Special Studies

Illustration to Animation - A Special Study

Looking at how 2d illustrations can be used to create moving images in animation and how artists have used interesting illustration techniques to create their animations.

There are many different tools that can be used in the animation industry for creating animation from 2d illustrations.


As an illustrator at heart my main focus for my animation was to create something that was visually pleasing to look at and interesting. I didn't want simple vector shapes and colours. I wanted something that looked hand drawn sketched and painted with textures and detail.


To create these effects for my animation I had to come up with a tool that would enable me to do all of these things and more. 


There are many programs that offer the facility of importing illustrations. 3DS Max allows the import of artwork to be added as a texture to a 3D model which can present the appearance of a 2D animation when its actually a 3D model.


Anime Studio Pro - can be used by adding bones using the create bone tool to add a puppet like affect to your illustration


And finally aftereffects which was my favourite as it is part of the Adobe suite and being a fan of Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator I immediately felt comfortable using it. It had all of the technical elements whilst being user friendly.


Aftereffects


Importing 2d artwork into aftereffects.


File - Import - (navigate to the image you wish to import) select open.


Note if this is a .psd file containing layers, aftereffects will then ask you if you wish to import the .psd file with the following questions about the layers:

Editable layer styles - allows you to import a file and retain all of the .psd layers exactly as they appear in photoshop with the transparent layers all in one folder.


Merge Layer Styles into Footage - will merge all of the layers into footage reducing the rendering time.


To  retaining the transparent background of an image, you can save the image you are working on in photoshop as a .png file or psd.

Image of a daisy saved as a .jpg file will flatten the layer and save the image onto a white background.

Daisy saved as a .png file in photoshop will retain its transparent background for importing into programs such as Aftereffects.

.................................................................................................................................

AFTEREFFECTS

For an object to be affected by the lights placed in a scene, it must first be transformed into a 3D layer. This will then allow the layer to be manipulated in 3 dimension.

There are three main light options in Aftereffects..

Ambient Light - Aftereffects
Ambient light is the overall light effect in a scene.

Point Light - Aftereffects
The point light works like a sun - it casts light in directions like a bulb. The further away from the source an object is, the more it is affected.

Spot Light - Aftereffects
The spot light is a similar light to the point light but if you affect the angle of the spot light, the light cast moves up and down.

The options for each light can be found in the drop down under light options.

The images below show my scenes (1.) with ambient light in the scene only, and (2.)
with spot light added to the scene...

1.

2.

Wiggler effect - Aftereffects

My spot light has been positioned where the fire is placed in the scene and is casting light in the direction of my character. A wiggler effect has then be added to the light. 

With the spot light layer selected - select the drop down options and select the position layer in the transform drop down. Add two key frames to the position layer.  I can now add the wiggler effect to the position layer in the timeline. The wiggler is found in the bottom right hand side of the screen (note - two key frames must be placed on the timeline and selected for the wiggler to be applied). With the two key frames selected, hit apply. The frequency and magnitude of the wiggle can then be played around with to create the desired effect, in my case the flickering light will light up the scene and my character as though he is beside a real fire light.

Cast Shadows - Aftereffects

If you were to turn cast shadows on in the effects layer of a light, you must then select the 3d image and turn on the cast shadows option also.

NOTE: Humans perceive everyday colours in a relative rather than absolute manner. There are colour casts present in most situations and everyday environments, however our brains are very good at filtering this information out allowing us to make sense of the colours around us and to interpret objects as white when intact they have a colour cast over them. A way to see this is to use a digital camera with the white balance set to daylight: a neutral setting that will show the colours in the environment as they actually are.

Light Bounces

When light hits a surface the effect is one of two things.. it is either bounced off that surface or absorbed.

High key lighting: This is where even shadows are light due to the amount of light bouncing around.

Examples are found in nature - Snow, Fog..  

Low key lighting: Contains very little light in the scene.

Night, Storms..

Wavelengths:

White: 

A white object will reflect all wavelengths equally.

If a white light hits a red surface, the blue and green wavelengths will be absorbed and the red light will be reflected away.

Black:

A black object will absorb all of the light wavelengths.

