Dji - Death fails. Prequel to the cartoon Gypsy (Making off)

    This is our 4th job. We did it for about six months. This is a decent time, and during this time we have accumulated enough material that we would like to share.

    So where did it all start?


    Of course, with an idea. In general, it is quite difficult to describe the process of creating an idea, so we will assume that it appeared on its own. And, inspired, we started work.

    The entire stage of work on the cartoon can officially be divided into several stages:
    1. Preproduction
    2. Production
    3. Post production

    Let's start with the pre-production




    Preproduction


    At this stage, further work is structured, a script is written, characters are developed, a storyboard is drawn, an animatic is done. In that order.

    The script


    A script is a bunch of scattered crumpled paper. These are puffs of tobacco smoke. These are red eyes from overwork. This is a broken computer. And one more. In approximately this atmosphere, the script was written for this episode. You can read it too , it lies, doesn’t hide from anyone, right here .

    Now it’s the turn of the Persians. According to our idea, there should be three of them in the cartoon: As Gee was created, we already wrote in our blog , I would like to draw attention to the other two characters.









    In general, work on the character begins with the drawing of black and white sketches. They are drawn as much as necessary for the director to say: “Here! I like it! ”In the case of Doc, the situation was similar. And the words “That's it! I like it! ”Flew out on this option.

    Pencil dock


    But how many options were offered to the director. It is necessary to work out not only the figures, but also the faces of the characters. I have to draw not two or three options, but much more (the director is finicky). A lot of material remains behind the scenes. As a result, when the most suitable character is selected, he is decorated. Why do this if it's not already modeled? A decorated 2D character is needed to understand what character will be in the end. In a pencil, this is not clear, and there is no volume. The most basic criterion for choosing a character is far from the technique of its execution, but emotionality. Those. it is not always important HOW the Persian is drawn, it is important whether it conveys the director’s vision and idea.












    We move on. Bean.
    Bob is a trucker, a workaholic. He exhausted himself so much that he even fell asleep at the wheel. As a result, he met Ji. This character is harder than Doc. All his complexity is that he is in several, so to speak, states:
    1. Alive in the car
    2. In intensive care half dead
    3. And finally, a ghost.


    By the way, we made Bob in the car at the very end of the production of the cartoon, just a couple of days before the project was completed, because considered that it is necessary to strengthen the beginning of the cartoon. But in what form the characters appear before us when we “get to know” them, that is those characters that the director selected from all the options. These are those who could become our trucker. In general, all this needs to be invented, drawn and implemented, and it is also necessary to draw the emotions of the character. And here is the result of our work


















    But if everything is clear in principle with Bob’s usual states, then with a ghost he’ll finally be completely ambushed. At that moment, it was not clear to us how it or he should look. We tried to draw on paper. It turned out, to put it mildly, strange. Maybe for a 2D cartoon, it would have gone wrong, but for a 3D cartoon - absolutely nothing. They began to think what to do next, and, to be honest, they decided to do as it turns out. After a bunch of experiments, we came to an acceptable result.







    Nothing super unusual, but the whole ghost was going in 2 packages. Body and vibes - Maya. Character Refractions and Color - Nuke.
    An interesting result was obtained.
    All! With the characters finished. Next you need a storyboard - the next stage of pre-production. Initially, the storyboard is done in black and white, and then filled with color. At this stage, we can understand in what gamut the entire cartoon will be performed, what the atmosphere will be in the frame, and, roughly, what kind of lighting should be. Of course, ideally, having made such a storyboard once, you don’t have to worry about further creative over the visual, but this is not our way. In any case, we are redoing something, changing, improving. As a result, the result may not be the one that was originally expected.






    Initial ideas may remain “initial ideas”, but something else changed will appear in the cartoon. This is exactly what happened with this cartoon, and the color storyboard that you see does not quite correspond to the final result.

    Character setup


    Computer graphics are a combination of creativity and technology.



    Before you start animating a character, you need to make a setup: set up all the controls and make sure that the character can do everything that our esteemed Director needs. WE do not use any ready-made solutions and do all rigs ourselves.

    Environment




    Having done all the necessary preparations for the character before the animation, it's time to think about where all the action will take place. Those. need to make an environment.
    In our previous cartoons, we tried to save time and made all backgrounds drawn. Those. the artist painted a picture and on top of it lay 3D characters, all sorts of effects and other things. The result was a very interesting symbiosis between 2D and 3D graphics. Everything is wonderful, but this technology implies some limitations: in addition to the fact that it is difficult for a 3D character to interact with drawn 2D objects, we are not able to move the camera strongly, so you can forget about camera spans and turns.



