

Drawn pictures

The most popular type of animation to this day is the painted one. Only technical devices change. If before the cartoons were drawn by hand, now it is done on the computer. The principle of how to draw cartoons, remained unchanged.

First a detailed script is written. Then all the characters are drawn. Each figure represents an element of the character's movement, a separate pose. There can be thousands of such drawings. After the drawings are either photographed one by one and are reduced to a single video series with 24 frames per second, or using special programs the same is done on the computer.

3D cartoons

Computer animation is the most promising direction for today. It highlights 3D cartoons. They allow you to make a 3D image. This is a very expensive technology, but 3D cartoons today are assembling full rooms in cinemas.

How do 3D cartoons? Of course, modern technologies come to the aid of man. The picture is created using special computer programs, for example, Maya or Z-Brush. First, the "skeleton" of the character with all the muscles and tendons is drawn. Each of them, as in the present human body, is responsible for this or that action. That is, when turning the head, we will see the movement of the neck muscles, and with bending the arm will strain the bicep. Particular attention is paid to the face, muscles, responsible for facial expressions.

Then the texture is stretched on the skeleton. And this is not only the color of the skin and clothing. It is important to work out every wrinkle and wrinkle, all chiaroscuro and so that the character looks alive. Also, the background is worked out in detail. Everything should be as plausible and realistic as possible. In order not to draw each blade of grass, the multipliers have special modules that "plant" the vegetation in the frame as it grows in reality.

Then the installation begins. Usually the animator creates 4 seconds a cartoon a week - so it's a painstaking process! To be in time on time, dozens of animators usually work on the cartoon.

Now, when you look at the next "Shrek" in 3D, remember how they make cartoons. Video length of 90 minutes - the work of hundreds of people and the fruit of many months of work.

Plasticine cartoons

Favorite from childhood plasticine cartoons are made a little easier. But you can not call for help on the computer, except at the stage of installation. All the figures in all their actions are molded by hand.

In professional studios, the figures are made from a special plasticine that does not melt under the lamps. Then they are laid on a special surface of pure color (blue, green) - chrome. Figures are filmed on a digital camera. Then the background is also removed. And already on the computer background and figures are connected. This is called the method of shifting. Now it is the most common.

You can create your own plasticine cartoon at home using the camera. Now on the Internet there are many master classes devoted to how to make plasticine cartoons. And for this you do not need to have a professional set of tools. Sufficient digital "soap box", plasticine, talented hands and a simple program for video processing.

Illustrations to the text - working material of the new animated film "Riddle of the Desert" studioTouchFX . The project has not been announced anywhere yet, so the footage is exclusive.

About animation

Animation (to put it very roughly) - is the creation of a visual series of changing images (for example, 24 frames per second). Depending on how the image is obtained, the animation can be drawn (the picture is drawn by hand), a puppet (a picture with puppets is photographed), a computer (the image is generated using computer graphics).

Visual development and kotsept-art

Computer animation, in turn, can be raster, vector, three-dimensional (depends on the chosen software and method of operation). We will talk about 3D computer animation - that is, about creating animated films using 3D computer graphics programs. And at once we will define with concepts. Animation is the process of creating a movie, and the animation process is the "propelling" of characters and movie objects. But more on this later.

Where does the cartoon begin? With an idea. Producer sets a task to develop preliminary materials on the future film. The script writer starts working on the story. Artist and art director over a visual solution.

The finished package is received by the supervisor (technical director). The supervisor with a kind smile reviews the project proposals and quietly explains that the technical and human resources of the studio are limited. Therefore, the film can not be a super-mega-epic battle scene with the participation of two thousand characters. It's better to get by fighting between the protagonist and the antagonist. Forty-seven unique locations too much. Three would be enough. When cries and abuse between romantics and pragmatists subsided, a new stage in the creation of the cartoon begins - the process of finding a consensus between the producer, supervisor, director and art department.

From model to renderer

Animation film is the result of adaptation of available technology and resources (including financial ones). Classical two-dimensional drawing animation - not an exception. There, too, there were problems finding ways to implement ideas. Remember the cartoon "101 Dalmatians" studio "Disney"? It was the result of using a new technology for studio black-and-white photocopying. Not romantic, but very effective. The same story with three-dimensional animation. At one time computer-generated pictures were considered only as entertainment for geeks. But John Lasseter (the current head of "Pixar") saw in this technology the potential for the realization of his creative ideas. Thanks to the synthesis of the principles of classical animation and the latest technologies, the first full-length computer animated film "Toy Story" appeared. The choice of the plot by the way is also not accidental. The technologies of that time were badly coping with the creation of organic characters - people and animals. But to make a plastic toy could easily. And it was easier to animate it than a person. Then there were the "Adventures of Flick" - about insects (visually the same plastic). And only the development of production capacity and the increase in budgets allowed to start large-scale use in cartoons of animals and people.

