Artwork Flow Discussion Log

[Admin]

Here the discussion we had yesterday:

*** You have joined #LoKOpenAniProj *
** cleuchtturm has joined
<HuntingRifters>Hello
<cleuchtturm>hi. sorry I'm here early, I just didn't want to forget about it.
<HuntingRifters>Lol no worries, I'll take a quick shower and we'll have a short meeting to make a direction on what to do and pursue the goal.
<cleuchtturm>ok.
** oisincar has joined
<cleuchtturm>hi osincar
<oisincar>Hello!
<HuntingRifters>Hello
<HuntingRifters>I guess that all it might be there for the meet
<HuntingRifters>other 2 won't be able to make it, but I'll relay what has happened
<oisincar>Sure. I'm sure some people will arrive later though. Is it possible to keep a log of what was said?
<HuntingRifters>oisincar: Yup, it just require copy and pasting to the text file. lol
<oisincar>Woah. That seems pretty advanced.
<cleuchtturm>Does the older text get deleted as we go on?
<oisincar>I took up blender a few years ago, and i could do the modelling. I suck at animation though.
<HuntingRifters>almost 15000 frames
<HuntingRifters>So we have good enough size of a team to do so.
<cleuchtturm>Google drive is the only one of those I've heard of
<oisincar>We should probally put toghter an anamatic. It's the same as a storyboard but with sound and scene timing.
<HuntingRifters>Character fluid movement is a bit tricky though, but I've been researching on LoK episodes on how they animate like so
<oisincar>The airships are 3d, as are the cars, though.
<HuntingRifters>We don't have to have car or blimp models
<HuntingRifters>Well
<oisincar>Surly it's not done like this anymore? Don't people use flash?
<HuntingRifters>So there will be a mix between several programs to make it more fluid and matching to Legend of Korra
<HuntingRifters>Yup we will
<oisincar>Oh that's ok. I thought you were saying to draw each frame separately.
<HuntingRifters>but use the lineart assisted program from Flash/Synfig
<HuntingRifters>Welcome dantheminer
<oisincar>Sup dan!
<dantheminer>Hey
<HuntingRifters>[link] for dantheminer
<HuntingRifters>cleuchtturm: Mostly for the first couple days, we'll try to get Storyboard/Writing done and meantime I will try to find all the color spec of LoK<HuntingRifters>and attempt a few frames myself to see what works or not
<oisincar>Sounds good.
<HuntingRifters>I am
<dantheminer>Backgrounds are very important and should probably be hand painted
<HuntingRifters>Yeah I agree which is what I proposed to do so
<cleuchtturm>I can draw fairly well, but painting isn't my medium. Charcoal is.
<HuntingRifters>Actually...
<HuntingRifters>Charcoal is perfect
<cleuchtturm>Oh, really? Cool.
<HuntingRifters>Do you have a scanner at home?
<oisincar>The backgrounds could probally be done in 3d, depending on where they are.
<oisincar>Charcoal could work very well
<cleuchtturm>No I don't. But I could check around work to see if there is one I could use there
<cleuchtturm>What size paper would it need to be done on?
<oisincar>Whatever is good for you.
<HuntingRifters>oisincar: Mmm depends, we want to bring the element between 2d and 3d to make it not as awkward which LoK does exceedingly well at
<HuntingRifters>cleuchtturm: About... say... foot by foot?
<HuntingRifters>Animation is pretty small in general
<cleuchtturm>Ok
<oisincar>i could render out objects to different layers. Should be easy enough (although i don't know how yet)
<cleuchtturm>if you did a "sketch" of the background, even a quick one via paint, just to give me an idea of what it should look like, I could do that.
<HuntingRifters>cleuchtturm: I'd be able to show you that, I think Charcoal is a perfect medium for Korra inner spirit/speaking during a conflict or emergence scanerios
<HuntingRifters>But we have to confirm with the writers though
<cleuchtturm>Would I have to draw the characters? Because I can't draw people for shit. Nature, most animals, sure, but not people
<HuntingRifters>You can try to draw characters if you learn from me or what not, but you don't have to do it. Background arts are encouraged.<dantheminer>Is there going to be anyone drawing charachter designs at all? Or are we skipping to the animation
<cleuchtturm>Background it is.
<oisincar>Haha, same here. Faces always look really stupid when i try to draw them
<cleuchtturm>I can never get the proportions right. They just look diseased.
<oisincar>Cross eyed and giant noses.
<HuntingRifters>Mmm my idea for now is to trace from original and distort it to find a new matching style to the storyboard
<HuntingRifters>as well as using new color platte
<HuntingRifters>dantheminer: I'll work on character design
<dantheminer>tracing could work to an extent, but we can just take every frame in the show and choose which ones to use, we will have to develop a somewhat origina style
<dantheminer>can't*
<HuntingRifters>dantheminer: Correct, and that isn't always easy to do
<cleuchtturm>For the backgrounds I do, do you want a textured paper like bristol? Or just untextured paper?
