So this is my first real attempt at putting them all together (along with a random ‘corn’ accessory).
I like to do this before the designs get too far to make sure they all look right together. Cohesive all that jazz.
Cow has a bit of a weird nose still- too pigly. And the chicken isn’t quite right yet. On to farm critters 2.0…
Here, I refined the rooster a bit this way and that- more stylized tail or less? Attached beak or one that looks stuck on? Floating crown thingie or attached?
Hmm…
I worked a bit on the cow here, too. Still wasn’t hitting it with the ‘pig-nose’ and still a bit too, um, anatomically correct and all.
Corn and wheat and pitchfork lookin’ good, though.
On to another-
I like the cow here- I think I swapped the two nostril nose for just one later, but I like the long leggy look to him.
If he’s too squat and bulky he looks more like a pig. The hay bail and pitchfork are getting there, too.
Still working on getting a good rooster look. Pushing the stylized vs. cartoon argument back and forth here.
A lot of floating parts vs. attached parts looks here as well as how scribbly the tail is and the look of the feet.
There’s also folks all over the neighborhood opening their studios, with lots of cool art and artist’s spaces to check out and some kid stuff at the main events and nosh and what not!
So first off, yes- Degas really did work on paintings after he’d sold them.
Never happy, it seems. And yes- he did have a friend who chained a painting to the wall that he’d bought so Degas wouldn’t take it home to his studio to work on it some more whenever he visited!
Crazy, right? Okay, so we exaggerated a bit with the boat anchor chain and the nails and the wrench and all.
I like how this guy pops around the scene in such a frenzy, trying to secure his painting before Degas gets in. It was a bit rough, moving his mouth all over the place trying to keep it on his face as he jumped all over.
That and I had to time it JUUUST right to keep it from showing when the hammer comes in front of his face.
I also like how gritty the watercolor is here- I’d been working a lot on getting the paint lighter and looser and more fluid with that video and it’s working out well. Last video the background’s were a bit too bright and punchy and we’d lose the characters sometimes.
That and- man was it it something to animate all those chain links moving! They go by pretty fast, but I had to do 5 or 6 drawings of those chains all moving in sync with one another as he links them up with the lock.
Chains are a pretty crazy thing to draw over and over. I kept getting the wrong side of the link on the front.
A lot of this video I’ve already animated for layout a few months back. Then folks kick the ideas around, we record new voice parts, then I re-time it and add the new ideas, etc.
So all the animation I’ve done on this since a few months back was add the animated door and a head turn- and of course timing changes. Basically, this means I have to take all the animation I did before and slide it all around so it fits the new timing and dialogue.
Not terribly hard, but rather time-consuming. Luckily, I have a job that yields funny cartoons, so it’s not so bad.
On to the animation! First off- I’m pretty proud of the door.
It ain’t rocket science, but a decent solid 3D rotation like that feels good to draw well. We added a knocker since last time- he didn’t knock in the last timings we did.
And I don’t know what it is, but I love the ‘pounding noise’ visual that shows on the door when he knocks! It just makes it so much funnier somehow.
My favorite character touch is him taking off his hat. He does it so crankily! Like, grumble grumble, I walked 5 miles in the rain to fix that painting because that one part still bothers me now let me in I ain’t going home!
The ‘fancy’ lightning effect is fun, too. I basically just animated the brightness of the character down to nothing when the flash comes in. Looks all sophisticated, but it’s not really.
Oh and if anyone cares, yes- that’s me doing the voice of the woman!
Somehow, way back when we did this video on George Washington I did his wife Martha’s voice for the scratch track and darn it if people didn’t love it! So I’ve become the voice of all the women in these videos now.
So, what to say about this one? Well, obviously it’s not entirely finished yet- but darn close!
I’m coloring it as we speak, actually.
First off, I cheated on this one. Well, not really.
I did however, create a 3D model of the door swinging open and then trace it so the perspective would be good.
Bad animator, right? No, good animator really.
I did however, do all the drawings of Degas stepping through the door, which I’m pretty proud of. He lifts his leg a bit high, but I think it still works very nicely.
How did I animate all that money disappearing, you ask? Well, we did this video about Thomas Jefferson where we show James Monroe paying Napoleon to acquire the Louisiana Purchase.
It was, like, 15 million dollars! Lotta change to bring with you somewhere, right?
So the gag I used was, well, what if he just starts shelling out the dollars right there when they agree on a price? So I animated him piling up money-like this:
Pretty funny, right?
Well, when we got to this scene from Degas where we wanted to show the money disappearing I went, hmm- reverse function anyone?
Same money, just backwards and going a bit faster. That and I piled it up a bit deeper and shortened some of the stacks.
I mean, I had to move it around a bunch of times and what not, but still. A bit faster than starting from scratch.
I animated this one shot of 3D snow flying for one of the videos- and it’s been re-used in about 4 other videos that called for snow. And I think I snuck it in a holiday graphic I was asked to do for a small TV show, too.
