Hicks n Chicks - "Country Hip Hop"

I have had the idea to do some kind of line dancing animation for awhile and from what I saw on a "Country Hip Hop" video by Diane Horner I'm pretty excited.  Easily in animating a dance, you can cycle the animation (like a walk) and it's well worth your time and effort.

 I could easily see Uncle Berry and Sunny doing . . .

"The Vaudville" - "Scissors" - "Two-step" - "Twist"- "Scissors"- "Window Washer"- "The Running Man"- "The Pigeon" - "Basketball" - "Running Man Hip Hop and Roll" - "Country Rolls" - "The Cowboy Hip Hop" - "Country Running Man" and of course "The Roger Rabbit".

I just need a "Slow Motion" film of the dancers Heidi, T.J., Susan, Jamie from the video and I am ready to do some Rotoscope Country Hip Hop work!!

Eric Larsen Caterpillar Animation from "Alice in Wonderland" (1959)

Disney Character Mouths

CATERPILLAR - No teeth, lots of facial expression.  He's two colors basically Blue and light blue. Then he's got a purple mouth and a pink tongue.  His many hands are flesh colored with three fingers + one thumb, except one scene I noticed they animated 4 fingers and one thumb.

ALICE - She has teeth but no lines for separation and a pink tongue.  Her lips got a colored line around them which I seems necessary for every female character.  Lots of non verbal comedy with her reacting to his clumsy feet and mind other their own hands. That makes the sequence interesting and enjoyable.

I found out Eric Larsen was given credit for the sequence but later saw a storyboard that show which animator did what scenes.  It was very interesting to learn everyone got to animate on the Caterpillar sequence.  Usually one main guy is responsible for each character.

 (Note to self, boy this had tons of typos, re-read your blog dude!)

"Invention Room" and "Naughty Nasty" and Individual Head Turns

"Invention Room" (Rough)

Remember to listen to the soundtrack before doing too much work, it gives you exactly what you need to make the scene work.  The scene I've been working on contains four characters all with dialogue. I choose it because the science lab bottles were so beautiful in the original movie I wanted to draw them.  I had never done a translucent bottle and thought I'd be up for the challenge.  Funny the dialogue lined up almost perfect after just setting up the mouths.

"Dodo Denny Full-Head Turnaround"

Later I had trouble with Dodo turning her head and did some extensive head turn around for 4 or 5 hours. This may have been excessive but I don't think I've ever done full turn arounds before and it was really hard.

The frame sizes of each scene seems to have changed since I checked the size option and DPI.  This worries me but when I've watched the final animation on Apple TV, all appears to look alright.  I may be getting some criticism for no originality but I want see this and no one else is going to do it.


"Naughty Nasty" (silent)

I was quite surprised to see how good this scene turned out. All my hard work must have started to pay off.  The dialogue lined right up with the mouths and expressions were simple and perfect.


"The beauty is in the simplicity."
- Eric Abrahamson

Mouth Chart updated, these mouths work but line up the neck is a pain in the @#$!@@!!!

Oh and make sure the upper teeth are alined!!

Animated Bike Stirring Cream

The Inventing Room

of course after I am done I get all the reference together.  This room is amazing what they make, really a lot of work to make this set this elaborate. On the level of the "Wizard of OZ".

Charlie's Animated Head of Hair

After many days,  I spent several hours trying to get Charlie's hair just right.  All the character do not have a line around the hair and Charlie's shouldn't either was what I was going for but his hair being yellow it's hard to see unless he's on a dark background.  So in this version there is a line.

In looking for the style of the cartoon I was originally drawing lots of hair detail inside the shape.  Be today I took out all the "Extra Lines" because it's impossible keep the consistent.   Here there is an indication of highlights with a light tone of the same color.


He parts his hair on the left and combs it over to the right.  His hair covers his eye's slightly in the front view and I had trouble getting the other turns to match. Lastly these lines were drawn on after the lines were removed in the computer.

Wonka is the only character who has a line around his hair, but now I'm thinking Charlie will too! Or maybe colored line!??!

Problems Arise

Problem will arise with every project.  It's not so much the problem as it is "your reaction" to it and how you respond.  Currently the problem I have is that I made a long animation pan and I don't know how to pan it. The solution,  buy "Toon Boom Animate" in order to learn how to overcome this problem.

"Rachmoninoff" - Photoshop Animation Timeline

Here's the final scene of colored animation without a background. There are no in-between on the mouths just syllable that were needed. When you make an R mouth you first need a "OO" mouth.  Notice if you start to say the word "Rachmoninoff". 

R

AA

Rock

Mon -

- i . . .  you get the idea.

Each frame is set to (0.1) sec. except when she turns her head. (No Delay) 

These two heads were other attempts and I used them as settling

 back into the first pose.  The results was a really bouncy feel which was better that I had hoped for!

Yesterday I thought I could do one scene with one word really fast. It was a"Cut Away" next to other scene I had already "The Chocolate Room".  The word 'Rackmoninoff'

I sketched this out quickly then the other characters around her. This was my second attempt.

Later I left then cam about and saw Violet looked pretty ugly but didn't worry about it and started animating "Side-Veiw Mouths"without flipping then, just on one page. 

Then I started coloring the three main characters.  I pulled up models from when I was doing several front views of this woman and found I had one that fit exactly what I was going to do.  three others and the five others from before were all rejected.

This was prefect for my scene

WONKA "Missing Mouths" Problem/Solution

The "Gobstopper sequence was working out great until just recently I was working on the "I'm a trifle deaf in this ear" and some how mouths that I was copying over to be use disappeared from the the other scenes.  After giving it a great deal of thought I came to the conclusion that I had just better use "Time Machine" the problem.

I went back earlier that after noon before I started working and then found the Gobstopper Photoshop file. I clicked on it and it asked if I wanted to "keep both copies" so I did and now I have the file without any mistakes and the one with mistakes and the new work.

Anyways I am now using two files for one sequence. I erased all the frames that had the missing mouths and was not about to sit and redue it when I have it saved correctly on a separate file.  I added some title ideas with animated wheel and spinning logo that I had been thinking about doing for a while and it came out great!