Disney's Frogumentary

[Paul Fierlinger]

PIGS: "4 feet yes, 2 feet no!"

__ Animal Farm, George Orwell" __

[Fabrice]

Anyway, 3D is best

LOL

And there you have it ! Yes, we are all dinosaurs , drawing on paper or tablets , it doesn't matter. We have a "D" missing , so 2D must not be as good as 3D , so I've heard.

David : Eric was just kidding


Btw, I just wanted to add to the discussion that :
On my side, I don't want to make an absolute opposition between paper and paperless.
I think that a young animator who has never used a real sheet of paper can not understand the benefits of the existing paperless technology (bitmap or vectors).

More important, for TVP-you don't have the right sales pitch for the people who write the purchase orders.

Do you know ? : I'm very happy to work here at TVPaint with Hervé, Eric, Mike, Elodie, Patrick, etc ... because we are all always trying to improve what we use do, in our speciality !
Such posts give me more energy to understand and improve my own work.

So, please tell me what should I do or say on the website, it could appear later or sonner !

[D.T. Nethery]

David : Eric was just kidding

HI, Fabrice,

Yes, I understood that Eric was joking . My response was meant to be humorous as well.


And to clarify : the second quote in your post above ( "More important, for TVP-you don't have the right sales pitch for the people who write the purchase orders.") was from User767 , not me.

-DN

[User767]

>>What would prevent using TVP on a network with 200+ artists?
Media management and quality control (Management Control, being an operative concept here)

>>You say you don't know that it can't be done and I don't know either.
No, I didn't say that-Wondering How it could be done effectively.

>>But traditional drawings can be scanned and imported into TVP , so what's the difference ?
Workflow, media management. They could have done the entire film in Photoshop too. What's the difference?

>> Do you like the ToonBoom Harmony/ToonBoom Animate Pro interface better ?
Yes, though only relative to TVP. It's also not the greatest thing out there. I think I actually liked Animo, of all the animation software I've used. Seemed to have been made by animators.

>>Have you used both TVP and Toonboom ?
Yes. 2009 estimated time animating: TVP 200 hrs. Mirage 100 hrs. ToonBoom 200 hrs, Cinema4D 200 hrs., Toonz 60 hrs, Paper 300 hrs, AnimeStudio 200 hrs, and probably something else that I'm not remembering right now. Supervised animation on some of these and others as well-beyond listed hours.

>>a software you say you don't like and never have
Didn't say that. I just dislike the interface. Other people here find it clunky too. I like what i can do with TVP, I just wish for a more pleasant way to do it.

>>24 field paper ? Good grief, man, are you mad ?!!
I suppose so. I don't mind working on 24 field, though 12 is certainly more manageable. I tend to use 16 when it's my own choice.

>>Yes the "schmooze" you refer to is a factor. I've seen it up close.
And that's what TVP (or any other 'vendor') has to deal with-as a business. And, what I would hope they figure out to target that 'Disney' sort of audience.

>>guess you don't use Mirage very much even if it is on your machine.
Hours above.

>>pencil was was the "best" pencil to use for animating.
I get a lot of flack for using a lead holder (Caran d'Ache 2+3mm leads)-short pencils get annoying too.

>>Use the tool that works best for you.
Agreed. I was impressed that the animators were 'allowed' to use pencils on this frog movie. What I always hope for is a better 'tool'.

When I look up from my disk, my eyes have a focus change. At a computer, I almost always have to turn to look at something that will give me a focus change. Looking at paper has better focus-ability than a monitor. I'll have to think about this, but I can always draw longer-with less fatigue on paper than with a computer anything. Which is probably one of the main reasons I prefer paper.

[slowtiger]

When I look up from my disk, my eyes have a focus change. At a computer, I almost always have to turn to look at something that will give me a focus change. Looking at paper has better focus-ability than a monitor. I'll have to think about this, but I can always draw longer-with less fatigue on paper than with a computer anything. Which is probably one of the main reasons I prefer paper.

This, and what I call the "sensitivity" of real pencil on paper, are IMO the biggest points against digital animation. I have to actively think about breaks and ergonomics to prevent health damage from drawing on cintiq the whole day.

All other arguments seem to boil down to just some points: Softwares are different frome each other, GUIs are different and often hard to get used to, not every task can be done by every software with the same tools. But will any of this be noticeable in the result? I don't think so.

BTW, I just attended the premiere of Sylvain Chomet's new film "The Illusionist" at the berlinale. Nice film, a bit smaller and slower than Belleville, but enjoyable as well. And all 2d animation was done on paper.

