Category Archive: 2D

May
18
2012

Motion Comic Magic- ‘HellBoy: the Fury’ motion comic

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A post on re-purposing comics and illustration into animation

I just saw this posted at BackFromTheDepths.com and had to post it here at MotionComicMagic.com. It’s a Motion Comic using art of Mike Mignola and Duncan Fegredo.

War ensues between the forces of good and evil as Hellboy finally confronts the Queen of Blood one on one, setting the stage for a new chapter in Hellboy’s life! Mike Mignola and Duncan Fegredo conclude an epic collaboration that began in Hellboy: Darkness Calls!

I am really impressed with the animation in “HellBoy: the Fury” (from Dark Horse Comics) the motion is very believable and fluid and still is true to the original art it is created from. They also do some neat work with translating the art into 3D to have the drawing shift in perspective. The voices are fine, but I suspect that they might disappoint some especially compared to other HellBoy animation that uses the actors from the live-action movies to reprieve their roles.

One thing I have been thinking about in motion comics is what source artwork seems to work the best for them. The best examples of Motion Comics to me are still the ‘Watchmen’ and ‘Batman: Black and White’ titles that were released from DC Comics and work really well AND use fairly stylized flat comic art. My feeling (at the time of this writing) is that more flat and/or stylize work allows for more opportunities at creating motion from existing artwork. That is not to say it can’t be done with more realistic/3D looking artwork, but might be harder to make it work it move with out using 3D mapping and other tricks that might take it too far from the core of what a Motion Comic is: taking existing comic artwork and bringing it to life.

It will be interesting to see how the fan community reacts to the HellBoy Motion Comic. I find some people are very negative about Motion Comics, comparing them with other types of animation and expecting them to be what they are not. Motion Comics’ strength lies in the fact that it uses the original comic stories and art making it the Comic Book equivalent to Audio Books. It does not replace the actual comic, but allows you a new way to enjoy it.

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Apr
26
2012

Jeffery Brown’s ‘Darth Vader and Son’ book trailer and CAM exhibit

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Cartoonist Jeffery Brown (jeffreybrowncomics.com) has a new book called Darth Vader and Son, which the trailer above promotes. I wanted to post the trailer here at MotionComicMagic.com since it’s a great example of taking existing art from a book and re-purposes it for animation, plus it’s really cool.

What if Darth Vader took an active role in raising his son? In this hilarious and sweet comic reimagining, Darth Vader is a dad like any other—except with all the baggage of being the Dark Lord of the Sith. Celebrated artist Jeffrey Brown’s delightful illustrations give classic Star Wars® moments a fresh twist, presenting the trials and joys of parenting through the lens of a galaxy far, far away. Life lessons include lightsaber batting practice, using the Force to raid the cookie jar, Take Your Child to Work Day on the Death Star (“Er, he looks just like you, Lord Vader!”), and the special bond shared between any father and son.

Jeffrey Brown is the author of numerous graphic novels and comics, including Cat Getting Out of a Bag and Cats Are Weird. A lifelong Star Wars fan, he lives in Chicago with his wife and five-year-old son.

Plus: You can see the artwork for the book at the Cartoon Art Museum this summer (in San Francisco) April 28 – August 5, 2012!

…the 18-piece exhibition Darth Vader and Son, featuring artwork by award-winning cartoonist Jeffrey Brown. This exhibit opens on Saturday, April 28. Brown will sign copies of his book at the Cartoon Art Museum on Thursday, May 17, 2012 from 7:00-9:00pm.

A post on re-purposing comics and illustration into animation

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Mar
02
2012

Motion Comic Magic – Animating children’s drawings “evolution”

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A post on re-purposing comics and illustration into animation

(via http://blog.sciencefictionbiology.com tweet) My posts here at MotionComicMagic.com are all about re-purposing art created for different purposes into animation. For example: Motion Comics take the art from comic books and repurpose it into animated. Well, this cool example that I am sharing with you today is the same idea, but taking the art of children and animating it to help tell a tale of Evolution. Animator Tyler Rhodes did this with some young artist to great effect.