<HuntingRifters>So original design = we have to document how we do it and how the character designed and how line should looks
<oisincar>Yeah, there's no point in trying to copy the characters exactly
<HuntingRifters>Yup
<HuntingRifters>Kind of thankful for David Revoy's teaching
<HuntingRifters>As for music, think we can pursue full range of music?
<HuntingRifters>Drum/Piano/Ocarina/Flute/ What not?
<dantheminer>as long as its not dubstep fine by me
<HuntingRifters>Lol I wouldn't accept dubstep anyway for this animation
<cleuchtturm>haha no dubstep.
<cleuchtturm>I have a synth with a nice bank of sounds to choose from as well as some actual instruments.
<dantheminer>Any idea on how many people are working on this though. Like how many people doing musick, voices, animation, backgrounds...etc?
<HuntingRifters>Well... to make a solid assumption on the look of it
<HuntingRifters>Me = Animator (I guess Main), Organizer, Ocarina Player, Video Editor(If need to be)
<HuntingRifters>dantheminer: Background/support animator and can pursue varties of fields in the animation projet
<HuntingRifters>Patriot = Writer (A good one)
<HuntingRifters>cleuchtturm: Musician and charcoal support animating
<oisincar>Me = secondary animatior, modeler(?), storyboard help. Ideas.
<HuntingRifters>Yep yep
<HuntingRifters>And we have other animator too
<dantheminer>so 4 animators?
<cleuchtturm>any audio in general I can do.
<oisincar>Yeah, that should be more than enough people.
<dantheminer>we could have two of them just do imbetween frames
<HuntingRifters>Yeah
<HuntingRifters>Most of animators are background
<HuntingRifters>So I guess my task is to do main animation via character design
<HuntingRifters>I will also try to teach how to do character animating once I get this down.
<oisincar>Story has to come first though. Anyone got any ideas so far?
<dantheminer>branch off ending?
<HuntingRifters>Spirit world, Korra, and that about it.
<cleuchtturm>I think we shoudl stay away from what we anticipate the actual show doing.
<HuntingRifters>But yeah, I will have to talk to Patriot and oisincar sometime to get some idea going
<cleuchtturm>for originality's sake.
<oisincar>Korra and Aang? Or just Korra?
<HuntingRifters>I think its depend on the writer
<HuntingRifters>My only request from them is to have some sort of impact to the audience
<dantheminer>I think atla would be entertaining, because it's already ended and all, korra has just started.
<HuntingRifters>It also can be a month long project as a hobby.
<cleuchtturm>ok
<HuntingRifters>Considering it is an open studio project, everyone need to upload what they've completed to the list
<HuntingRifters>So that if one is off duty, another person can take it up
<HuntingRifters>and we can as a group decide what to do with the resulting works
<cleuchtturm>how often would we need to do that?
<dantheminer>should we all share a dropbox or something?
<HuntingRifters>Like background completion/model completion/audio completion
<HuntingRifters>and yep dropbox or whichever you like that it can be viewable in public
<HuntingRifters>I will archive it on my computer, so that once we complete, we can zip it up to release via bit torrent
<HuntingRifters>Also don't be afraid to try recording what you do in animating
<HuntingRifters>It can help one another in this team to learn new things and improve as we go along.
<HuntingRifters>Cool?
<cleuchtturm>I'd love to see animating in action, so yeah, cool.
<dantheminer>ya
<HuntingRifters>Most important duty I would have to do is to develop what is known as Animation Workflow
<HuntingRifters>It is long and difficult to make few frames in animation, so to make it go faster, we gotta develop a work flow so I'll have to show the animators teammate on how to work with it.
<HuntingRifters>Basically the goal of animation is to go like this:
<HuntingRifters>
1. Character lineart
2. Character quick shade
3. Filter Processing the frames of characters
4. Introduce background
5. Adjust shading
6. Render
<HuntingRifters>Obviously background can be an another set of animation
<HuntingRifters>But blender can assist with that
<HuntingRifters>Or we do it as another phase of 2d animating
<dantheminer>Is the final goal something along the lines of egoraptor's videos?
<oisincar>Wouldn't it be easier to do the backgrounds first though? For matching perspective or whatever?
<HuntingRifters>Mmm it something like egoraptor's, but egoraptor account for like half of the process I mention above
<HuntingRifters>oisincar: True.... mm
<dantheminer>I really liked the avatar mini series, of course it was profetionally made though
<HuntingRifters>oisincar: Considering we have a lot of background artists, I'd say we can go for background first after storyboarding.
<HuntingRifters>But charcoal have a lot of protential to make an impact though
<HuntingRifters>Easily a form of medium that can make a heavy scene
<HuntingRifters>Therefore background can take a while
<oisincar>There isn't a reason we can't composite together different charcoal images.

