As a quick disclaimer, I don’t mean trying to make hand drawn looking characters, personally I love the look of photo-realism. By cartoons i mean like characters you might see made by pixar but with an adult-orientated style story; but that’s a mature way to put it.
For the past four years I’ve been writing cartoons, I love cartoons, I really love absurd crazy cartoons. And for the last two years I’ve been working an average of 10 hours a day on my computer learning every step to make a cg animation. I’ve been making photo-real characters (often of everyday objects, many of which you shouldn’t have out in public) Over the last four years my writing ability has developed substantially, my stories have improved exponentially and according to those who have read them are very good(not that i listen to compliments but i do get laughs from people reading the scripts which i think is pretty hard to do.)
I have so many characters like 30 plus, and at least 5 or so scripts that I’m happy with and at least 20 more i just don’t have time to write. I’m very serious about this, I dropped out of college for this, mostly because it was so boring ( i had straight A’s for the whole 3 months i was going but damn its so pointless.) But I’ve seen how far I’ve gotten from just dropping out with a dream of making cartoons with no idea of how considering I can’t even draw to finding cg to actually knowing the ins and out of the entire process.
I’m very serious about this, I even have plans on how to make money off this, unique plans (its actually a really good idea a swears it) that really utilize what resources this potential studio would have if we can build a fan base. But i digress as the best laid plans of mice and men often go awry but I’ve realized if you put everything you have into your goal, all the pieces will fall into place if you look hard enough.
Soooo I would love if anyone was interested in being a part of my schemes, or just wants to hear a story. And in case your wondering I really do know the work involved in this and I’m prepared to go it alone but honestly its just more fun to make cartoons with other people.
Anything you want to do, to be honest, but I think its safe to assume you prefer to model. As this very moment I’m just trying to go through a quick project with blender as i just switched from Maya two weeks ago and i need to get up to speed. I have a monkey that’s playing poker with like three or four versions of himself, and the camera stays in the middle of the poker table and rotates from each one of himself using a different voice and maybe like a hat or glasses or what not for each. And one of the characters is scamming the others. So yada yada im thinking like one minute long, nothing special just need to complete one full piece before i start the full cartoon I’m currently working on.
Soo yeah sorry i talk alot, you would have to make a poker table, a room, a few props, I made the monkey maybe you could check it out?
Ok, sounds easy enough. The topology on the monkey’s not bad -a bit dense (I do super low poly stuff -lol) but it’ll do. Next stage is a story board. Do you have some sort of play by play (detailed) to go off on? I’ve learned that trial+error in 3d land is a real pain without a plan.
Uhhh, Yeah well this ones a bit easy. I mean i would storyboard but i can’t draw, I try to draw but I fail so very badly. Nevertheless, I’m gonna write a script, I can probably get that all done like by tonight. There’s basically little movement besides like maybe once you catch him messing up and playing the wrong monkey and scrambling to find the right chair. And the story is pushed along through dialog. So a script shall suffice.
A stick figure storyboard would’ve done. It’s just to convey an idea and have something to point at like: ‘on this pannel he’s doing such and such’ instead of: ‘so on paragraph 2 section 3 subsection 4 he’s doing this? or is it paragraph 3’
doesn’t have to be the best drawing in the world, it’s just for reference and positioning of action.
Agreed, but it’s dialog. No paragraphs nor subsections. The scripts pretty simple there’s only a few lines that explain camera movements and maybe two or three actions that needed to be addressed. I agree a nicely drawn story board may be necessary… and easier to convey ideas… but I write… I’m far more comfortable writing a story. So here’s my script, it shouldn’t be hard to read, it’s a bit vague but its a rough draft and I like to put in the final touches after I know what people think of the direction I went with it.
And for gods sake don’t say “it’s good”. I hate that. I rather have someone arbitrarily go through and rip it apart piece by piece then say its good. Its good, doesn’t help me at all. Everything could be better and I’m not at all happy with something being just good. So yeah rant rant rant. I look forward to your harshest criticisms.
I cant attach a word document uh Okay i attached it as a zip and a pdf not sure if either will work. I evidently can’t open any PDFs on my machine so yeah. :spin: Monkeys.zip (4.21 KB)MonkeyScript.pdf (91.9 KB)
Hey Captain, I would like to volunteer to help do some voice work for one or more of the characters. I have been playing around with cartoon voices for a while now, do a mean sponge bob lol, and would like to try my hand at creating something new. Inbox me if you want to chat more about it.