From scientificamerican.com…

How do you make an authentic evolution animation? Quite simply: you allow it to evolve. Tyler Rhodes, a student in the animation program at Virginia Commonwealth University, wanted to create an animation that wasn’t simply linear, but instead represented the true ‘tree-like’ process of evolution. So he enlisted the help of elementary school students from William Fox Elementary School and the Patrick Henry School of Science & Art, and involved them in a type of game.

“Much like the whispered game “telephone” where one person whispers a message down the line until it’s very different by the end due to small “mutations” along the way, I would create a game of telephone using visual imagery.”
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He then had various groups of students make copies of this sketch, knowing that the copies would contain subtle differences. The natural variation in the ‘progeny’ created from the first salamander sketch was used to determine the survival of the fittest. Tyler would ‘kill off’ 98% of the organisms and start the process again…

The video below is the final result which is lively and very fresh. The animation is the kids drawings brought into after effects and animated with the puppet tool to great effect. It’s a great example of the animator repurposing the kids art into animation. You can see the kids drawings on the official blog HERE.

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Nov
19
2011

Motion Comic Magic > new european comic trailers ‘Gringos Locos’ ‘Ria’ and ‘Kid Lucky’

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A post on re-purposing comics and illustration into animation

For today’s Motion Comic Magic post I just wanted to share a few nice trailers for comic books from France/Belgium and Germany. I am still surprised that the  major US companies don’t create more trailers for their books.

The first one is a Franco-Belgian BD comic trailer that features a story of three comic artists and their trip to America. Jijé is the creator of Spirou et Fantasio and Jerry Spring, Morris is the creator of Lucky Luke, and André Franquin is the creator of the comics Gaston and Marsupilami.

Gringos Locos (editions Dupuis)

The journey of Franco-Belgian artists Jijé, Morris and Franquin throughout the United States and Mexico.

Concerned about the advance of communism in Europe, artist Jijé decided to leave the Old World with his family. Franquin and Morris decided to follow him, with them all arrived in New York in 1948. Having acquired a Hudson Ford, they travel the U.S. from east coast to west coast, hoping to get hired by Disney Studios. Not a chance, at a time when Disney has laid off more than he was hiring. Seeing his tourist visa expired, Jijé decided to move several months to Mexico with his family and is soon joined by Franquin and Morris.

After the success of “Groom verdigris,” the duo of Yann and Schwartz addresses the picaresque adventures of three monuments of the Franco-Belgian comics.

The next two trailers are from the Berlin based company Stenarts who are a studio that creates art for all sorts of projects including comics. Where the first trailer for Vol 1 below features art from the comic the second trailer looks as it’s art has been created specificly for it. Both of the trailers are especially nice with the second being really impressive.

Ria: Lightclan Chronicles (by Stenarts)

And lastly we head back to Franco-Belgian BD comics  this one featuring the classic comic cowboy character Lucky Luke as a kid. That’s right, it’s Kid Luck which should not be confused with Alexis Fajardo’s comic Kid Beowulf (which I do production work on BTW) though I would love to think they stole the idea for him.  The creator of Lucky Luke is Morris is who is a character in the trailer for Gringo Loco above.

The trailer does a nice job of animating the characters from the comic art with quite a bit of cleaver movement.

Kid Lucky (from Dargaud)

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Nov
02
2011

Motion Comic Magic – Bringing unbuilt Disney theme park concept art to life in animated tributes

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A post on re-purposing comics and illustration into animation

To me Motion Comics and Motion Illustration is about taking material that was not designed for animation and bringing it to life with modern multimedia technology. In my previous posts here for Motion Comic Magic I have looked at how illustrations and artwork can be animated for music videos, motion comics, trailers for books, and to simulate what never existed. In fact I first talked about the idea of recreating what had never been built thorough motion-art and motion comics in my post a while back….re-creating the ‘Western River Expedition’ ride. That example used concept art, photos of models and other elements that Disney had in their archive, but it was mostly a slide show.

Recently I discovered the work of  animator David Witt (quasi-interestingparaphernaliainc.blogspot.com) has done it one better with actually animating the characters in the Concept Art itself. It also brings up an interesting idea of how using multi-media could be pre-visulized how an robotic figure for a dark ride could move in the real world.

