₦airaland Forum

@GRafikDon: You truly are a draftsman.

And here's "Gawk", Goro's twin. His barrels are wired to produce infinite rounds of bullets via an intricate system of vessels and artificial pipes that transport and tranform a chemical mixture of his blood and metals. Nickname: "Mark 19"-- after a U.S made machine gun. Killer move: Pumps enough rounds into his opponent; enoff to get the job done.

I call this one "CLAW". A Nigerian by birth, was raised in Siberia, Russia by an exiled activist father. During a school excursion he strayed from the group and wandered into an abandoned Nuclear facility. He's exposed to high levels of radiation but somehow his body develops immunity against its deadly effects, however he consequently mutates into a freak with CLAWS. Wolverine's blades got nothing on his claws, guys. Nuff said. Killer move: He stabs his opponent in the abdomen with both claws simultaneously in super fast motion.

Here's mine. His name is 'Goro', a true beast in every sense of the word. He's got an almost identical twin named 'Gawk'. He and his brother lost one and both hands, respectively, in a freak accident at a young age, and were later exploited as 'guinea pigs' by some sadists in a freakish experiment. Thus, Goro was born. His blade can cut through any metal or steel. Killer move: He grabs his opponent by the neck, slams him to the ground and stabs him multiple times.

@Raymond: Sorry I do not have much knowledge about Cut-Out style 2d animation, however, make no mistake about it, cut-out animation is a viable style in its own right. Infact, I've come across some cut-out animation that blew me away! So,  I encourage you to keep at it, keep learning and honing your skillz and you should be fine. Some years back I stumbled on a cut-out animation software, called "Creatoons", manufactured by some company in belgium [it's a bit pricey, though]. There's a section of the company's website that allows access to some fantastic cut-out animation created with the creatoon software by animators from all over the world. Dude, I tell you, I was impressed and fell inlove with the style after I downloaded and viewed some of the cut-out animation on the page. The link to it is : http://www.creatoon.com/samples.php . You'll need Windows Media Player, Quicktime, and RealMedia in order to be able to access the files, though. Plus, some [thankfully just a few of 'em] of the files are kind of large so you may have to exercise some patience, esp. if you're using dialup, while they load. Hope this helps.

I use Digicel's Flipbook Studio version for pencil tests, as well as for compositing [I heard AfterEffects is also very good for compositing] and for painting [alongside Paint Shop Pro]. Then I later use Adobe Premiere to put together the scenes. I think that as far as choosing between Japanese Anime and American animation, particularly for the audience, it all boils down to personal preference. However, as an animator, I'm of the opinion that American animation is more superior in terms of visual quality and technique. Before venturing into the art-form, I asked myself which of the two styles [anime and american 2d] would be best for me to start with, so I embarked on an extensive research into both styles and their respective merits, only to find overwhelming evidence of the superiority of the american style. In fact, it's much easier to move into anime if you have a solid american 2d background/knowledge base, because it exposes one to the fundamental principles. Only after learning those can one then try to get away with '/tweaking/bending/breaking the rules'. For one, american animations are better 'animated', and here's what I mean by that.

U.S. animation comes in two different styles called "limited animation" and "full animation". In limited animation, only parts of a character move at any given time. For instance, only the mouth of a character will move while he or she is speaking. This form of animation is often seen in syndicated cartoons or those shown on Saturday mornings. In full animation, almost everything on the screen moves at the same time. The movement is often choreographed with movements of real actors to appear as life-like as possible. This style is used mostly in Disney movies. Still, many animated cartoons which would be classified as limited animation are blending in some full animation techniques.

Japanese anime, on the other hand, is usually a very extreme case of limited animation. In anime, when one character is speaking, everything else on the screen will appear as if it has been frozen in time. The other characters will stand in the background still and motionless. Even in the American version of this, you will often see that animators still pay attention to small details. Take a closer look and you will see characters blink their eyes and fidget in the background of a regular cartoon. Nobody really notices this when they see it, however the absence of it looks painstakingly clear in anime! Animation is all about movement; even small movements add to the sense of realism.

