2D sketch + 3D animations

[beau]

I’ve been wrestling with combining 2D sketches with 3D animation for years.

A few weeks ago, another dept here at work asked me to take a stab at a segment they were producing. It went well enough, (here’s that first one: http://www.weather.com/health/one-weird-trick-weight-loss-20140725).

That was my first stab at cloth simulator, 2D sketches and 3d. It’s already embarrassing to look at now.

But my LATEST one is better. This one went live on our site yesterday. They asked me to knock out three of these a week!

My original vision was to have the sheet yank off of the bed by one of the edges. I couldn’t figure out how to do it, so I just used a couple of balls (hahah oh the humor) to throw it into the washer, and it turned out better than I could’ve imagined.

[Scotchtapeworm]

This is a cool animation style! I like the way he blinks when he’s getting acupuncture.

[FlyingSausage]

That second image is definitely a person in robes with a hood on his head, jumping down into the washer with his legs first. Or maybe it’s just me? Also really like the animation!

[beau]

It definitely ended up looking like the sheet was possessed. And that was perfect.

[beau]

Update: My third video, (about Mosquitoes) launched yesterday on weather.com; and today it’s the Video of the Day!

I used particles to create the swarm of mosquitoes and after some tweaking, (hours. HOURS of tweaking) I got it to look perfect.

http://www.weather.com/video/sponsored-video/3-secrets-to-beat-mosquitoes-52077

[beau]

Update: I’m animating the sketches with shape keys, and so far, it’s working out better than I thought. Previously, I’d used bezier circles to replace the facial elements on the face, but it never looked right.

[beau]

Here’s another shot using shape keys on the material:

Versus a shape key on a bezier curve for mouth and eyes.