Transcripts
1. Preplan Your Animation: So we've all seen a
Troll Brown Christmas. Well, in that special, Director Bill Melandez
and the animators created an infinite looping
cycle of falling snow. Now, you will not know
when it started or ended. Even though we know there
is always a start and end. It was seamless, and that's
made it so cool to watch. For that mindset,
I wanted to create that same kind of endless
snow in my animation. So I cite the snow scenes from the Christmas
special frame by frame. I wanted to see when the
cycle would begin and end. How long one cycle and how long each drawing
is exposed. Okay. Now, on the surface,
because it's charlie round, the cycle looks simple, but only deceptively so. We are used to any
animation going from point A to B to C because
that is the rule of thumb, but not so in this context. Here it is from point A to B, and then back again to
point A, thus the loop. I know that seems odd at first, but think about it
because if you were to animate by the
thumb of animation, you will find your snow moving
downward from point A to B only to then see and move of Webley back upward to
its first position. That means we would have
to start all over Now, though that might seem
like a stretch at first. But think about this first
second because if you were to animate by the roll
of thumb of animation, you will find your snow moving downward from zero point A to B only to then see it move abruptly back upward
to its first position. That means you would have to start all over again
from the beginning. Now, keep in mind what
the animators must be asking themselves when they're working on those kind of scenes. You are applying all
those key points to not just one or rather
many smaller pieces that are moving together. They will come in
various shapes or sizes and have different
paths of falling down. Each snowflake is a
character unto itself.
2. Animating the Snowfall: Okay. Okay, so let's start. I'm ming this in Tubo harmony. So I'm going to use
the paint brush tool. For this scene, I have
the size set at ten. The color is set to black, which might seem odd because that's not the color of snow, but when I finish the animation, I won't change it
to white to make the albline and the
fill the same color. Okay. Here's the next step. Underneath your animation, have a separate drawing and
simply draw a rectangle. When you turn on your
light table feature, which can be found
up here, you know, the shape of the light bulb, you will be able to
see the shape itself. This will guide you in keeping your work within the
aspect ratio, the shot. Now it's time to animate. If you're doing it
on a light table, you know, grab a few
sheets of paper. If you're doing it on tune boom, as I am just start drawing, remember that the first
and third drawing should be exactly the same. Trace or copy and
paste your work from the first drawing
onto the third drawing. Now we have the same
start and end point done. Since your first
and third drawings, you know, they're
the same thing, they will appear to be the same thing through
your aligned drawings. Through the light
in the process we like to call here,
the onion skin. So what's the onion skin? The onion skin allows us to see through multiple previous
and next drawings. Since the snow is the same. You don't have to worry about connecting the two images
like we would normally. All we have to do now
is draw out the snow falling while adding new snow
when they enter from above. And most importantly, just
draw all over the place, go all over the place. Spacing of the snow
for the second drawing won't determine its speed.
So think about this. If the snow is
meant to fall fast, then the gap in
between the first and the second drawing
would have to be big. However, if it is meant
to fall more slowly, then the gap should be small.
3. Finishing the Snowfall: Okay, we've got through
three drawings. So let's start in between them. We have some help
from our very trusty and handy dandy animating chart, which you can see
on the screen here. Draw as you noally would, as you bridge the first and
second drawings together. But pause when you get to the second and third
drawings of your animation. The pause that I speak of was
the scenario that we were just talking about earlier in
the class. Think about it. If we were to in
between normally, our snow p you right back
up to its beginning spot. We can't let that happen. So disregard the next drawing. Look at your previous one and continue to draw the snow
falling down from a side. The five drawings under a belt now draw in between all of them. This time, though, we can
in between normally now. We can do that now because there are enough drawings
in the area of question that now implies downward movement instead
of upward movement. In that sense, we were able
to trick the drawings. That out of the way now, let's take a look at
our exposure sheet, which you can find
on the right side. It will come in handy now. This tells us how many
drawings we have in total, the frame number of the drawing. The name of the drawing,
and the exposure set for each drawing when all the drawings
are played out. If you're doing this
on paper, that's fine. Just make the exposure
sheet on your own paper. With the exposure sheet, we can see the
animating chart in action from beginning to end. We started with just
three drawings, and then we finished
off with 11 drawings. Because of that trick
that we pulled earlier, the snow kept falling. And finally, I added two more images to smooth out the motion
of the snow falling. Okay. Let's wrap this up now. In the timeline or
exposure sheet. Copy only drawings
two through 11. When you click in Frame 12, select past cycle with
six normal cycles. Now, highlight all the drawings and set the exposure on two. And there we have it. That's
our Charlie Brown snowfall.
Mike Ryan, Traditional Animator