Let's return to our studio. After numerous rounds of negotiations, discussions, discussions, disputes and quarrels, the concept of the future film is approved. The stage of "preproduction" begins. The script is written, the visual development of the film begins.

3D models and locations

Preproduction and production

The main feature of computer animation - all that is in the frame, should actually exist in a three-dimensional version. So it must be someone invented and created. Animation studio is similar to a conveyor. The first person on it is an artist. He draws characters, environment, interior items, plants.

When there is a ready-made concept art and sketches, direct production begins. In 3D animation, drawings are not used by themselves. They are a kind of "drawing" or "scheme", on the basis of which three-dimensional models will be created and visualized.

3D modeling is the construction of objects from points, lines and polygons (polygons). It sounds boring, in practice it looks even more boring, but the result is already pleasing.

The three-dimensional model moves further along the "conveyor". The technical development department, if necessary, adds the necessary attributes to the model. For the character is created a virtual "exoskeleton" (rig), which allows you to animate it, develop facial expressions, create a hairline and much more.

In order for the model in the frame does not look like a gray cluster of polygons, it needs to be textured and to implement the shading. In fact - it's coloring the model and giving it the properties of light reflection. Any object you see is the result of falling into the eye of the light reflected from it. Depending on the properties of the object, the light is reflected in different ways. In the three-dimensional graph, the same. Depending on the settings of the reflection of the virtual light source that falls, the ball model can be glass, stone, iron. The more complex the material, the more difficult it is to get the desired effect. For example, human flesh partially absorbs the light that enters it, refracts and dispels it under the skin. All these indicators must be properly adjusted to get a nice picture for the eye (remember, what was written about plastic characters?).

The rendered character

Storyboard

Models of characters and environments are ready. It's time to "revive" them. Then you need to take a step back. While the three-dimensional world was being created, the script writer was finishing the script, and the storyboard artist, along with the director, were engaged in the production of the film. The storyboard is a kind of comic strip, a prototype of the future film. Determine the sequence of actions in the film, the basic plans, some kind of situational humor is invented. Each of us can interpret the script read in different ways. For someone, "fruits on the table" are apples and bananas, and for someone - kiwi and apricots. The task of the storyboard is to make everyone see the film through the eyes of the director. The finished "comic" is superimposed on the sound and creates a kind of rough editing of the future animated cartoon.

"Storyboard"

Animation

Here begins the linguistic hell. Animation animators animate characters on the basis of animation.

Animation - literally "animation", from the Latin "anima" - the soul.

How does the animation work? Imagine a puppet in the puppet theater. That's exactly the same, just "inside" the computer program. The animator changes the position of the controllers on the exoskeleton of the character in such a way as to obtain the desired movement. The lesson is very painstaking. A day can make a few seconds of good animation.

To accelerate this process in animation, the motion capture motion (mocap) technology is applied. Briefly, the mocap in the cartoon is the same as you know, heard and seen about "Avatar" and Goluma from "The Lord of the Rings". The technology is used the same. The actor wears a special suit with retro-reflective markers, each of which is responsible for the controller on a three-dimensional character. A person moves, the cartoon character moves.

Mocap and Animation

And again the conveyor. Added to the three-dimensional scene with objects, environment and animated characters are virtual light, virtual cameras, virtual special effects. All this is a matter of rendering - that is, visualization.

Likbez on the render

From the lessons of physics in school we remember that vision is a process of perception of reflected light. In the three-dimensional scene the same. The object gets a conditional "ray" from a virtual light source (say a light bulb). The ray is reflected from the object (taking into account the shading settings), falls on another object, is reflected again and falls into the "eye" (the lens of the virtual camera). The number and method of reflections depends on the complexity of the scene, the intensity and the source of lighting of many other factors. Rendering is the process of rendering and visualizing the results of this light reflection. The more physically correct are given the parameters of light sources, the number of ray tracing and methods of reading them when they hit the eye, the more physically correct and photo-realistic will be the final image. Rendering - technologically one of the most complex operations of three-dimensional graphics. For understanding - the rendering of one frame depending on the complexity and task can take from several minutes to several hours. The second animation is 25 frames. 25 hours of machine-time processor. On average, more than three months are allocated for the project's rendering.

