Des Héros

cableon · Post by **cableon** » Thu Apr 17, 2008 4:24 pm

Myspace :
http://www.myspace.com/experiencefrenchband
http://www.myspace.com/peep_s

Blog / making-of :
http://exp-heros.blogspot.com

E.X.P :
http://www.experiencenet.net
http://e-x-p.blogspot.com/

Ronald Grandpey :
http://ronald.grandpey.free.fr

Made w/ Anime Studio Pro
Thanks for your help!

slowtiger · Post by **slowtiger** » Thu Apr 17, 2008 4:43 pm

Wow. That's pretty impressive. Lots of ideas, lots of work, a personal style.

But it seems to me that you could improve your workflow a bit, since AS is not the best tool to deal with frame-by-frame animation on paper. I would recommend Mirage to you if it weren't out of sale (although you could pick up a used copy right now for a very affordable price).

Did you really create the shapes for all those background buildings in AS and filled the shape with colour one by one? From your blog I can just guess the way you worked, but I found no text which explains the details.

Beautiful work.

cableon · Post by **cableon** » Thu Apr 17, 2008 5:01 pm

slowtiger wrote:Wow. That's pretty impressive. Lots of ideas, lots of work, a personal style.

Thanks!

But it seems to me that you could improve your workflow a bit, since AS is not the best tool to deal with frame-by-frame animation on paper. I would recommend Mirage to you if it weren't out of sale (although you could pick up a used copy right now for a very affordable price).

Well I hadn't heard of Mirage, but ASP's switch layers proved a lot quicker and more convenient than Flash to import sequences of hand-drawn pictures (which was the way I proceeded on previous videos -- 1, 2 & 3)
Actually the purpose of using ASP qas to work faster and more easily with colors (which would have meant tremendous work and time if fully handmade).

Did you really create the shapes for all those background buildings in AS and filled the shape with colour one by one? From your blog I can just guess the way you worked, but I found no text which explains the details.

Nope this was made either hand drawn or with Photoshop...

chucky · Post by **chucky** » Thu Apr 17, 2008 5:29 pm

That was really cool cableon, so much work!Some of those backgrounds were particularly impressive and the whole thing had that 'edgy' charm and quite cinematic in many ways despite the cool stylisations.

Slowtiger is right about mirage being very good for hand drawn images and drawing straight into it with wacom can produce some great sketchy effects.
It has however some quirky work flow procedures that can drive anyone used to more established methods a little loopy.
I think the programmers are onto that now though, the guy who developed the story boarding tool emailed me in reference to that saying the programmers were kind of pushy in relation to how they liked to do things, but he said maybe they might be rethinking their approach to the users.
It actually hearkens back to the old amiga deluxe paint in many ways which is both good and bad.

You will definitely be able to tweak the hand drawn animation in mirage if you like and it imports image sequences very well, give it go and don't give up on it too quickly there is a bit of a speed hump in the learning curve, and it isn't as fun to use as anime and it wont tween for you which you might not want anyway.

Well done, cableon.

slowtiger · Post by **slowtiger** » Thu Apr 17, 2008 5:56 pm

I always feel sorry for the artist when I see such excellent work done with so much unnecessary pain ...

The colouring scenes: that's an easy one in Mirage. Do the line drawing, copy frame, colour an area, copy frame, colour another area ... doesn't get any faster.

Handling animation on paper: Mirage can import numbered sequences as easily as video files.

Layers: you could split your animation between different layers, so to have one (loop) for the BG and others for the character - no need to redraw each portion of the BG on each sheet.

Feel free to email me for details. If you plan to do more animation in this mixed media style, you should get something more comfortable than Photoshop. Last official price for Mirage was 400 €, a used license should be cheaper. We (Mirage users) all wait for the new software, but don't know any release date yet.

human · Post by **human** » Thu Apr 17, 2008 9:32 pm

I haven't seen the blog, but wanted to chime in.

This is brilliant work, and pretty damn scary.

It's almost as scary as the reality you are trying to portray, so that's a grim compliment.

Thank you for "getting it!"

"Resist much, obey little" --Walt

Rasheed · Post by **Rasheed** » Thu Apr 17, 2008 9:58 pm

Impressive.

About Mirage. They have lost a legal battle with TVPaint Développement, and had to take the whole product off the market. It was a mess.

Anyway, I have heard nothing but good things about TVPaint, first on the Amiga, later on the PC, and now both on Mac and PC.

It isn't as affordable as Anime Studio Pro, though. The non-Pro version costs around 400 euros, the Pro version around 900 euros.

chucky · Post by **chucky** » Fri Apr 18, 2008 5:10 am

This is all very strange Rasheed, there's a whole web of rumours on the net regarding both tvpaint and mirage, I was sent a product and staff evaluation form to fill out by mirage just a couple of weeks ago.
I'd love to know more Rasheed, anyway this is probably not the right forum for it.
Either way,cableon is right on and although it seems labourious to use only one layer,I do understand why, as cableon can can that feel and spontaneity and very natural composition while finding his/her feet on the very early projects.Obviously as the projects get bigger this should all be just limited to the layout process, I'm sure cableons style is strong enough to translate to any platform ,vector or raster and I admire the fact that he/she just powered ahead without getting bogged down in the technicalities which can quickly suck the soul out of a concept.

cableon · Post by **cableon** » Fri Apr 18, 2008 10:55 am

chucky wrote:Either way,cableon is right on and although it seems labourious to use only one layer,I do understand why, as cableon can can that feel and spontaneity and very natural composition while finding his/her feet on the very early projects.

It's "his".

Most sequences actually are multi-layered (sometimes using a LOT of them), even some of the "stop-motion" ones... Chucky, you have a very kind way to put the fact that I am not too familiar with professional techniques : even "regular" ASP sequences (ie with imported objects made of .png elements, bones etc) are quite "homemade", hehe...

Apart from that, what can I say -- thanks a lot again.

The choice of ASP also was made after a quick overlook at Toonboom, which did not seem to include any bone layers. But I am also gonna check Mirage for sure, although the image importation from iPhoto to ASP was very simple and convenient, allowing to skip long and painful scanning/cropping sessions...
I have also recently heard of TV Paint, which looks quite convenient to test your sequences' fluidity, but once again, straight snapshot importation seemed quite obvious, fast and convenient to me this time...