Well the situation escalates kind of fast. Idk how they wound up there personally, but my only real issue is the pacing. I know you said not to say “it’s good” but it’ll do. Just please do a visual. Or better yet, since you like writing more, use this format instead:
=> narration (if any)
scene description (what’s in the camera’s field of vision)
action (one per pannel is best)
dialogue (like you’ve done)
Yea i agree. The scene kinda jumps ahead in places. I will definitely write out a complete version.
But i gotta ask, I have the rig under way and I’m trying to making squishy eyes. Not just like bigger and smaller I mean really cartoony, where like mad eyes angle in and sad eyes kinda scoop up. In maya its very easy. But i just learned in blender if you rotate an object within a lattice or mesh deformer, the lattice or mesh deformer rotates with it.
The only work around seems to be key shapes, but rotating with key shapes moves in a straight rather then a circle, obviously. I just gotta ask if there’s something I missing. I probably should post this elsewhere but as its pretty vague, I feel it would be a fruitless endeavor.
Okay, I’m thinking the best way to do the visual would be basically a storyboard, but instead of drawing it all out then scanning it or what not. I’ll use the rig (which has enough bones to be properly posed as of right now) and I’ll just render simple shots of each panel. Then I’ll add in the lines and a description.
So my question here is do you know of a program that can be used to ease the creation of this storyboard. One that will allow me to write in the lines, set up timing and preferably render it into a movie file.
And if you could put together a mock up of the scene then we can have this under way.
Okay I have the script written out in basically proper screenplay format. There really isn’t much action, they don’t even get out of the chair except where specifically mentioned. I’m gonna leave arm motions and what not for when we get to animating or at least the animatic.Monkeys.zip (10.9 KB)
HAHA! -ok to answer your questions:
squishy eyes: You can use the mesh deform modifyer
(1st of 2 videos below)
blocking out animations: you can draw out pannels and insert the images in the video sequence editor (add->image) and scale the bar to decide how long an image stays on the screen. -if there’s an overlap, the bar on top takes precedence.
the second video shows the best example usage.
(2nd of 2 videos below)
vid 1
I completely forgot blender had a video editor… As for squishy eyes, shape keys will have to do, the tutorial didn’t seem to mention object level rotation but nonetheless just a little eye jitter will more then suffice.
So I’m gonna keep chipping away at the rig. Should have the body rigged up in a day or so, just still have to get accustomed to rigging in blender.
So just keep me updated with how the scenery coming along.
okay okay I have a real fun problem this time. I noticed there was a random hole in my mesh but only in edit mode, not in object mode. Soo I tried to fix it and I could fill in the hole with the exception of a single edge. I’ve tried everything removing doubles, rebuilding the area even mirroring but no matter what I do it will not allow that edge to be there, in fact mirroring did just the opposite and now the problems on both sides, even though I deleted the problem side. It doesn’t seem to make a difference I suppose but do you have any idea what could be done to fix it?
Nevermind the scene kinda just exploded on me. I mean things starting disappearing randomly freaking crazy but I had a backup and didn’t lose anything.
So yeah just keep me updated with the scenery.
Well, if in edit mode only, I think that’s a normals issue. press ctrl+n and it’ll make normals face the same topological direction (outwards)
Good thing if you had backups. The only other thing I had if that didn’t work is to open the file in a pre 2.63 blender file and then try on a post 2.63 cause that’s a similar problem b-mesh seemed to have if you opened a 2.63 file on a 2.62 or previous (no n-gon support prior so you’d get holes or worse: no faces -and scripts would break cause faces were now called polygons i think :p) I know useless maybe wrong info on my part.
But, yeah I’ll keep you posted on what I get done. Just multi-tasking on a bunch of personal stuff as usual.
I’ll post a proxy movie type thing in a couple of days (a skeleton for the movie if you want to call it that)
It wasn’t normals it was quite strange, it just refused to allow me to make an edge between two vertices, everything worked just fine except it didn’t want an edge in that one specific place. Then the UI started getting wonky, but only in that scene file, I think i just need to be more careful.
I believe that I can work with you. Your model is good but for cartoon is too realistic. Take a look at that model. If you want work with me contact me by e mail: [email protected]
My blog is: andregomesprado.blogspot.com
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