[Admin]

Damn it, appearently the log file truncated, basically for what we've discussed:

1. Normal Animation work flow is basically as followed:
Background being completed first, Character Lineart done in Flash/Synfig and have it animated, Color/Shade the character, Merge the Character and Background, Fix the Shading for both, and then do general frame processing (extra effect and the likes), onto the next scene.

2. Copyright Fair Use is that we can work with this medium as long as the main purpose of this project is to educate ourselves new techniques and skills to animate a show in original content. I will try to vertify if this is a valid defense in copyright case.

3. I am still working on synfig and producing the new style of art for Legend of Korra Open Animation Project in order to create an original work and to prevent copying anything from the original series.

4. We also need to have a good working storyboard and writing to make a solid standpoint on this topic and getting started with the background, so far it seems we're supporting the spirit world story quite heavily.

5. We should record what we do by writing a note or diary and share among ourselves so we can learn from each others and translate into a new skills using different mediums. The goal is to teach ourselves with new skills and knowledges.

6. We will use Dropbox, Skydrive, Google Drive, 4Shared, and variety of file sharing services to transfer each of our works to one another seamlessly. I would not recommend using DeviantART, because it is known to have a heavy backlash on copyrighted/fanart works over a simple accusations. We can post the links via thread in this forum.

7. Although this isn't like a chat program, let me know if you need to bring up a meeting.

Anything else?

[oisincar]

Yesterday i was trying to draw korra and i really can't... I might still be able to animate some stick men for you to draw to?
Or if you could draw the charachters from all angles, like this:

Can't post links... it was an image of korra from left/right, left/right 45, left/right back 45, front/back

I (or others) should be able to split it up into separate parts and animate it from there. It would also mean each frame wouldn't have to be finished seperatly.
Although if you only wanted to use free programs then i don't know how we'd do that...

[Admin]

Mmm this is proving to be difficult, I've been looking through multiple tutorials like so:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JvPZyzDbkWI

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yQoWuqD34Go

My problem is that I have limited skills in drawing various lines that are necessary to draw the characters.

Let me know if you have any other ideas.

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