Winner Suggestions & Tips Interview: The Making of Vivek Rai’s “Biker”
The “Winner Suggestions & Tips ” collection covers sensible workflows and methods shared by winners of the “2022 Animation At Work Contest”. To let customers see the total spectrum of the Cartoon Animator pipeline, we’re introducing tasks that acquired consideration and credit score from the group. Let’s now check out “Biker” to see how Vivek Rai labored his magic with Reallusion Cartoon Animator (CTA).
About Vivek Rai
I used to be born and raised in India. Kolkata, town the place I grew up is immensely wealthy in literature and cultural heritage. That is the place I discovered my ardour for pencil sketching and studying comedian books. My thoughts was fully blown away after I first noticed my classmate make a flip ebook. For individuals who don’t know what a flip ebook is: it’s a collection of illustrations of an animated scene that’s sure collectively on a number of papers in a sequence, to present an phantasm of motion by flipping them quickly; a typical instance is a bouncing ball or early Disney cartoons. This was after I realized that art work may be became animation.
The subsequent 25 years had been difficult as a result of we moved to totally different locations in India on account of my father altering jobs—new college, new pals, and the rising weight of teachers. The educational wrestle continued until I got here to the USA to pursue my grasp’s in electrical engineering in 2008. It was solely in 2011 after I earned my first paycheck and I felt that I can now ease off and revisit my outdated ardour for artwork.
The recollections of the superior flip ebook animation from childhood had been nonetheless recent in my thoughts, so I purchased myself an iPad and downloaded an app that allowed me to create keyframe animation. And similar to that…I obtained into animation. Or so I assumed. As a result of I quickly realized that creating a high quality keyframe animation of even one second would take a major quantity of labor hours, like my first animated video on YouTube contained over 1,500 frames and near 200 work hours as a newbie (In 2017, I began my very own youtube channel by the title Saffire Animation the place I’d flip sequential comedian ebook artwork into animation).
Though my first video on YouTube was nicely acquired by the viewers, as an animator I quickly realized that keyframe animation comes with some limitations, and my job as the only animator can be so much simpler if I might overcome these limitations. For instance, if I can simply rig my character for fundamental motions like stroll/run cycle, bounce, and discuss, then superimpose the identical rig on totally different characters then it should save my time in redoing the identical motions repeatedly. Other than that, I additionally needed to spend much less effort on creating in-betweens. My google search quickly landed me on some title manufacturers out there however that they had a month-to-month subscription price and had been too difficult with an enormous studying curve. Reallusion’s Cartoon Animator had all of the options which I used to be searching for and so I began off with a 30-day trial model after which quickly bought it for good. I quickly created a video that had an amazing response of 96k views on my channel in just some weeks. Issues had been all set and good to go, however only one problem remained: time administration.
Now, with a full-time IT job that requires my consideration from 9 am to six pm day by day in addition to being a father of a seven-year-old, comes with its personal challenges. So, after dinner, cleansing up, and placing my baby to sleep I don the cape of an animator when everybody in my home is asleep. I had turned a closet in my home into my private studio which additionally has a little bit recording area. I animate three to 4 hours throughout the evening and at the least two extra hours within the early morning. This fashion, I can spend roughly 5 hours on my interest. I’m joyful that in a world the place many individuals complain about issues not being beneath their management, I’m able to find time for what I take pleasure in when and wherever I can.
Why I made “Biker”
I used to personal a Ducati Monster throughout my early years, so the topic I selected for the 2022 Animation at Work contest is a few biker and his love for his automobile. Protecting the video easy, I needed to inform a brief story a few biker’s ardour, drive, and initiative. To maintain the opening dramatic, I used a soothing observe and ensured that every successive shot ups the joy to construct up anticipation for the following scene.
Often, motorcyclists are rebellious and stand for freedom, so I added a bald eagle to the video to point out its rebellious aspect and its high-flying perspective as an emblem of freedom that may compete with the biker. I created a number of drawings of the animal and biker that may hold your entire video dramatic. CTA has a tremendous real-time synching approach with some picture enhancing software program. I used Adobe Photoshop because the PSD editor and Procreate because the drawing app for hand-drawn scenes.