Sunlight:

White light from the sun contains a whole spectrum of colours, as seen in a rainbow. They have progressively longer wavelengths:

Violet, Indigo, Blue, Green, Yellow, Orange, Red

As sunlight travels towards earth the photons collide with atomic particles within our atmosphere.. the shorter waves of light become scattered. Shorter wavelengths are more likely to be deflected than longer ones and therefore the main photons that are scattered in all directions are blue - hence we see a blue sky. Dark colours will appear to turn blue as they drift back towards the horizon.

Diagram: Photons have different wavelengths depending on their colour. 

Because the longer wavelengths can travel much further without being scattered we see sunsets as red:

The sunlight has travelled through a thick layer of air to reach us. Once its lower in the sky a lot of the blue waves have been scattered and the remaining light will be red.

Additive Colour: 

Involves the mixing of coloured light. The colours on a television screen are a good example of this. Additive primary colours are red, green and blue.

Subtractive Colour:

Involves the mixing of coloured paints, pigments, inks and dyes. The traditional subtractive primary colours are red, yellow and blue.

Light Colour and Material Color Interaction

The colour of the light in a scenes changes the colour of the material it is illuminating. For example, a red light turns a light-coloured material red and turns a bright green material black. Multiple lights in a scene also add their colour to each other. For example, overlapping red, green, and blue spotlights creates white light at the nexus of their intersection.

Plan for this in advance by choosing material colours that work with the lighting colour design of the scene.

Radiance:

This is a very subtle effect usually as it takes a large amount of bright light for it to become apparent.

In soft or dim light it may not be visible at all. But in bright light it can add a lot of colour to the objects it affects. If the light bounces between objects of the same colour it will become enhanced by the light reflecting back onto it, creating a glow and saturated version of the existing colour.

Shadows:

Cast shadows on snow will reflect the blue sky. A blue sky makes blue shadows. On a partly cloudy day these will contain more grey.
Long shadows are cast from a side light source (as from the sun in late evening or early morning), short shadows are cast from overhead. The shape of the shadow will depend on the object casting it and how close the source is to the object.

Reflected light:
"The angle of incidence equals the angle of reflection." So for example when light rays hit the surface of a mirror, they will be reflected back off the surface equal to the angle at which they hit.

Refraction:
Light refraction occurs as light rays pass from one transparent medium (such as air) into another (e.g. water) when this happens the rays slow down and the rays bend. The amount of bend depends on how much the material slows them down.

NOTE: Bose-Einstein condensate: In 1999 Harvard completed a test on slowing down the speed of light. They managed to achieve 38mph. 

My own personal Yurmby colour wheel I created for use in digital painting for photoshop!
I basically took a copy of the Yurmby colour wheel and opened it in photoshop, created a mask layer over the top and then created the mask shape to reveal the mask gamut of colours beneath it.


By selecting and moving the colour wheel layer around (using transform or move tool) you can then alter the gamut of colours within the revealed shape and create a pallet containing colours that are all relative and harmonic for your artwork.

A colour stylist working in the animation or game industry where colour scripting is required needs to be familiar with the colour wheel and learn the location of the colours within it.

Colour scripting is vital as in a narrative sequence of scenes and artwork, you need to be visually aware of the changing colour and moods as one image sequence precedes and follows the other to allow the scenes to be seen in relation to one another.

..................................................................................................................................

04/03/12 After Effects - Beams of light with particles of dust.
Managed to complete a tutorial that had the effect of dust particles shining in beams of light coming down into the scene.. created a really nice old, kind of secret look.. I created it from a tutorial on Video copilot using CC Particle world effects in after effects.  The only difficulty really was creating convincing beams of light. In the first test they were way too much and it looked like an underwater scene with too much light coming down so I had to tweak it quite a bit, making the rays bigger with a slight angle food more depth and I altered the brightness a bit too so it was more contrasty and took the evolution from the suggested time (100) and made it 50... second test came out much better! :)  Screenshot below of light beam controls used:

Backlit animation lighting technique:
This is an animation process used to create animation with light, by shooting animation mattes with light shining through them, filmmakers can then create special effects that have a characteristic "glow" effect to them. This animation process was used extensively in TRON for the glowing circuitry on the bodies of the programs as well as the majority of the effects animation (i.e. sparks, lights on walls, background animation). 

