Cartoon "Gypsy": A card inside out

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    Well, judging by the comments and reviews on our first pro-vision video postcard about Gypsy, we can assume that most liked it. I think many would be interested to get behind the curtains and see with their own eyes how this short cartoon was made. Welcome!


    After the idea and the script were ready, the work began in several directions at once:
    1. the main stage - storyboard
    2. preparing the characters for animation
    3. drawing color sketches that you need to focus on when rendering and composing
    4. an important stage is the sound. In fact, the circuit that was developed at the beginning of the Gypsy project was tested. Storyboard and animatic.

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    They began to make a storyboard by defining a clear number of plans in the video: there were seven of them. Then it was necessary to determine the composition and duration of the plans. The result was a sketchy cartoon on paper, which then smoothly turned into a video.
     
    Sketches and backs.

    1

    In parallel with the storyboard sketches of locations and backgrounds were drawn. In principle, three locations participate in the video: this is the location of the gypsy along which he goes to the village, the location of death coming out of the forest, and the location where gypsies and death appear together in the frame.
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    Oddly enough, the work on the sketch for the foreground took the most time. He underwent sufficient changes until he began to satisfy all our requests. With the rest it was much easier: they turned out literally the first time.

    4


    Animation
    Needless to say, working on the cartoon was both difficult and interesting at the same time? :) The first difficulty was the interaction of the characters with each other.

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    Animation keys must coincide in time, otherwise there will be no clear interaction, and the characters will move independently of each other. To achieve the most accurate result, a video was shot with this scene. (Everything is absolutely sober in the frame!)

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    It was, without exaggeration, the most complicated plan in the video.
    After the drunken Gojo and Death, things went more fun! The work was interesting in the first place because in its process new methods of working with fabric were tested, allowing faster to achieve the desired result. Also refined and improved the system of facial expression control. Tissue simulation.
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    After several tests, it turned out that the clothes of the characters will also cause a lot of headache. Any combination of parameters did not produce acceptable and predictable results. The problems were mainly expressed in simply indefinitely long miscalculations, and the quality left much to be desired. If one rag behaved still bearable, then with the interaction of several objects a real nightmare began - the clothes simply torn to pieces. After several hours of torment, it became clear that the problem could not be solved in the forehead.
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    To solve a large complex problem, it is necessary to break it into smaller components, as we were taught at school. Divide and conquer, so to speak. Based on this, we selected all the problem areas, broke them into pieces and simulated separately. So, let’s say, the gypsy separately miscalculated the shirt, separately the vests. Death, when viewed from a certain point of view, is just one big piece of fabric. Here I had to cut it alive ... First, the sleeves were cut off, then the lower part of the dressing gown (conditionally - “skirt”). We got three separate parts: sleeves, a "skirt" and the remaining upper part. The upper part was also divided into sections: directly the torso and the hood (they didn’t have to cut them specifically: we simply painted the sections where we would use the simulation and where not). Now the speed of work and its interactivity soared at times. After the director approved the resulting animation in a cut and “gutted” form, this whole mess was put together so that no seams and cuts were visible. The already sanitized “dressed” doll was further edited manually to eliminate the remaining glitches, and of course, to introduce the final touches of the director. Well, the final cache was baked in the final for the final scene. In this case, all garbage that accumulated during the production process was thrown out. Well, the final cache was baked in the final for the final scene. In this case, all garbage that accumulated during the production process was thrown out. Well, the final cache was baked in the final for the final scene. In this case, all garbage that accumulated during the production process was thrown out.
    Done! The scene is footballing for our visualizer!

    Render and compositing.
    It would have seemed all over. It remains only to click on the magic button "Render", and the thing is done. At least it seemed so at first. The most basic and perhaps the most difficult task was to achieve the maximum similarity of a three-dimensional picture with a two-dimensional one, which was drawn by an artist. Yes, the task is not easy. I had to trick with lighting, shaders in 3D and color grading in compose.

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    But, in fact, not only color correction is done in compositing programs, because compose is a good half of the work on image visualization. It is in the composite that all effects are made, in our case it was snow, fog, all backdrops and much more. The ability to use normal maps helped a lot, which made it possible to change the lighting on an already rendered image. This saved a lot of time, because every time you move the light source you don’t have to go into the 3D editor. This technology was used to animate the flashes from the salute on our heroes in the last desk. Voice acting.
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    Well, the sound. The music, of course, turned out to be valid due to the group “Zdob si Zdub” and our sound engineer Ivan Slivka. It was like that. One evening, three delegates from our company stocked up with pincers and wine and went on a visit to Zdub. In the studio, naturally. Work until midnight bore fruit.


    Roman Yagupov (lead singer of Zdubov) gave all the best: he made unimaginable sounds, danced, produced fantastic themes on the go, and improvised. By the way, Roma knows gypsy, and is well acquainted with gypsy culture. So he just had to catch the mood of the cartoon. "Zduby" unpredictable and super-professional musicians. So it turned out that the guitarist played the violin, the bass player on the double bass, and the soloist on drums and drums. All instruments and voice were recorded, and something had to be done with this. Then the sound engineer got down to business. To enhance the sound and emphasize the mood, some scenes required winds and an accordion. VST-tools coped with this role on "5". As for ambience, long live the sound libraries! All mixed and supplemented music was carefully "licked" and mounted on the video.

    And the most important thing is the warmth - on April 1, the studio’s birthday, we are releasing yet another postcard with Santa Claus and grandson Tagar.
    Cartoon website "Gypsy"
     
     

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