[Fabrice]

And to clarify : the second quote in your post above ( "More important, for TVP-you don't have the right sales pitch for the people who write the purchase orders.") was from User767 , not me.

yes, yes, it was clear in my mind

[Elodie]

Animo, Animo... Oh ! yes, I remember ! It was a great European animation software, killed and bought by Toonboom.
Sure, Toonboom is really mad-skills in affair...

And that's what TVP (or any other 'vendor') has to deal with-as a business. And, what I would hope they figure out to target that 'Disney' sort of audience.

Thanks a lot for your precious sales-management advises Dennis. I always thought we had to wait without doing anything to sell something. Has someone been lying to me all these years? I'm shocked !

Well, we are totally flooding this interesting subject (I remind, it was : "The Princess and the Frog" technique... not "TVPaint's sales"). So, in order to find again this subject, here is another documentary / interview :



Dennis, if you have other adivses for TVPaint, write us an email, we will read it with interest.

[Sewie]

Well, we are totally flooding this interesting subject (I remind, it was : "The Princess and the Frog" technique... not "TVPaint's sales")...

Right!
Just want to add that I think TVP is doing a great job in developping the sofware and paying attention to it's user base.
Who cares if Disney (or any other studio) knows this!

[Peter Wassink]

Just want to add that I think TVP is doing a great job in developping the sofware and paying attention to it's user base.
Who cares if Disney (or any other studio) knows this!

Well i can think of a couple of people who'd care about that!
Above all it would be nice for TVP business... if only for marketing purposes, just imagine: "Disney created their latest 2D animated feature using TVP"

[Elodie]

Yes, it would be really nice, I must say

But even in that case, I'm not sure we would be authorized to claim it

[Sewie]

The way I see it, it's their loss.

[D.T. Nethery]

Out of curiousity: does anybody know of any screenshots from the GUI of Disney's CAPS system? (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_A ... ion_System claims (at the end) that Princess and Frog was done using ToonBoom Harmony ...) I never saw any picture of that system, it would be so interesting to see and compare it to recent software.

Hi, Slowtiger,

Because you asked, here is a frame capture showing the CAPS interface :

CAPS Workstation

(click image to see it larger)

--------

added :

Another screen capture of the CAPS interface -

The CAPS scanning workstation-

This is a print-out of a screen grab showing the CAPS interface with color model notes on the character -

CAPS_Interface_B&B.jpg (82.76 KiB) Viewed 19388 times

-----

[slowtiger]

Thank you so much!

It's interesting to see what they already had, and what's different to recent software. Not that I can read anything on the photo, but some GUI conventions are obvious. It's a typical product of that time, I'd say.

On the left screen there's the familiar X-sheet, directly converted from paper, and why not? They were still working in a hybrid environment. The toolbox on the top looks quite big and very cluttered. There are icons which take more screen estate than some of the labeled buttons. On the right screen there's a bunch of big buttons, some of them coloured aggressively. I guess the 25 buttons in the middle represent all the different colours for that character, all neatly named, and all but the colour in use greyed out. All in all there's a total of about 100 clickable items present at the same moment - there seems to be no content-sensitive collapsing.

Do you know if they already used a pen-and-tablet input?

Yes, that's definitely a first-generation software ...

[D.T. Nethery]

Yes, that's definitely a first-generation software ...

Cutting edge tech for 1989. The GUI may look clunky compared to what we have now , but it was a powerful, versatile system.
Alvy Ray Smith has a little bit of background on it in his paper "Digital Paint Systems: Historical Overview"

As I recall the toolbars could be collapsed or hidden. There was some sort of pen tablet for "inking" details
though most of the coloring was simple click and fill. Honestly I never paid that much attention to it.
The Digital Ink & Paint dept. was on another floor in the studio and I never had much of a reason to be there.
We had one CAPS workstation in our department , but the only thing we ever used it for was to call up scenes
to view them in color. As far as actually using the interface I had no idea how it worked.

I would imagine that if you had access to old issues of American Cinematographer or certain computer graphics journals from around that time (1986 -1990) you would find an article or two explaining it in greater detail, though perhaps not because it was proprietary and Disney was very secretive about it.

Of course now it's all merely historical interest as the system is obsolete and has been surpassed by current generation off-the-shelf software, so maybe someone will write an article about it with detailed screen shots and explanation of the functions (for those of us who are interested in such historical minutia) .

[malcooning]

The folder with the "introduction to CAPS" makes me eek.