From the Archives: Zombi

Zombi was a piece created a number of years ago when I was enrolled at Animation Mentor. When I was not working on my animation assignments, I tried to work to improve my illustration work. This illustration was produced off the back of the Goreball design work, which also included zombies but had a more contemporary/apocalyptic theme and aesthetic. He's even wearing Adidas runners!

The first step in the process was to complete a traditional pencil sketch. This was a large drawing on A3 cartridge paper that I scanned in and reworked in a couple of passes to get the pose working. Once I had a very rough working drawing, I brought the image into Photoshop and did a clean up pass while maintaining the scratchiness of the original sketch.  

I then created a Greyscale value pass or painting on a multiply layer working out the lighting and atmosphere before even touching any colour. I struggled a lot with understanding colour for many years and have found the process of separating value from colour (Hue and Saturation) a helpful process.

I kept working the values, pushing the contrast to push the character out from the background. The style is contemporary comicbook blending line art and painting but never moving into pure illustrative painting. The line art was re-introduced at this stage and highlights and details painted in. Without adding any Hue (colour) I knew that the values would work with any colour wash.

With the colour wash, I wanted something vivid and dynamic. Red is not a colour I commonly use in my work. I tend to favour blues, neutral values like browns or oranges and occasionally purples or greens. The colour wash was applied on a blend mode layer on top of the value pass in Photoshop, either set as a Multiply or Overlay layer.

The next step in the process was an eye opener for me. I typically would paint the main character palette on a layer under the main wash so that any colour I applied would blend with the main scene colour ( in this case, red). The problem with this is that the colour is washed out or over powered by the main scene colour but it does give a good starting point anything as an underlay or under painting.

I could then colour pick values from the under painting and paint these on a new layer over the existing colour knowing that the palette will work. I would also use pictures and textures on multiply or overlay layers over the opaque painting and mask them out to fit the different shapes like skin or cloth. 

From the Archives: Encounter

A short animated film about ideas,taking control and enterprise created by Melinko Productions in 2005. Directed by Dave Chapman, Music by Cat Little, Animation by Andrew Crotty (me) and Composited by Aoife Greenham.

This film was completed in one week around October or November 2005. I had just finished work experience with Boulder Media and was looking for work in the animation industry in Dublin. Luckily, I had a few friends who were producing shorts and independent animation work and they asked me to animate this short. At the time, it was great as I really needed something to keep me tied over and the final film was a main part of my portfolio showreel I used when applying to Brown Bag Films.

The process of producing a finished product every one to two weeks would be my bread and butter for the following few years when working freelance on shows like I'm an Animal and Crap Rap for Brown Bag Films. In fact, I think the majority of my working life as an animator has been on short turnaround projects like this one, be it TV episodes or commercials.

It's nice to look back at something like this nearly 10 years later and see some of the gags still stand up.

'Mick' Animation and Colour Tests

Here's the first completed animation test for the character 'Mick'. The design, style and animation has to be simple and quick to do while still showing a lot of character and personality. This was complete using a Cintiq Companion and Toon Boom Animate Pro.

Next I have the fully cleaned up animation with full colour and drop shadow. The final design style of the show will probably be more rough and ready with 'scratchier' line art but this does give an idea of a higher quality finish.

TV Animation Development Work Part 02

Above shows the complete process from character design to finished production still for Angler Fish.

Before a design can be approved, multiple versions need to be created and sent to the shows producers for feedback and approval. 

My workflow is to produce three designs for each character and have the producer/director choose their favourite. 

Any fixes or requested changes are then made to this design and sent again for final approval.

Once the design is fully approved, it goes to clean up. For a vector based show like this, i’ll do my clean up in Adobe Flash, drawing directly into the application using a Wacom Tablet.

Anticipation and Path of Action

Anticipation and path of action animation test based on Jason Ryan's Ramp up tutorials.