The rendered character

"Walt Disney Animation Studio" thanks to its own technical achievements and programs was able to achieve the performance of its computing capacity of 1.1 million render-hours per day. For comparison, with such technologies, the cartoons "Ralph" or "Cold Heart" would have been rendered in 10 days (the total need for each of the projects was about 11 million render-hours).

The rendered video sequence is further mounted, special effects are added, color correction is carried out. If necessary, the image is stereotyped so that the film is available in 3D viewing format. By the way, to get a stereo picture, you have to render each frame two times - with the calculation of the offset for the right and left eyes.

The assembled and processed video is synchronized with the sound (voice of characters and interhumans). Everything, the cartoon is ready. Enjoy watching.

PS. I will tell you more about each stage, yes. But a little later. Thank you for attention.

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We all grew up on the good old Soviet cartoons. But, seeing on the screen Neznayku, Funtika or other loved heroes, no one thought about how much effort is put on the creation of one minute cartoon. What is animation? Where did her story start? Puppet and cartoon animation - which one is older? You will find answers to these questions in this article.

What is animation?

Animation is a set of techniques, based on the creation of moving images, or rather the illusions of their movement, as it uses for this set of still pictures and scenes. That is, in fact, it is shooting pictures or dolls depicting individual moments of movement. The animation appeared much earlier than the Lumiere brothers invented the cinematograph. Modern animation is increasingly called the term "animation", from English "animation." Animation, animation - these concepts are close, but not identical. Their relationship can be characterized as follows. Animation is the creation of animations, when frame-by-frame shooting of drawings, scenes, paper constructions, etc. is performed.

The invention of animation

What is animation? Part of the childhood of many children. But where did it begin?

In 1877, the self-taught engineer Emile Reynaud constructed a praxinoscope - a mechanical toy with a mirror rotating drum and a ribbon, on which pictures were painted. Drawing animation originated from this invention. Later, Reynaud improved his unit: now the painted pantomimes, which were painted by hand, lasted from 7 to 15 minutes, although one can not but admit that this device for synchronizing images and sound was primitive, but not for those times

Moving Pictures

The animation technique looks like this: on each next frame the hero figure is represented in a slightly different phase of the movement. Separately taken pictures are photographed one by one and projected onto the screen. The translation speed is 24 frames per second.

What is animation? It is a creative work, the creation of which takes a lot of time and labor of hundreds of people. Producers determine the general purpose of the tape, script writers work on the story and write a script that will then be broken into scenes and episodes illustrated by a series of sketches. After all, it gets on the table to the director-animator, who distributes the scenes between the artists-animators: each of them draws a certain position of the characters in the episode. Intermediate scenes will be drawn by younger multipliers. The rest of the artists are engaged in creating a background on which the action unfolds.

Then the contour drawings should be painted. They are transferred to a transparent plastic, imprinted with ink and colored. After that, the operator photographs pictures using a special camera. The last stage is the synchronization of the image and sound.

There is another technique for creating a cartoon.

Puppet animation

Russia is the birthplace of a puppet, or three-dimensional, animation. With the development of this type of cartoons, a new technique for making movies has appeared. But nevertheless the process of creating the tape remained no less laborious.

The first stage of creating a cartoon is writing a script and thinking through the images of the characters. According to the sketches of the characters are sewn dolls, their costumes and shoes, which will match the image of each of the characters. This is the most time-consuming stage of work, since each doll must be mobile.

The second stage - the filming of the phases of the movement of the dolls, corresponding to the scenario. One episode can be shot for several days, and maybe several months. A full-length puppet cartoon can be shot for 3 years and even longer. But basically the volume animation has a duration of 5-15 minutes, but even this takes several months.

Why is this happening? For example, according to the scenario of the cartoon, the hero runs along the forest path. To remove this scene, the character doll is placed against a background of moving scenery, which depicts trees, the sun, clouds, sky, birds. Creating the effect of the running character, the multiplier manually moves the legs and arms of the hero, turns his head. Thus, each phase of the character's run is gradually removed onto the film. Together with the body, the phases of movement of clothing and hair are removed. So, during one day of shooting a cartoon, when all the photos are combined into one video series, the tape makers take only a couple of seconds of screen time.

When the animation came computer technology, puppet cartoons began to be shot much faster.

Electronic animation - animation

Electronic animation, or animation, is created by means of the computer: in advance in the form of a slide show are built in advance prepared graphic files. Not less popular is the flash-animation, when the cartoon is created with the help of a special program Macromedia Flash. It is easy to use and configure, which determines its popularity.