At our studio, Perennial Pictures, work continues on “Crawford the Cat.” Above is a screenshot from a scene that uses a simulated multiplane camera effect. I love the way the buildings and rooftops glide past the camera giving the scene a slightly three-dimensional feel.
This post includes a sequence of three short scenes by animator Daryl D. Pyle. In them, Daryl mixed a fair amount of hand-drawn animation to that of Flash created animation. In these scenes, the Handycat animation was hand-drawn on paper and was mostly completed outside of Flash. (Note the pegs holes.) The multi-level animation drawings (bodies, heads, arms, mouths) were then scanned-in to the Flash program and put into position on the Flash stage. The bees in the scenes, however, were completely created in Flash and then “animated” by the computer.
“Crawford’s Classics” is an hour-long TV Special our studio is producing. This week more scenes were completed for the show. It features Crawford the Cat - a character we developed a few years ago for a series of “how-to” shorts.
Here’s another pencil test from HANDYCAT. This is Drillbit running up the steps. Animation by G. Brian Reynolds.
Click here to see it.
(Be patient – the pencil test takes longer to load.)
It wasn’t always as easy as powering-up the ol’ computer, loading up Flash and then happily manipulating your graphics to a soundtrack playing synchronously on the timeline. Nor could you instantly and easily review the work, make changes, and then pop the scene out in color – skipping entirely, a whole department called “Camera.”
Animation production last century meant sweating it out for a day or so until the film had been processed and printed. Only then could one see if the lip sync was right, or if the camera operator properly executed that double pass shadow effect, or if the ink and paint dept had applied the appropriate cel-level-compensated paint color. Not to mention the myriad of other things that could and did go wrong, even when the scene had been dutifully checked all along the way. That was just the way it went. Ahhh, the good old days…
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Here’s a fun clip from HANDYCAT that features an animated cycle.
The beginning and the end of this scene consist of animation that is only able to be used once. The middle part, however, uses the same cycle of animation several times over - it’s just repositioned. It’s an economical way to get a lot of “mileage” out of a few drawings, yet the scene looks great.
If the controls at the bottom of the video work on your browser, you can step through the animation and see where one cycle ends and the other picks-up.
Currently our studio is working on a pre-school product featuring a character we developed a few years ago called Crawford the Cat.
This production is in its initial stages, and many processes are underway. Some of the track has been recorded, and the background style and other designs are all but finalized. Below is a background/concept piece for a nighttime scene in the show. It was done by G. Brian Reynolds and was rendered on the Flash stage.
Here’s another short Pencil Test from HANDYCAT by G. Brian Reynolds. This one is of Drillbit jumping out of the truck window. Fellow creator Jeff DeGrandis commented that the drawings retain energy in the rough stage. He’s right. There is a special kind of “life” in these drawings that is unique unto themselves. It’s kind of hard to explain. I always enjoy looking at pencil tests and, of course, the finished animation too. Sometimes they feel the same, sometimes they don’t, but the comparison is always interesting.
Here’s scene 77 Pencil Test & Color
(Be patient - the pencil tests take longer to load.)
The O.S. screaming is once again provided by Rob Paulsen. Great lungs, Rob!
I was digging through the archives this week and found the above pencil test from the HANDYCAT short. This was a rough, motion test animated by G. Brian Reynolds. At the studio, we use a software program called FlipBook to test animation. Sometimes the drawings are then cleaned up and then imported into Flash for manipulation. With this particular test, however, the drawings were not cleaned up, and the pencil test was simply imported into Flash to be used as a guide. HANDYCAT head shapes, body shapes, leg shapes, and other shapes were then aligned with the pencil test guide to make the final scene.
FlipBook and Flash Animation are terrific tools, but it takes a skilled animator to get the best out of them. Brian is one such animator.
Click the link below to see Brian’s pencil test and the color version of the scene. Rob Paulsen provides Handycat’s funny coughs.
Pictured above is Rob Paulsen with June Foray and Larry Huber at the Handycat record.
Rob plays both Handycat and Drilbit (Handycat’s faithful mutt.)
Enjoy Rob’s “Drillbit barks” and a “Handycat scream” in the clips below.