    In this cartoon, we decided not to limit ourselves and do everything completely in 3D. This absolutely does not mean that you no longer need to draw 2D pictures for backgrounds. Pictures are used as samples for lighting, location and color of objects. Based on these references, we can start texturing the backs.
    When the characters are ready, the setups for them and the environment, you can start the animation.

    Animation


    4 and a half animators worked on this cartoon.
    Good animation is obtained when the animator gets used to the role of his character, i.e. we can assume that the animator is an actor in theater or cinema.



    In short, the joke is that each animator understands the character’s movements in his own way. So it turns out that the same character moves differently in them. In order to prevent such an ambush, we shoot video references. What it is? We take the camera, take several volunteers and make them become our characters: think like them, move like them, and so on like them.
    Why is such a thing needed? So that everyone has a single idea of ​​the movements of our characters. By the way, there is a Director or Animation Supervisor in our studio. And it is not in vain that he receives his salary, it is he who ensures that everything is clearly done.
    The animation is located approximately in the middle of the production of the cartoon. All that remains is to visualize it.

    Visualization


    Because author of the article, i.e. I am engaged in visualization, I can say that this is the coolest moment of production. At this point, everything takes on color. How it is done in the world:
    1. The artist paints a 3D picture.
    2. The visualizer repeats the lighting scheme and atmosphere as in the picture. How is this done with us: 1. The artist paints a 3D picture. 2. The visualizer repeats the lighting scheme and atmosphere as in the picture ... and it doesn’t work. Those. it turns out, but in the animation everything does not look so cool as in one frame: either a jamb with some additional light sources will come out, or the artist did not calculate the correct lighting scheme, so in the next frames, when the camera rotates, the whole picture behaves unpredictably. Something like that.







    But in fact, this is absolutely not a problem. Because as a result, both the artist and the visualizer sit down together and make a product that suits everyone. Visualization is one of the most resource-intensive stages of production. And when we started counting shots, we realized that we can’t do without a render farm. Thus, we purchased a render farm with the help of Kaspersky Lab. Small, only 10 computers, but, despite this, she helped us a lot. Without it, we would probably still render cartoon.))) In addition to the iron is also important software that visualizes. For some time, we wondered what to use for this, and decided, without further ado, to render everything with V-Ray. He miraculously fit into our pipeline and helped save a lot of time.






    Compositing




    Visualization is far from the last stage in production. She goes hand in hand with the composite. At the compositing stage, everything is piled up. Given that rendering is done at the very end of production, the following thing happens. The first 70% of the time a person works on a project is more or less relaxed. They see that there is still a lot of time ahead, you can do creative search, you can do several versions of the same animation and so on. This leads to the fact that the final stage of visualization is less time than planned, and there is no way to make any mistakes.



    Composers, and especially visualizers, work in a very tough mode. Often this thing happens, we just can’t make any changes to the lighting, the atmosphere of the picture and so on. It is necessary to modify the existing material. So, at the stage of composition we do this - we modify what came to us at the stage of rendering (the color of the doctor’s sweater fabric, it turned out to be dark green, but according to the director’s idea, it should have been a different shade, I don’t remember which Instead of re-rendering all shots with a doctor from the 3D package, we just changed the color in all shots).

    Point ten - installation


    In fact, editing a cartoon is not a separate process. It stretches to the whole production process. Only at the end can some roughness be corrected.

    That's all.
    Congratulations, you have read.

    And now a little bonus. What could not be said in the post itself - small chips.
    In the process of character development, we spent maximum time developing and drawing the following items:
    1. Clock G - worked out in great detail, because this is the gadget that our hero will have in the next series. 2. Braid - if you notice, the blade of the braid is connected to the shaft is not a simple "heel". We have a bony hand that repeats the hand of Ji himself.









    The same attention to detail is present in the shot, where Doc is in the office. He has sooooo rare books. They are released in small prints - in just one copy. Therefore, he protects them and will never sell them. One such book , Forgotten Sandwich Recipes . Also in the cartoon there is a HINT OF THE SECOND CART. Well, as a hint? One of the main characters of the second series appears in the first episode. But where is he - we will not say. And now you can see what we got ...









    PS: Thanks to Kaspersky Lab for helping us get RenderFarm for the cartoon.

    You can watch our other cartoons on our Youtube channel .

    Also popular now: