Final Assignment – The Comic Strip

For your final assignment you are to create a 3 or 4 panel comic strip.  You can sketch it and ink it on paper, sketch and scan in to edit in photoshop, or create it from beginning to end in photoshop.  Ultimately it just has to be readable.  Doing a comic strip seems relatively easy but it’s not.  You’ll see once you try to create one that it takes a considerable amount of time.  SO DO NOT PROCRASTINATE.  It won’t be any fun if you try to do it all in one night.  I thought after learning to draw that doing comic strips would be cake.  After failing miserably  time and time again  I shed many tears trying to figure out how something so easy looking could be so daunting.  Maybe it will be easier for you.  I hope it will be.

To get inspiration I suggest taking a look at the following comic strips,

www.penny-arcade.com

http://www.xypdz.com/

www.pvponline.com

www.sinfest.net

www.grieforglory.com

Calvin & Hobbes 

http://www.transmogrifier.org/ch/strips/index calvin and hobbes searchable database!

www.XKCD.com 

Boondocks, Garfield, Peanuts, Calvin & Hobbes, Marmeduke, Get Fuzzy, Opus, the list goes on and on.

There are 4 stages to creating a comic strip…

1. Write/script the dialogue action.

2. Layout – Make thumbnails of which characters will where on which panels and make room for their speech balloons. There is a lot of problem solving to be done here so no elaborate drawings in this stage! For instance, is the character who speaks first on the left side? You’ll want to read his speech balloon first so these kind of issues need to be worked out.

3. Render – Now that the layout is done you can add in the bod language, facial expressions, and hand gestures. Ink the letters, balloons, backgrounds, etc. You could also color it if you wanted.

Art Links

www.CharacterDesign.com

www.IntothePixel.com

http://www.IntothePixel.com

Storyboard template

Storyboard Template Here is a good storyboard template.

Research these Sites to Collect Reference

Here are some links to help you collect reference materials for your research (sketchbook). Please pay attention the compositions that the artists and photographers are using.

www.ConceptArt.org
Concept Art

http://characterdesign.blogspot.com
Professional Character Design. Find the artist you like and scroll down past their interview.

www.GriefOrGlory.com Article on how to Quick Sketch
Quick Sketch – How to Draw like a Pro

stock photography, please draw from nature and real photographs – not just other artists.

www.iphoto.com
www.gettyimages.com

First Assignment – 30 pages of animation

Your first assignment is to animate anything you want.

Must contain a sequence of 30 drawings.

The drawings are due by next Tuesday.  If you could have them all scanned into your computer that would be great, otherwise we’ll try to capture it with a digital camera setup.   The next step will be importing the images into Flash and timing them out so we can see your animation as a short movie clip.

I suggest you number your pages, draw something simple, and focus on the movement between the pages instead of focusing on each individual drawing.  I’ll teach you today how to roll the pages on your clipboard.

~Shaun

New Animation Class Syllabus

Syllabus Here is your syllabus for the Intro to Animation Class. Email me at shaunDmcmillan at gmail.com if you have any questions.

GLENN KEANE

THE ART OF GLENN KEANE This is a great website showing some the key scenes from one of the world’s greatest animators.  Study his animations over and over again.  You can also find some notes on thumbnailing in the “notes” > “Feature Animation” section at WWW.ANIMATIONMEAT.COM

Cold Hard Flash

To see the most recently published animated shorts and to get an update on recent animation news then check out a couple of thsese sites.

WWW.AWN.COM Animation World Network – The Central Hub for news in the Animation World.

WWW.COLDHARDFLASH.COM Constantly updated with new animated short films using flash.

WWW.ANIMATIONMEAT.COM A wealth of resources for animation, storyboarding, and model sheets.  Through these free downloads you could actually teach yourself all the fundamentals of the animation world – so long as you put it all to practice.

New Animation Class

I’m teaching an Introduction to Animation class this term so most of the links will now be animation and animated short film related.  If you guys come accross anything good be sure to send me a link. 

Thanks, Shaun

Perils of Love – Short Film

 This is a great short film.  It has simple design, fantastic timing matched to great music, most everyone can relate to it emotionally, and it makes you cry and laugh.  Such is love.

Grief or Glory

In case you havn’t seen my webcomic you should check it out, www.GrieforGlory.com

 

Metal Gear Solid 2nd Digital Graphic Novel

They released the second digital graphic novel for Metal Gear Solid. This is definately the future of graphic novels. I hope you comic book artists are learning after effects!

Street Figher Trailers

Here are some great Street Figher trailers. One of my students, Lance, pointed this out to me. While I was looking at the game trailer I found the comic trailer. For those of you who don’t know the game trailer uses a combination of 3D characters, and the paint/smoke effects are done mostly in a motion graphics program. Very nicely done.

Full Tank

Fulltank has a great combination of 2d animation and motion graphics. Check out their zune video.

Buck.tv

Here is another great inspirational studio. Buck.tv has an entire portfolio of work full of great ideas. This is the best motion graphics studio site I’ve seen since www.Psyop.tv. Check em out.