Animation is very environmentally friendly- we recycle all the time!
The hand is basically the same hand re-colored and re-timed about 50 times. Sounds fast, but I mean MANUALLY re-timed. Yeah.
Duplicating and shifting it a few billion times.
Nice to get up and take a little walk after something like that.
Well, back in the day, the Salon was the place to show art in Paris!
And Edgar got a piece in the show- hurray!
Not so fast, bub. Seems, um, they had a really high ceiling. Yeah. And they used every inch of it!
So in this scene, we see Edgar the proud artist taking his Dad to go see his first piece in a fancy show.
And it’s reeeeaaallly high up there. Past the nesting birds almost up into the stratosphere it would seem.
Oddly enough, I’ve been to art shows like this.
Not necessarily way up that high, but in deep winding hallways where nobody will ever find your work or at severely out of the way locations.
And of course, you bring your friends and it’s kinda weird to tell them, well, here it is! But they’re usually very nice about it…
Also, the author/illustrator of the Degas book this video is based on-Mike Venezia-really wanted the dialogue between Edgar and his Dad to be very
much a ‘Who’s on First’ sort of routine. If you don’t know who Abbot and Costello are, ask your parents…
My favorite part is how the bird pops up and peeps. He looks very suprised to see a movie camera floating up there.
I think I was thinking of the old Partridge family opening. Oh geez, now I’m sounding old…
We’ll pause here while all you young’uns go ask your parents who THEY are, too. Go on.
Ask about Milton Berle too, while you’re at it.
He may come up later.
That and, boy, do I spend a lot of my time finding clever generic ways to fake olde tyme paintings from the 1800’s! I put in all kinds of little guys in armour, fops sniffing flowers and mountainous landscapes and ladies on settees and all that jazz in these paintings!
It’s gotta feel like a period painting, but not any specific one. Harder than it sounds.
Well, Degas’ Dad passed away and guess what? Turns out he hadn’t been running the bank his family owned as well as everyone had thought!
Edgar was broke, basically.
Luckily the Impressionists decided to put on their own show at this point and Edgar jumped at the chance to sell some work.
This shows the aftermath of the show (well, a bit exaggerated of course).
Basically Edgar brought 10 paintings to the show and sold 7 of them. Hey, I’d be happy to sell 5 out of 10 I bring to a show…
The rest of them, well- they didn’t do too well. Nobody bought any work and they basically got torn apart for their art and ideas.
I kinna like the guy crawling with the canvas on his butt. Hee-yuk. I gave all these guys funny names too, just like in this post.
Hey c’mon, they all look the same- it’s hard to keep them organized otherwise. That and whenever we do animation with the French in
it, everyone has a twirly moustache! So I can’t exactly call anyone ‘moustache guy’.
My other favorite part is the guy with the glasses on the bottom whose moustache twirls in and out in little spirals while his glasses wiggle and his eyes spin.
That and the way Edgar counts his money- great classic animation fake-y stuff. I love them dirty tricks…
I just put in that little pop with his left arm at the right point and your brain tells you that he’s flipping a bill from one hand to the other!
When, of course, in reality it’s the same little counting loop over and over and over again. No bills go anywhere!
That and I toss in a bill flying here and there and voila! It’s real!
I do all the animation and paint the backgrounds just like in the book these are adapted from by Mike Venezia.
In fact, if you listen really closely, you can also hear me as one of the French dudes in the crowd at the end.
Multi-talented, I know…
It’s basically a fun little animated biography of Degas, with animated scenes that illustrate his life
in between showing his art and historical photos from the time.
So what’s going on here, you ask?
Well, Edgar’s dad ran the family business- a bank!
The Degas were rolling in dough, apparently. Part of why Edgar could go to art school and get to be so
great instead of getting a real job, it seems. Lucky guy.
Well, his dad wasn’t the greatest at running a bank- he preferred taking the day off to go play the guitar and hang around
galleries with his son. Good for the son- not too good for business.
So here’s the little joke on that- him turning people away with sacks full of cash that they just want to hand to him.
I’m pretty proud of the animation of him walking out- that’s always a funny angle to animate a walk… that whole 3/4 front view thing.
I gave everyone in this scene names when I was animating them for several reasons.
First off, it gets a bit disorganized calling everyone ‘Guy01′ and ‘Guy02′ etc. Or even worse it gets a bit lengthy calling them ‘Guy front right’ and ‘Guy front second from right’ etc. So I gave them names like Vlad and Gramps and the Baron or Lucy.
And the second reason is of course, that I work down here in my studio all day with no one to talk to so I need to invent some ‘friends’ for the day.
They’re all pretty awesomely funny looking, aren’t they? I can say that because, well, I didn’t design these characters- the author of the book did.
I also think I did a good job animating the acting on Edgar’s dad before he walks away. Subtle, but it gets the point across without using a hundred poses.