Why I selected Cartoon Animator
Cartoon Animator is an easy-to-learn software program as a result of it’s designed to supply a really clear workflow and doesn’t include a number of extraneous options to distract you. It’s clear, easy, and simple for rookies to make use of this software program the place no prior 2D animation expertise is required. One also can use CTA to make the method of animation intuitive and non-technical. For individuals who are new to Reallusion’s CTA software program, Reallusion holds reside webinar classes the place animators can get solutions to their questions.
Though CTA will not be recognized for creating art work, it could work in tandem with both Adobe Illustrator or Photoshop, which is the second large issue for me. One can construct a personality with its particular person elements as separate objects in Illustrator, or on separate layers in Photoshop, after which use Character Animator to rig these items collectively into an animatable puppet. CTA has a really underestimated characteristic of supporting frame-by-frame animation; I discovered about this characteristic by chance after I ready a sequential animation in photoshop, and I imported the frames in PSD format.
The third and most outstanding issue for utilizing CTA is the Live Performance Capture Animation tool. Right here, one can use their webcam and microphone to generate reside performances for his or her animated characters and ship them to the viewers or file the efficiency on the mission timeline and refine it additional by hand.
How I did it with CTA
Step 1: Script and Storyboard
I saved the video quick round one minute with solely background, SFX, and music (no dialogue). I selected background music from a normal license web site. Then I seemed up numerous YouTube movies on bike drifting and created a tough format of each scene on my timeline. As soon as I finalized the format of the tough sketch, I began drawing and including colours to my scene. Under is a picture of a collection of snapshots from a number of movies, which I laid over the music as a reference.
Step 2: Character Creation & Sketching
Whereas going via numerous YouTube movies, I picked up some fundamental 3D biker equipment like a helmet and boots, in addition to a drift animation. With some drawing skills, I laid out a personality in his early 20s, sporting a helmet and using a Ducati Monster (my first bike) utilizing paper and pencil. As soon as I used to be assured with the outcomes, I scanned the drawing and digitally imported it into my drawing pill.
Earlier than creating the animation, I like to point out the drawing to my seven-year-old for a second opinion. His eager to see extra of it provides me confidence that I’m heading in the right direction. The next are a number of the tough sketches throughout the growth stage.
Step 3: Characters & Sprite Animation
Each shot had its personal set of necessities. For the shot the place the lead character leaps into the air together with his bike, I used totally different sprites of the character to create a keyframe animation in CTA. Some pictures just like the lead approaching his bike and the chicken flapping its wings required gradual movement that wanted to be clean sans the choppiness that usually accompanies keyframe animation; for that reason, I used the bone-rigging characteristic proven beneath.
Step 4: Scenes Creation, Composition & Digicam Setting
I used digital camera actions to provide dramatic rigidity by utilizing the Live Camera feature in CTA. With Digicam Operation set to Mouse Choose mode, I used the Alt key to speed up the switching of the cameras: Alt+LMB to pan, Alt+LMB+RMB to zoom, and Shift+MW to zoom in. I performed with these controls to present some depth to my nonetheless pictures, particularly the place the biker lands on the bottom after performing a somersault. To attain this impact, I first downloaded a clip with no digital camera motion and one other clip with digital camera motion.
To convey depth to the background, I positioned the props in a method that may give a parallax impact. I mixed each pictures within the video editing software and saved the biker within the middle of the body utilizing the “rule of thirds”. The shaky digital camera impact is a way that I additionally generally use when the biker is zooming previous the display. This took me barely 5 minutes to provide and it delivered precisely what I needed out of that shot.
Step 5: Sound FX
I consider that music performs a very powerful half to provide a dramatic impact on the scenes. So, I like to make use of copyright-free music from a web site like EpidemicSound.com the place one can obtain music of assorted moods and tones. Other than that, I seemed up some SFX (like bike roaring, brake screeching, and many others.) that may give my video an expert high quality.
Conclusion
Cartoon Animator may help me to generate satisfying outcomes with out complicating workflow. Reallusion additionally affords FREE online tutorials for customers to entry at their on-line portal, making self-learning attainable for customers like me which have to change between day-job and nighttime hobbies. I hope with my story and demonstration of the entry workflow, extra customers will get impressed and begin creating extra 2D animations!
Comply with Vivek Rai
Youtube | https://www.youtube.com/c/saffireanimation
Instagram | https://www.instagram.com/saffire_animation/
