Leons-Manifesto

My initial goal was to learn toonboom:

Did i successfully do this?

Kinda!

It's my first rig film so everything's new to me. Slowly but surely I evolved the rigs and made them look better as i gained more experience (e.g added texture)

Sadly the film does have its limitations. It has very limited facial expressions and very little character acting :( i got the lip movement but i bit off more than i could chew and didn't really have time. I'm still happy though! I pulled of action, dialogue, a new program, freelance and backgrounds all in two months.

These are some exaggerated faces I used as inspiration for my film! I don't think i quiet got the vibe right but I did utilise many "anime" like aspects like exaggerated lines on their face or wide buldging eyes!

Also, a week before the due date I finally figured out how to end the film! A cold cut to a silly rip goon card with like. Sparkles and stuff could work. A cold cut also means I don't have to animate an explosion or draw a crater etc etc

It’d probably be funnier if i cut out the magical girl sequence but like. I spent too long on that so i’m keeping it in anyway. I’ll just speed it up to 150%.

For lighting I did this Usually I do my lighting in After Effects- this is how I did it all for last years film.

This year because I'm all about exploiting toonboom I want to do my lighting within the same program, especially because Toonboom has the capability to.

This below is how ZeBirdBrain does simple lighting using nodes, cutters and the light position tool. In a 3d space you can more the light and this determines how the lighting's angle looks on your character. It's incredibly quick and easy for lighting! To evaluate the only downside is it's also incredibly laggy- whenever i'd try render anything it would crash and shut down my entire pc from overheating. I paniced! I fixed this by playing with the Toonboom preferences (render setting specifically)

(apologies for the blurry image I'm not sure why but she only showed very blurry images of her setup (well ones including her shading node too anyway). to evaluate: this could be better quality haha, but also ZeBirdBrain has a very credible experience, working on Disney and Netflix (big hero six tv show, Glitch Techs, Lackadaisy and Wakfu) so i trust a lot of their advice and art techniques! I couldn't figure out how to colour the lighting??? All the toonboom official pages have really confusing explanations since everything is so complex and they're like 8 different variables you can change. a lot of the variables dont do much i found after playing with them I wish I could've made it sharper/crisp cel shading/lighting but I also couldn't figure out how to :(( to evaluate: i should've put more thought into lighting

It went Ok! I put wayyy to much stuff about my art process, sean told me I should focus on what I learnt instead!

I found out through research that Anime typically do all their animation before the lip sync

and then the voice actors have to try copy whatever mouth movement the characters are doing

this is also cheaper for dubbing- when anime is exported and translated around the world, those voice actors just have to copy the movements instead of having to change the entire animation

this is because anime mouth movements are very simple

its typically just a mouth flapping open and closed with little detail. because of this it's easy to make them say anything with the simplistic mouth movement

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American cartoons typically do the voice first then animate to it. this is the method i'll be doing (not for any particular reason. i guess for a short film its expected for me to do a little more work. i especially wanna do it because i must learn to do more actual lip sync and character acting for my portfolio

To lipsync I use a mirror and do funny mouth movements and then sorta replicate them. I know there's specific shape guides online and I did initially use them but later on I've found that except for the "o" and "L" and "m" "and "u" sound you can kinda just use any big open or teethy mouth shape. Those 4 exceptions I've learnt what specific shape you need though

initiialy i tried to lip sync with no advice and it came out kinda just...ok/bland/boring/weird? So I used an experience rigger called ZeBirdBrain to help

Sean advised that i put the mouth movements a slight second before the audio. this is to let your eyes/brain process the mouth movements before the speech

youtuber ZeBirdBrain also said this. she helped my lip sync flow a lot better!

She has a very cartoony lip sync style where the mouth literally floats from side to side of the character's face. while unrealistic it looks so expressive! and it was definitely better than whatever bland untimed thing i had. I drew a red line showing how it literally floats from side to side. It especially does this for the "o" sound.

here shows me imitating her speech style: below

Here you see her mouth slides all across her face. In real life this would be uncanny and strange but since it's a cartoon it looks fine!

It's a bit "too much" but i kinda like it? It feels very stylistic. I’ll understand if not everyone likes it though as it might look distracting. For her blinking i just do it after each movement another key thing ZeBirdBrain said is make sure each mouthsound/word has a distinct shape. putting two similar mouth shapes next to each other can make it look weird so there should almost always be contrast between mouth shapes. This is why she slides it all around the face, especially for fast dialogue.

She also said avoid animating the mouth on 1s. To many mouth movements can look weird (I learnt this last year) --------------------------------------------

Another useful tip is ZeBirdBrain said is that: if you temporarily hide your rig’s mouth layer you should still be able to tell what the characters emotion is just through their movement

This is such useful advice! Unfortunately I won't be able to apply it because i dont have enough time to make a million movements. Also its my first time making a rigged film so im kinda scared ill break them if i move them too much haha

This is a lineless background I did for one of the 3rd year’s film “Glory Days”. they asked me to model a windmill so here it is! (trees are not my models, copyright free source for them is: https://www.blenderkit.com/asset-gallery-detail/e1757b38-4bb3-4e92-a0ec-d2d45f9653fd/?query=tree+order:_score+bookmarks_rating_gt:0

Then for colours they gave me a moodboard that had a lot of UPA abstract artstyle so I followed that! it also had a bit of "superfriends" which is a superman show with watercolour backgrounds- since it was an outlier i just stuck to the UPA geometric style

They loved it but they (rightfully) said it should look more gloomy (the film is quiet serious). he said it's the saturation that definitely needs to be toned down to fit the films vibe.