The images below are of my all time favorite animation by director don Bluth - The Secret of NIMH showing scenes lit by fire and light... Bluth and his team of animators created these beautiful images using a backlit effect which was a popular method in the 70's and 80's. Among the techniques experimented with on The Secret of NIMH were rotoscoping, multiple passes on the camera to achieve transparent shadows, and backlit animation (where animated mattes are shot with light shining through colour gels to produce glowing areas for artificial light and fire effects), multiple color palettes for characters to fit in different lighting situations, from daylight, to night, to warm environments to underwater. Mrs Brisby had 46 different lighting situations, therefore there were 46 different color palettes, or lists of color, for her.

25/02/12 Started collecting images of firelight and candlelight to begin my study on how flames affect their surroundings and how they light up objects...

20-02-12  The software that I am using to put all the animation and effects together will be adobe after effects. It makes sense to use this as I enjoy photoshop so much. So far I have managed to create a burning fire (although the flame effect is too fast and needs slowing down) and a cloud of smoke using After Effects.

The fire for my latest test in Aftereffects was created in CS5.5 using the cc particle world effect. I created a faded sphere with a birth colour yellow and Death red. I then played around with the velocity and birth and death rate, its randomness, gravity and so on to create the effect of the flames.

I will need to play around with the velocity a bit more as the effect moves too fast and needs slowing slightly. I have also managed to create a kind of smoke cloud above the fire. This is an image of a cloud which is brought in and duplicated 3 times. A warp effect and rotation are then added with the opacity altered on a couple of the layers.

.............................

'The Illusionist' is lit beautifully with lots of shadows creating a very magical and theatrical feel. In the movie industry it is the DP - director of photography that is responsible for the way in which the film is lighted. The Illusionist was shot in the colours of yellowing paper with a flickering, out of focus on the edges light scheme to produce an "old" movie feel about it, as though watching an event from the past.

Saving Private Ryan:

Director Steven Spielberg and cinematographer Janusz Kaminski wanted to capture the terror, slaughter, and chaos of the invasion at Omaha Beach, D-Day, June 6, 1944. They used handheld cameras with lenses that had been modified by stripping out the black coating on the interior of the lens bodies. The interior surfaces of modern cinematography lenses are coated with a nonreflective matte finish to eliminate internal light reflection. Modifying the lens in this way created a higher contrast image reminiscent of the black-and-white newsreels seen during World War II. The overcast indirect natural light of the French oceanside, coupled with the high-contrast images produced by the lenses, enhanced the viewer's perception of motion in the scene. 

The Matrix:

Bill Pope was the director of photography on The Matrix and had this to say about the lighting, color, and emotion they were trying to create.

"To distinguish the Matrix from 'reality,' from the Nebuchadnezzar and the pods, 'reality' was given a cooler look, a bluer, more normal, less sickly look. The future in the film is cold, the sun is blotted out, there is no real warmth unless it is artificial heat, so that is why they went for the cool side.
"Whereas the Matrix, created by the computers, is a decadent, decaying world, so it has a green hue. These are the two different colors—green and blue. The Matrix should make you feel sick, and in 'reality' you should feel a little more at home, but never comfortable. If you make it gold and warm you know that it is home, a safe haven. The other day I started using warm lights—I did this unconsciously for the first time in Neo's bedroom. It just felt right that it should be slightly warm. As harsh as that bunk is, it is the only home he has got." (from an interview published on the official The Matrix Web site).

Light stage devices and image-based facial rendering systems:

Have been developed as a technique for character re-lighting in the movie industry for the last ten years. Whilst the first Light stage developed had only one spot light, Light stage 2 featured around 30 bright lights which rotated to capture detailed facial reflectance in just 8 seconds. In 2008 light stages 3 and 5 were used in combination with creative technologies in such movies as Hancock and to transform a computer-generated Brad Pitt as an old man in David Fincher's The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. Light stage 5 was eventually used with the visual effects team from WETA Digital for Cameron's Avatar.