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Sandra says that she is re-registered as Dogsma.

every user's experience is interesting to be heard.

I feel the same way, but from Frank's responses I don't get the feeling that he wants to hear about individual's approaches to art or their philosophies on the subject of art but just wants to learn which button to push first and which last. this is an approach to artwork that is foreign to me and I can be of little help here.

What might be of general interest though, is that Sandra wouldn't understand any of what you listed as the first steps for Frank to follow, yet her work looks so good. She uses the pen tool and the layer sliders, and I described that.

This is why I don't believe in cookbook formulas and tutorials about "How to Paint a Tree" or "How to Paint the Human Face". How to paint a house, yes, but background painting is an art form.

The lessons should be: What to look for when painting the human face. Or, How to understand the functionality of backgrounds.

You pretty much came to the same conclusion yourself, when you said:

I'm often embarrased when it goes to teach to anyone how to do this or that,
because I have not one but a bunch of different ways to bring forward,
and I don't know which one of these will suit to anybody else,

I feel the same way, but from Frank's responses I don't get the feeling that he wants to hear about individual's approaches to art or their philosophies on the subject of art but just wants to learn which button to push first and which last. this is an approach to artwork that is foreign to me and I can be of little help here.

Actually I'm interested in both...... yes I want to which know buttons to press and in which order to use them, I want to learn this digital tool and yes and I am open to learn about art in general, knowlegde very much decoupled from the tool (after all the saying is a fool with a tool is still a fool....)

Thanx for the help

Gr,
Frank

Paul,

Just a little more background information from my side as I got the impression that you think I neglect the wise art lessons from your side. As a matter a fact I am very interested in hearing experiences from people in this area.

As said I create animation just for fun as a hobby. My main "audience" are my 3 children and their friends. I started just because my oldest son asked me every night before he went to bed to make a drawing and tell him a story. After a while I started combining the two questions and I started creating short animations for him on my pc. After having done that for a while and having a received a childrens book from a friend of ours in which the main character was named Stijn, just as mu oldest son, I decided to create an animation whiched follow the story told in the book (see http://circusfaldinianimation.blogspot.com). Just for fun, just to please my children. Both myself and my children like this very much. Nothing professional and no pretentions whatsoever.

After that I started a little "project" with my oldest son, he liked the animation so much that he would like to make one for himself. He is rather young (5 at that time) so I decided to make a joint project of this in which I helped him making up a simple story and created some basic drawings with him on paper. I scanned these drawings and brought them into my animation software. Again both of us had a lot of fun doing this! Although the project is not finished yet (it is summer time and I am glad he is playing outside together with his friends, playing soccer etc!), the result so far can be seen at http://nl.youtube.com/watch?v=Qx6dazpIYn8 (no sound yet!).

In Februray someone asked me to create a music animation for a song he had produced. He would like to create a DVD containing several of his songs and an animation for each song. I liked the idea but I told him that I am not a professional and I create animations for a hobby, for fun. I told hime that I am not able to compete with professional animators and that I was never able to deliver an animation at "Disney" level. That was not a problem for him so I started to create an amination for his song: http://nl.youtube.com/watch?v=lfOiADzSIjQ Again a lot of fun!

So bottomline: I am having a lot of fun creating animations like te ones above. Everything I do, I learnt myself, through reading some books, looking at other work, asking in forums and just by doing and exercise. I am aware of the fact that what I create is far from perfect but I am having a lot of fun and my children like the results too.

I just started to look into the tvpaint tooling and the main reason for this that I want to explore if I am capable of creating some "animations" based on more natural looking artwork. Main reason for me is that my father used to create water color painting (on paper). I like these paintings very much. He has had a formal art education, I don't have that at all. Nevertheless I am curious whether I can produce something that comes close to his work........ I would be happy if I succeed in doing this, however I won't be unhappy whenever I cannot match his capabilities. All my efforts are for fun!

So I am still exploring and open to any advise!

Gr,
Frank

Frank, you deserve a medal for this work! What joy and what a story you have just about yourself and your children! I don't think I have much to give you, but if you think so, please just ask away. I am the world's biggest pusher of originality and you are a perfect example of what happens when a person doesn't care to imitate so much as just create.