This isn't the only area where american style animation floors/bests anime, it does so also in areas of character development and acting. If you really want to be a good animator, you have be able to depict your characters as ACTORS; be able to project their personalities through various gestures and emotions. Here again, the u.s style's the more expressive of the two, mainly because it's based on rounded forms/curves, which makes it easy to move and change the shape of characters and infinite freedom of flexibility. This is often impossible to do with Japanese animation because of its use of sharp and jagged lines; you have less freedom in movement without contorting the character's body into some unrealistic shape. On the other hand, curved motion can make the animation seem very fluid and natural -- or shall we say, "very animated". You'll also notice that in American animation, the time frame of action tends to be parabolic (curved), where the action starts out slow and gets faster until it slows down again. Once again, this makes the animation seem very smooth and appealing to the eyes, heightening your sense of realism. Another technique used in American animation to effectively convey motion and action is called "squash and stretch". This adds a rubber-effect to the animation. When a force acts upon a body of mass, it either expands it or squeezes it. This makes the object seems real, solid and three dimensional, since the physical reaction conveys weight and mass. Unfortunately, to use this technique, one must work with a roundish body of mass. This means that you can't use it with drawings based off those jagged lines which animes are based upon. Anime style seems more suited for illustrators.

Having said all that, it may seem that I have left out one key advantage that Japanese animation has. To be fair, I will mention it. The use of colors and shading is often quite more advanced in Japanese anime than it is in American animation. In this area, it might seem that American animation hasn't really advanced much beyond the Technicolor days.  It's not because Americans don't have the skills or knowledge of how to make good shading. In other art forms, like comic book art, Americans make very good use of shading which far exceeds the anime-style. The anime-style of shading is actually a very simplified version of shading that usually only uses one color for highlights and one for shadows, rather than the more advanced forms of shading which use graduated amounts of blended colors. Still, it has a nice visual touch which can give atmospheric effects similar to those found in theatrical lighting. One reason Americans don't use it is because of the added production time and costs it would require. There is also the fact that Americans learned a long time ago that the whole "persistence of vision" trick, which is the basis for all animation, works best with flat colors. You see, if you use a lot of shading effects, then the animation seems less smooth and requires higher frame rates to obtain the same quality level. Over all, I think that American animation nurtures what is most important to its art-form -- the animation itself!

[b]Guys, if you want to see pure 2d animation at its best, try and cop some of the old cartoons from the golden era (from the Disney and Fleischer brothers studios of those days]; lately I've been running across tons of them at Wal-Mart, ON DVD, for the measly price of $1.00 each! I kid you not! I have tons of them, and believe me, animation doesn't get better than what you see and experience on these dvds! And I mean QUALITY, SMOOTH 2D Animation! Each DVD contains atleast 17 shorts ranging from Superman [I have all the episodes of the early superman cartoons from the Fleischer brothers, episodes that till this very day student are made to watch in animation schools around the world to learn some of the best animation techniques ever applied], Little Lulu, Popeye, Little Audrey, great shorts from veterans Ollie Johnston and Frank Thomas, Billy Tytla, Art Babbit, Ken Harris, Grim Natwick, Milt Khal, Don Bluth, Preston Blair, e.t.c. I'm talking about the Animation pioneers. What I do is, I practically dissect each short by freezing it, 'tear it apart' frame by frame, and STUDY the movement of the characters. Boy! Animation can be fun and extremely rewarding, if you have the patience and time to put into learning and perfecting the art-form. For me, the most inconvenient part of producing 2d animation is having to scan tons of drawings for pencil-tests, but I've managed to work out a system that enables me to scan atleast 50 drawings in 9-10minutes. In the words of Richard Williams, the author of the "Animator's Survival Kit", "if you want to save work, what on earth are you doing in animation? It's nothing BUT work! , No matter how talented -- the best guys are always the ones that work the hardest. But hang the work, it's unique result that we're after. Every time we do a scene, we're doing something unique -- something nobody else has ever done. It's a proper craft." [/b]



Grafikdon, do you produce all your animations alone, or you got friends in related fields that help you out? Hey, I have friends who aslo rave about 'Ghost in a Shell 2', heard it's very good. I'll check it out.

@Darkmanzero: I think I've heard a lot about those animes you recommended, thanx. I'll check 'em out.

