Moho Forum

Hi,
I am doing some digital painting with my Wacom Cintiq and wondered what peoples opinions
were when it came to using them in animation?


Thanks for any feedback.

Cheers
D.K

Just my opinion, but I think it would be tough to integrate this style with most animation types.

Are you asking about digital painting in general? Or your artwork specifically? If nobody else is charge of the design, 'style' is whatever you decide to make it.

Personally, I think your painting looks fine. It's little 'soft' (as in focus) but maybe that's the look you were going for?

Depending on how I feel about one of my own projects, I might use traditional or digital painting techniques, or cg, or still photographs or live action. The important thing is to keep the designs consistent throughout the production. But even then, 'consistency' may be subject to interpretation.

G.

Thanks for the replies Jahnolci and Greenlaw.
I guess a good way to test things is to put them into an animation and see what they look like!

Cheers
D.K

Yeah - I like the style -- and, agreeing with Greenlaw about style / consistency etc, I do, however, see a few challenges here about putting action into the scene because there's a "high depth" (i.e. the real world z from foreground to background is very big) and the picture is (probably??) drawn as a "screen sized bitmap" (the image as posted is 900*506px?)

One is resolution -- zooming in to (say) the mountains to show something bigger than a dot skiing down will likely produce an unacceptable level of graininess in a project with a resolution over (say) 480p

The other is masking - so that action can go behind the cabin (relatively easy) and behind the foreground grass (maybe more of a challenge)

==>
My own opinion...

When I use pngs etc as backgrounds my own "starting premise" is that they _are_ backgrounds (i.e. all the action is in front of them!) and that they're large enough (say 3* the linear size of the project -- i.e. if I'm in 1080p HD then the image needs to be 6000*3000 px) to allow pan/ zoom etc. Obviously, if I know I'm going to do a long tracking shot, I'd choose a much bigger x - say 12,000* 3000px. That doesn't stop me using other (much smaller) pngs as "foreground" assets. IOW, I'd have layered your image into (probably) 2 files: actual bg ("huge"); and "near" tree(s), cabin, fg ground and fg grasses (not so big).

Hi hayasidist,
Thanks for the reply. So refreshing to have a discussion about background construction on the forum! Great points about layers there! You're right, It would be extremely handy to have backgrounds that are constructed from separate layered elements like you mention. If I get time I will post back a file or two.

Cheers
D.K

As you say - lots of "character" discussions and not much about their environment - which can be just as challenging to design and get right especially if you go for camera movements ... parallax, relative motion, perspective, lighting ...

looking forward to seeing your next output!

Ok....had a bit of a play with things as suggested and broke all elements down into separate layers.
Below the image is a link to a short parallax panning test.


http://www.creativetvandmedia.com/Forum/Pan.mp4



EDIT: Hayasidist.....I was astounded to find your suggested image size, 12,000* 3000px is not supported by AS?
I tried to render it at this size and it defaulting the first input size of 12000 to 9000. 9000 seems to be the limit on the width.


Chreers.
D.K

Would the cabin be lived in? If so, having paths that show activity around the cabin would help show it.

yeah - AS is limited on render .... but no issues at all here with a 12,000 * 9,000 px import of a PNG -- 18,000 *12,000 crashed it though!!

I like the "pan" (is it actually a track and zoom??). Oh - and is the artwork done in PS on the Cintiq?

Hi Hayasidist,
Yes, track and slight zoom. Artwork is done using Corel Painter with a Wacom Cintiq.
3deeguy, good suggestion! This is just an experiment piece with no preconceived ideas only the question "Could this style of background be used in an animation".

Cheers
D.K

thanks for the info re Corel Paint... that's a powerful tool in the hands of someone with your talent!

Firstly, a tiny niggle on scale: the fg "tree" seems to me to be way smaller than the others... but no real problems for me if it is intended to be a "shrub"

But moving swiftly on to more constructive opinions / comments: given the level of "photo realism" in the artwork, IMO, you'd need to carry that on in the animation.

so if we imagine a character walking down the hill and past the cabin (as per the same but slower camera track), their feet at/near ground contact would need to be partially obscured by the taller grasses between them and the camera (extra layer for grass??) and/or building on what 3deeguy said, we could see the grass where their feet fall compress and spring back (fbf "overlay" at each footfall point??).

There would also be "waves" in the long grass (and slight movements in the tree foliage) from the breeze implied by the brush strokes in the grass: candidates for fbf looping??

Whilst the set-up as is probably means that the perspective / viewpoint changes for fg elements are small enough to be ignored here, if you imagine a character seen first at screen left and finally at screen right you'll be looking at different profiles at those two extremes, so that may need to be factored in to the animation.

hope you do find these ideas constructive!

Hi Hayasidist,
Thanks for the feedback. I just duplicated the tree for the exercise so it may look a little wrong...lol.
I'm really interested in what people you think of this background style? Maybe I should place an animated character into the scene and see how it looks? Stay tuned for the next post.

Cheers
D.K

it's just occurred to me, looking again at your widescreen render, that I might have been unclear about how I use png backgrounds... the "odd" aspect ratio (12,000:3,000) is for the png which is then imported into a standard aspect ratio (e.g HDTV 1920 *1080) AS file to give me scope to zoom out / track etc...

I have added some animated elements while keeping the characters of a similar style to the background. No sure if any other character style would suit these types of backgrounds really.


Video
http://www.creativetvandmedia.com/Forum/Pan2.mp4

Cheers
D.K