I would like to ask you a few questions myself: How much time did you spend on the film (silent) about the warriors and what software did you use for that? The wonder of that film is in the care you took to give the impression of a colossal invent. The massive scenes without hype you put together with obvious patience. This reminds me of the country fairs with their puppet shows for children I used to watch when living in Eastern Europe. Everything that happened on those little stages became tantalizing events of enormous proportions for small children, but without creating ill effects and havoc on their psyche, the way anime is reported to do (easy for me to believe) because the memories of those little shows remained just what they were -- small shows for small children.

But you also have another asset, which is your inventiveness. I think you are a perfect example of a person who isn't looking for cookbook recipes. I apologize for my attitude in my posts -- I read your questions the wrong way. I will not beat myself up too badly though because it would have helped if you had started off with your last post.

Now what is it that you are planning to do next? A more traditionally created animation; less puppet like?

By the way, I know of another person on these forums, Tony Dusko who lives in a town nearby and he is a young teacher of fifth grade students. He also got into animation to make little simple teaching aids just for his classes and has had great success with them -- not only in his classes, but on professional level venues such as film festivals. I believe he has so far entered 3 and has won major awards every time he entered.

What the two of you are doing brings our craft to the level of its greatest potential. Since these digital tools make the creation process of animated stories so accessible to anyone interested, there is also great potential for abuse, by which I mean the proliferation of imitations of the worst, crass commercialism and ugliness. I will go out of my way at any hour of the day or night to support people like you.

Frank is a well-known participant over at the Anime Studio (formerly Moho) forum. And he's achieving more than most of the guys with an established animation background who, in my opinion, get lost ofer technical trickery in their attempt to fully automate the animation process ...

The software Anime Studio is a favourite of mine: compared with 3D programs it is quite simple and reduced to the bare necessities, yet it is still powerful to do long and complex tasks. I especially like its easy approach to pans and level movement.

I would like to ask you a few questions myself: How much time did you spend on the film (silent) about the warriors and what software did you use for that?

Hard to say how much time it took. As I created it together with my son (when we started he was 5), I sometimes had to wait for him, sometimes he was very eager to work on this, sometimes he was occupied with other toys. I didn't push him (he is only a child) and he had to enjoy working on this. Nevertheless we started last October and the last update was beginning this year. It was drawn and coloured on paper. I scanned the drawings and cut them out in Paint Shop Pro. As mentioned by Slowtiger I used Anime Studio Pro to animate the png files that I produced through scanning.

Now what is it that you are planning to do next? A more traditionally created animation; less puppet like?

I am not sure yet, it could be that I am going to create a sequel to the circus animation or another music video. I would like it be less puppet style but my capabilties are for the moment nog good enough to do so. All my animation work has to be done "after hours" in the evenings, during office hours I have a job outside animation. So I have to find a balance between the time I have, the complexity and the 'quality' I can achieve. For the moment the puppet like style is not that time consuming compared to other styles, it matches more or less my capabilites at this moment in time and gives me the opportunity to show my "audience" some results in an acceptable timeframe. As a next step I would like to make is improve on the backgrounds and use some more advanced textures for the puppets (hence my attempts to master TVPaint and create some more natural looking backgrounds and textures).

Gr,
Frank

Have you tried drawing and in-betweening those drawings with just a few more drawings in TVPaint? I think that if you can draw what you did for those cut-outs, you can draw well enough to draw two poses of a character in that same style and draw a few inbetweens. You might be surprised how little time it might take you. You don't have to keep a character in constant motion and if you take advantage of how instances can be stretched out into holds of individual frames in TVP now, you might find this interesting.

If you would be interested in trying that out and aren't familiar with drawing on a tablet, I could give you a few pointers to make the transfer from pencil and paper to stylus and tablet quicker.

Otherwise I would suggest that if you have all your elements as "cut-outs" from scanned paper using crayons and such utensils, that you will get the most pleasing results with consistency in materials and just paint with real paint and brushes on paper. On the other hand, if you want to simplify that process by going digital, I still think that the best way is to at least start working the way Sandra does, which is quite simply painting without the use of masks and such helpers and only after you run into some difficulties, you upload the painting here and people like ZogOtto can direct you to some of their tricks.