My favourite anime is "Inuyasha".

@DarkManZero: One of the forumers here, who goes by the handle "Grafixdon" made the movie. I think it's out on dvd. Maybe you can contact him to find out how you can grab a copy. **Grafix, I go charge you for this free publicity wey I dey do for you o**.

@DarkManZero and other 2d enthusiasts: Have any of you guys seen "Kill Bill" Volume 1? In the movie, there's a 2d animation sequence/skit that was used to tell the story of one of the assassins [played by Lucy Lu] the protagonist was after. I thot that the animation was SUPERB and a clear verdict on the superiority of 2d's ability to create and simulate live action while still retaining the nuances of the art form. I later found that the skit was made by a studio in Japan called Production I.G [one of the best in Japan]. That right there is 2d animation at it's best! Japanese animation usually aren't as 'animated' as the skit in that movie were. Unlike their u.s counterparts, Japs usually use limited animation techniques since their drawings are more detailed and aren't based on rounded forms as is the case in yankee --  the drawback of that is that it can significantly increase their workload and take longer to produce, hence why their characters movements aren't as 'animated'. Anyway, there's no way 3d could've acheived that as convincinly as 2d was able to in that movie. If you guys haven't seen that movie, please do, and forward it to the skit I'm talking about,  and come and tell me if you weren't "WOWED" by the sheer beauty of the animation therein!!

2d animation can be labourious and tedious, hence why animation studios have different departments that deal with every phase of the production of an animation film; there's the storyboard dept., layout, character design, cleanup artist, animator, assistant animator, inbetweener, background designer, e.t.c. For any studio to thrive there's gotta be a well educated and trained personel that can fill these depts. I guess that explains why there aren't any studios in a place like naija, because there's a dearth/absolute lack of knowledgable instructors who can proliferate the knowledge and train the necessary personel to fill the aformentioned depts/positions within a studio. Thankfully, I can do all that stuff -- yes o, I'm 'one man studio', which can prove a handicap at times because there's just too much for one person to do to be maximally productive. So I'm intent on passing on my knowledge to interested folks, when I arrive naija that is, sometime in the near future. I know that fantastic draftsmen abound in naija, however that talent/skill alone is inadequate to make them animators without proper training. They need to be taught the techniques and different phases of how animation is produced.

@Seun: You can't really mean that, or do you? Or perhaps you're not in touch with what's happening in the world of Animation, or know very little about the art form for you to have made such an uninformed statement. On those grounds, I'd excuse your comment. But don't let the successful Japanese Anime industry, which is largely 2d based, hear that o, or the proficient and brilliant 2d animators being churned out by Animation school all across the U.S [a la CalArts and Sheridan College in canada], as well as the tons of studios worldwide who still retain a vibrant and ever-busy 2d workforce -- let's not even mention Japan, where their version, anime,'s appeal is phenomenal.

Besides, MARK THIS -- COMING FROM A 2D Animator {moi}, you can't do professional 3d animation without first knowing the fundamentals of 2d, it's basics; principles of timing, anticipation, exaggeration, staging, squash and stretch, weight, e.t.c. GO AND CHECK THE CREDITS OF ALL 3D ANIMATION MOVIES THAT'VE BECOME HITS AT THE BOX OFFICE AND YOU'LL SEE THAT THEY WERE ALL DIRECTED BY 2D based animators originally trained in "traditional" 2d . In my opinion, the best 3d animation movie out there is "The Incredibles"; it's got the best acting, timing and animation of any 3d animation ever made [imo], and that's SIMPLY BECAUSE IT HAS A 2d 'Look & Feel'. Most of the animators who work on ALL the good/average 3d movies out there are 2d animators who simply got trained to use the computer to project their 2d knowledge and skillz. In AMERICA, saturday morning cartoons are still the staple diet of kids on t.v and studios are raking in mad dough from advertisements to that audience, and though there hasn't been a 2d animation hit like "Aladdin", "Lion King" and "Beauty and the Beast" in a while, 'straight-to-dvd' 2d styled flicks are being produced and released into the market daily. So the genre [2d] is far far from dead, and will never die because it'll always have a market [especially abroad] and its enthusiasts.

