I am thrilled and challenged by the reality of having essentially a virtual animation studio in my home. It’s been a cyclical journey for me trying to reach the look of ‘Golden Age’ animation.
Having worked in traditional animation during the late 70s the amount of resources needed was considerable starting with reams and reams of punched paper. Factor in the acetate cells, paints, camera, and an area to house all this including workspace and I can’t even imagine the expense.
Now after 30 some years I have all the tools at my fingertips and no trees were harmed or houses mortgaged.
I'm in the process of making a pipeline for a short personal film and have decided to use an 8GB thumb drive to transfer project files between platforms; a PC with Wacom Tablet, and a Tablet PC with Wacom technology for cleanup animation. I’m using Flash for quick and dirty animatics and color studies, ArtRage to do final backgrounds and Toon Boom Animate for principal animation.
I did a combination storyboard\animatic that was broken out into scenes using QuickTime Pro so I know my shot lengths and the sound tracks were extracted from each scene. I made folders for each scene that contains the scene animatic QT, audio file, ArtRage BG file, and ToonBoom work files so everything needed is in it’s own folder.
Here’s a low resolution scene showing the steps from storyboard, to layout and pencil test, to finished color.
What is so great about this is I can go in and make changes even after the fact without having to re-shoot or use more materials!
If you want to do animation, there really isn't any excuse not to now that it's all in the box.