Dstrukt Showreel

There is hardly need for any introduction to the new reel from Chis Hewitt aka. Dstrukt.
The track was created by Uffie and remixed by Sebastian and was edited by Hecq / Ben Lukas Boyse

MG Music Video

I like the animated oragamis.

Inspiration

Need some inspiration? Check out these motion grapic artists
devoidofyesterday.com Things Fall Apart
theronin.co.uk
dstrukt.com
www.dielamb.com

I got these from www.motionographer.com which is constantly updating with new inspirations for motion graphics. They also have a lot of other resources you may find helpful.

Sound Effects

Great Sound Effects really cause your animations and graphics to have an impact on the audience, so bring in sound effects on all of your best animations. To find some sound effects you can go to www.SoundDogs.com or www.FlashKit.com

Good Graphic Painter – Eyvind Earle

www.gallery21.com

This is the art gallery of Eyvind Earle – an art director and background painter from Disney. His work has beautiful graphics which would be perfect for animating in motion graphics. Feel free to recreate any of his art in illustrator to bring into after effects.

Shaun’s Friar Tux Commercial

Here is my commercial for Friar Tux. Enjoy.

Satisfactory

I’m not sure what to say about this one. You just have to watch it. Very creative, very fun, great use of timing and music.
www.linetested.com

Giovanni Bucci

Watch each piece in his film and find one you’d like to immitate. In the past I found a way to get really good really fast. And this goes for any type of media arts – Just find the best work and copy/immitate it. If you like the ipod advertisements, just figure out how they did it and implement the effect into your own work. Take another look at my final as well as the Casino Royale and try to figure out how you can find graphic elements that are based on shapes you see in your footage.
www.giovannibucci.com

Casino Royale Intro

This is really impressive. It’s ver slow but I love the combination of graphic elements. If you have any footage that you see some great shapes in then I would highly suggest you create vector shapes out them to bring out the design in your elements as well as add in more color. By stylizing your work like this people will take notice.

Bobby Chiu Speed Painter

This is the first of a series of speed painting videos done by digital painter, Bobby Chiu. He also tells his philosophy working and how he found independence as an artist by working crappy jobs and eventually starting his own studio. It’s not really motion graphics, but if any of you like digital painting you might find it interesting.

Free Online Portfolio

Check out www.CarbonMade.com. This site will create a professional portfolio for your work. All you have to do is upload the files.

Free File Storage

Need to back up your files? Either email yourself your files or use www.OrbitFiles.com. They give you 6,000 MB for free.

Blogging – The Easiest & Most Professional Way to Get Online

Create a Blog – The Fastest Way for an Artist to Post Art Online

What are They? How does it compare to a regular website or MySpace?

A Blog is simply an online Journal where you can post pictures, videos, as well as comments. It also allows for you audience to leave comments on your articles or posts. It’s easy to update, it doesn’t cost you anything, and it quickly gets your work online. This is a blog that you are reading right now.

It’s technically different from a website in that the newest posts are at the top of your page and you don’t need to design, develop, or upload files to a server. You can add parts to it that are like pages of a website, for instance you could add an “About” page.

It’s also different from a MySpace page because it works more like an online journal and in my opinion looks much more professional.

How do I create One?

Easy, just register an account at an online blogger service like www.WordPress.com or www.Blogger.com. This blog was created with wordpress and I also have a blogger with some flash that I developed myself at www.drawalot.blogspot.com which I created for my animated comic strip.

How do people make money with their blogs?

Almost all websites make money by implementing an advertising strategy in which advertisers pay the blog writer to put text links or ads for the large number of website visitors to click on. Some people sell merchandise on their blog. Companies like www.CafePress.com help you to create t-shirts, posters, hats, cups, and whatever else you want with your designs on them. You could then set up a yahoo shops page on which you could sell these items. A good example of someone who does this is www.Penny-Arcade.com. They have a shop page which they created using yahoo shops on which they sell t-shirts and paraphanalia. They also have ads for advertisers on their site which also brings in some revenue. To find out more about how to make money with a blog you can visit one of these very helpful Blogs…

www.copyblogger.com This is a site that teaches the importance of writing headlines and copy in a way that achieves it’s goals. Writing is key to knowing how to sell yourself. It also has extremely helpful information about blogging in general.

www.problogger.com A Blog that teaches you how to blog like a pro – pro meaning you get paid to do it.

www.blogmastermind.com I really like this one. This guy racked his brain for two years trying to figure out how to make money happen online. As soon as he figured it out he wrote the book and now he’s giving it away for free! All you have to do is join his newsletter and you can download it.

http://yirmumah.net/make_money This is a blog by the artist of the online comic strip, www.Yirmumah.net where he tells his ideas of how to make money off an online comic strip.

Skateboad Movie Animation

This is animation heavy, but it is all done in either after effects or a program very similiar. I like the Journey song too, nice touch.

Skateboarding Motion Graphics Intro

This is a really nice piece of motion graphics for a skateboard video. I was asked how to animate the string. We can go over it in class, but basically you create a vector line and animate all the curve points seperately. Besides that you guys have already learned how to do almost everything in this video, so technically you should be able to do something this good already. Feel fre to do something similiar for your final project.