If you would be interested in trying that out and aren't familiar with drawing on a tablet, I could give you a few pointers to make the transfer from pencil and paper to stylus and tablet quicker.

Yes I am very interested in learning to use a tablet better, I am stille stugling to het the most out of my tablet (I have just rather simple wacom tablet but I suspect that doesn't matter).

moorsel wrote:

(I have just rather simple wacom tablet but I suspect that doesn't matter).

That actually matters the most! In this case, the Bigger the Better rule applies -- ideally you should have a 12 x 9 inch Intuos 3; it will make a huge difference.

This is because the whole secret of getting best results is to map out for your pen a portion of the tablet that roughly matches the size of your drawing window. This way you end up with an arrangement where you draw on your tablet the corresponding size of the drawing that appears on your screen. Everything else around I handle with the mouse.

If you have a large tablet you most likely won't end up using the entire surface of that tablet to draw on, but you still want to have a large tablet so that you end up using the maximum possible number of pressure points you can get within your mapped out surface.

The next important thing which is often underestimated is to have your pressure settings most optimally set in the Wacom software. This will depend on which drawing tool you will use in TVP, what size of line you select etc. So when you are searching by experimentation for the best line to draw with, don't forget to often reset your pen values in Wacom.

Paul wrote:... I still think that the best way is to at least start working the way Sandra does, which is quite simply painting without the use of masks and such helpers and only after you run into some difficulties ...

painting masks is very common and frequently used by illustrators,
the goal being simply to temporally protect/preserve a part of the drawing from ink and paint (or fx).
in natural media, it's called "drawing gum" (or liquid frisket),

believe me, nothing hard or mysterious with using this old technic,
I know pure aquarellists don't use that, this is "against the law",
but personnally, I won't care any law, if it can help and save some of your time,
(after a mask defined, you can paint fastly with few big brush strokes,
you won't have to change many times your brush size, neither have to erase
thousand times when your strokes run over out of the area.)
I use mask not very often, but sometimes, it's very helpful and time saving.
here again no orthodoxy : you just have to be aware you can easily do that,
but you can do without as well, it's up to you.

Of course, the digital frisket (stencil) has big advantages on the natural media equivalent :
- it dries immediatly, (no waitting time before to lay the colors)
- you can switch it on/off at any times, with a single click
(in Natural Media, once erased, it's gone definitively),
- you can store (in hidden layers) as much masks as needed,
- you can animate a mask,
- you can use mask with smooth edge (border with gradiant opacity),
the drawing gum only allows sharp edges,
- ... etc.
my 0.02€

What fun your movies are! So intricate. I love the way the water moves and the elaborate boats. The backgrounds in general. I got the gist of the story even though I didn't understand the language because the characters were expressive in their puppetry way.

We had a business teaching children computers in the 90's. I wanted to teach the kids animation. Each week, I would learn one new thing that I then taught to the kids. Your son's sword fight makes me chuckle....there was always some kind of swords or fighting or explosions in the boys' clips.

I then started out making little films for my grandsons for their birthdays for fun. They really enjoyed them.

After some years, I decided to really learn to draw. It does take time (I'm in my 4th year now of drawing...but I definitely can do it...although one always sees need for improvement.) It is a great joy.

Also: I use the very tablet Paul describes and it is a great wonder indeed.

Sierra K Rose wrote:I still mourn the loss of all our posts on that forum. So much vital and helpful information gone. Forum-shy as she may be, I still learned a lot from Sandra's posts.

Actually, I printed out LOTS of posts from the old forums and I believe I have some stuff when Sandra was offering insight into how she worked. I will have to dig around for it. I have boxes of the stuff.

regards,
William

ZigOtto wrote:btw, is your half "shy Sandra" registred here as a forum member ?

I am a very shy registered member of the forum (notice this is my first post)
but I am not the Sandra you're talking about
To prevent some misunderstandings. I simply don't use an avatar-name.
I am still a student using tvpaint only since a short period and love to search for advise on this forum and get all these wonderful brushes and panels: thank you people so much!
As soon as I have something to add myself, I will
I'd love to see some work of Sandra too!