This was my third try making it look more bleak! they were happy with it! They wanted it to be kinda smoggy looking but I'm not sure I'm happy with it. maybe once i animate the smoke it'll make more sense

i went for a warm sepia looking colour because :

-its a flashback, and flashbacks in media are usually represented with warm rustic colours

-there is a fire so to make it look kinda warm makes sense. i animated the fire by drawing blobs dissipating then i put detail over it later

In the original october storyboards the goon doesn't have a design nor does he have a weapon. so I restoryboarded the short fight at the start. I felt like it just being the girl punching a big guy into the sky was kinda boring, so he has a hammer and kiki now has magic. To make Kiki just as magical as Boba just felt right.

i wanted to make the big bandit cooler. Just like the small goon I made him inspired by dogon masquerade for consistency His hammer is inspired by an African drum!

Here are his test colours.

I think his mask’s purple fur looks a bit awkward in hindsight, oh well. I chose purple because in media it's usually associated with evil- which would fit a bandit. i thought it would also look nice with the nighttime colourscheme

Here's a video of me doing the hammer smash motion. I needed to reference myself because I couldn't get the hammer smash right!

This is the scrawny goon! I really wanted to push the blocky eye and mask looK. Since Kiki is triangle and Boba is circle I wanted him to be as square as possible! He has little squares in his hair

Here are some Test colours

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I asked my friends on discord which they like best!

It helped give me clarity! i agree that the pointy horns fit better because they're also more square!

In hindsight I should've use the #1's hair because the vibrant purple squares stand out the most vibrantly

He is inspired by the Dogon tribe masquerade!

For context he's also an old character of mine- I updated his design but it didn’t change too much (lack of time). old version of him:

I tested some mask expressions to see how far I could push it (no mouth and no eyebrows means I have to push everything else)

Reminder of key elements in Anthony's art (TheSketchyLab), my inspiration for this term:

I used his method of drawing curly hair. The study I did a month ago really did help! Though I didnt wanna copy 100% his style so thats another reason why i put square squiggles in the goon's hair instead of circles. I want to represent black textured 4c hair in a fun creative and unique way

Here is the final version of the scrawny bandit goon. I tried to also incorporate Anthony's harsh rim lighting. I couldn't put detailed textiles though because it's animated :(

to evaluate i think i did an ok job with this design, though i think the hair and tunic should be different colours in hindsight. I feel like he's missing something- like an accessory or necklace.

After doing the 3d here is the first draft tracing my models. After picking which animatic to do I immediately went to do my 8 backgrounds. These are them all about 70% complete

I later recognise that these look super desaturated and dead looking (e.g these homes dont look lived in- no pots, no hanging clothes, no mats). I think I also need to add better texture and better contrast (e.g the grass and mud are similar values). I also want to add boababs and palm trees so after a month or two i did the above^^^!

i think they look a lot better now, lively and lived in

i like the new saturation but I might have to desaturate it again so that the background isn't fighting for the eyes attention when my characters are supposed to be the focus

These were some of my references!

My Little Pony's night scenes were particularly helpful for colours and sky. I want mine to be slightly dark cuz its not set at daytime but I also need everything to be visible

so I went for a dawn/dusk/twilight time of day colourscheme with a pinkish sky like MLP does

Natasha Nayo is a Ghanaian animator who made an independent short film. Her style of drawing environmnets and buildings is very appealing to me- its bright and happy and has character

After the animatic presentation deadline I focused hard on backgrounds!

Now that I had time I modelled all the all the houses myself! I used the same placements as I was happy with them though. Personally I like when thatched roofs look blocky so I chose to make it chunky

Since I'm doing a fantasy world based in Africa I chose Asante architecture as reference (a 1700s Ghanaian kingdom) , photos below

There aren't many good photos as it was burnt down by the British long ago. I plan to trace my models and give it mroe character- e.g don't make all the lines perfectly straight, add cracks and texture etc.

I will also add typical details and village stuff like plants and windows later!

Initially, for the animatic presentation I used royalty free models I found online! I did cuz I just needed to block out the scene/village layout so I could figure out camera angles. Source of models (BlenderKit):

https://www.blenderkit.com/asset-gallery-detail/e726d35b-0666-4b84-b2ce-888edd481762/?query=order:-bookmarks+bookmarks_rating_gt:0

This is Kiki's rig- I made it within the first week after the animatic presentation!

To summarise the process: First I sketch the character in Clip Studio Paint, then I make my node view tree in ToonBoom. After this I trace my imported sketch in Toonboom using the already made nodes! Below I experiment with different drawing substitutions.

(Her initial sketched design below)

I wanted Kiki to be the opposite of Boba. She has a sharper design- lots of triangles, a pointy nose and UPA art style square fingers. 

I googled specific african clothing and found the Ghanian “Smock”. Kiki is wearing this with a red scarf/sash garment around her waist.

I want her to be kind of “emo” but still believably medieval- so I gave the smock dark colours and made her sharp.

These characters below inspired her personality. Raven especially inspired her magic powers!

I struggled with her sandals as I’m awful at drawing them, so I used Lapis Lazuli and Steven Universe as reference

I designed Kiki only after the storyboard was done

I really wanted her design to come across as a Southern African "princess". So I used the Ndebele people group's attire and architecture as inspo.

I love to use real world inspirations for my characters! I love the fantasy genre and want to make one set in Africa, so using some real cultural attire is a must! I wanted both my protagonists to be opposites. She has very round shapes meanwhile the other character will be very triangle/sharp. Hence I'm nicknaming them Bouba (and Kiki)!

I was looking for voices so I joined a public discord!

Every 15 minutes theres a new voice actor pitching themself! I didn't realise how many people were in the VA business and ready! Granted a lot of these people are new to it also.

So I pitched myself and let people come to me instead!

I was overwhelmed with how many people came! So I ended up just using the first who did haha, no auditions needed!

I've been using Pixabay for all my animatic sound effects and music! it's royalty free!