The reality: Studios such as Pixar, Dreamworks, WB often hire 2D animators who are then trained as 3D animators. Why? Well, to be frank, in most cases, 2D animators have acquired an extra sensitive eye for performance. Now, this is not to say that a 3D student with little to no 2D experience could not achieve this, but, often in cases this is unlikely.

Computer animation [3d] has it's limitations. I mean, you COULD achieve the same quality of movement seen in, say, a WB cartoon, but given that the characters are rigs of anchored bones and weights, the same qualities of movement and distortion could not be achieved in 3D without amazingly impractical amounts of time. In fact, to truly achieve the same quality of animation in 3D as 2D, there would be no rigging, only a model. And each and every vertice would need to be manipulated to produce the same equivalent squash and stretch. This is why 2D animators succeed in the 3D market. Because, unlike many 3D animators, they better understand the limitations of the rig. And with this heightened sense of how good the performance COULD be, they tend to push limits of the character more so than a 3D animator. In order to maximise the quality of animation, you must know beyond your means. But, once again, I'm not speaking for all 3D animators.

So, why all the denial? Why the persistant defiance towards the traditional 2d style? It takes time to learn, and we live in a fast, fast world.

Even if you're not the most gifted traditional artist, it is crucial to learn as much as possible about it, and while it's easy to dismiss the idea with claims like, "That's one man's opinion," then consider the word "experience." This word means something. It's the idea that before you can do calculus, you need to know how to divide and multiply, and before you can divide and multiply, you should understand adding and subtracting, and before that learning to count. A programmer without his math may be able to make a crude program, but when it comes to the specifics, his lack of focus on the basics will present itself. The same applies to animation. Any one can make a drawing move. Anyone can set keys. Unfortunately, not everyone can sit down for hours trying to perfect the way a characters index finger moves.

All I can stress is that it is ignorant to ignore the fact that animation is simple to understand theoretically, but damned hard to do. So, for all you 3D guys, pick up your pencils. Animation is a visual art, and the computer is just your calculator.
 
I've seen some naija attempts at 3d animation [as well as 2d] and I'm sorry to say this but they're at best amatuerish, and any good animator can tell that those folks know nothing about the fundamentals I mentioned earlier, above, or if they do, they simply fall short of applying them effectively. The best naija efforts at 3d so far, that I've seen, are from GRAFIXDON, the bro who made the 'CHIKA' movie, but then I wouldn't expect any less from him since he's u.s. trained/based [the u.s trains the best animators on earth since they developed/created the art form to begin with, sorry to burst the bubble of the anime fanatics out there, but anime has nothing on good old american-style animation, simply because they're more animated and move better, among other things] and actually went to school to learn the art, and evidently he has a strong and competent artistic background. Anyone with an eye for animation [and by that I don't mean one who just watches cartoons to get entertained, hehehe] can see from his work that he has the fundamentals on 'lock-down' -- he has the knowledge and background necessary and knows what he's doing.

Bottomline: Don't knock 2d just because it's going thru a bad spell for now, all it'll take to knock it out of that is perhaps another successful box-office 2d animation hit -- reminiscent of the Golden era of the 30's, 80's, and early 90's. But even without box-office hits, there are tons of 'straight-to-dvd' 2d animation flicks and 2d-based commercials being churned out daily to keep the genre ever vibrant. If folks can still get hooked on anime and other 2d cartoons out there, that tells you 2d has more staying power than some would like to give it credit for. In most other countries in the world it's still the preferred/bonafide means of expressing animation. Pretty soon naija will catch the HOME-GROWN 2d bug, too, and by that I mean, good, well animated and expressive traditional-style animation,  from yours truly . It's a sad shame that after all these years, africa still has no reputable animation studio(s) of renown. Moves/plans to change that are in works.

Oh, my bad, then. My nickname's Larry as well,  hence why I assumed you were referring to me. I sincerely apologize. Btw, I'm in the process of uploading some pencil tests of some 2d animation stuff I'm working on for the forum's appraisal. I'll provide the 'youTube' link to 'em as soon as they're ready.

bump!

, And here's the main character of the 2d animation short I'm working on, named "OLU",

Here's mine,