So here are some animations of Marc Davis’ concept art for the Western River Expedition ride that was never built at Walt Disney World…

Western River Expedition: Last Roundup from David Witt on Vimeo.

Western River Expedition: Horse on the Roof from David Witt on Vimeo.

Western River Expedition: Saloon Singer from David Witt on Vimeo.

David also just release a video that features the art and audio from the Story and Song from the Haunted Mansion. You can read more about it on his blog HERE.

To see all of David’s videos, visit his VIMEO profile.

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Jun
03
2011

Comic/Art Book Trailers

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Teenage Satan traile image

A post on re-purposing comics and illustration into animation

The line between Art, Commerce, Marketing, and Storytelling is getting thinner and thinner all the time. Here are a sampling from around the web of using animation with art (mostly) created for another format and brought to life to promote and entertain. Like a trailer for a movie, an animated promotional video can quickly sell the idea of what a publication or product is about and sometimes is part of the product itself.

“A 30-second book trailer for The Spiderwick Chronicle’s bestselling centerpiece, “Arthur Spiderwick’s Field Guide to the Fantastical World Around You” by Tony DiTerlizzi and Holly Black. 2006.” Tony is an amazingly talented artist and he has a brand spanking new website for you to check out. The trailer is very simple, but has a lot of nice touches that sells the story.

The comic Thorgal by Jean van Hamme and Grzegorz Rosinski from German publisher Splitter. Really nice movie style editing that conveys the epic quality of the work.

“The Sixth Gun is an epic supernatural western by Cullen Bunn and Brian Hurtt.” Published by Oni Press. The trailer just sells the story and theme really well.

A trailer for the latest book featuring the classic BD characters Blake and Mortimer “The late Rene Sterne, author of the series Adler, Chantal Spiegeleer, author of the series Madila, and screenwriter of Largo Winch sign a story to match the myth of the 9th Art!”

“It’s a COMIC. it’s an APP, It’s a GAME – It’s Teenage Satan, created by Stephanie Buscema, Marsha Cooke and Candis Cooke. Animation by Darwyn Cooke . For more information visit http://teenagesatan.com …” A great example of media going in all sort of new directions by way of digital technology.

Hell-O Teenage Satan

The Sexy Spy YUKI 7 returns in another melding of art+animation featuring retro digital illustrations from Kevin Dart which are brought to life in a special animated short.. “The brand new Yuki 7 Adventure Book, written by Elizabeth Ito. Every copy comes with a DVD which includes both Yuki 7 shorts, “Looks That Kill” and “A Kiss From Tokyo”, as well as several bonus features. 72 pages, Paperback with Acetate Dust Jacket” Sexy! I wonder if the art is created in layers in Photoshop from the start so they can be animated?

Looks That Kill – HD from Yuki 7 on Vimeo.

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Mar
17
2011

Motion Comics and Marketing

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A post on re-purposing comics and illustration into animation

With the dominance of the internet as our center of information, I have noticed more and more viral videos being made to enhance other entertainment such as plays, movies and video games. The short videos can give the audience more information and get them excited about the story yet to come. A few of them are Motion Comics or use the same animation techniques to create simple animation and story telling.

First of an animated promo for the opera The Tsar’s Bride at the Royal Opera House in London. The Royal Opera House has been doing quite a few impressive viral videos for their productions, including short animations and teasers. They really seem to be trying to take traditional music and dance in new ways. Great music of course.

Next up is a short back story to the movie Suckerpunch, which comes out soon. “The Trenches” by Ben Hibon helps us learn more about what happened before the movie takes place. (via Cartoon Brew) The style is very Motion Comic-ish, but created directly for video.

The new DC Superhero multi-player on-line game has posted multiple videos that give introductions to different characters and storylines. The art is comic book looking, but I don’t know if it was ever a comic book before the video. The do call it a “Cinematic Motion Comic”. This one is “New Heroes and Villains”

Here is one of my favorite on-line commercials with the clean line art of Mike Allred (creator of the comic Madman). Here WonderWoman sells makeup in a dramatic way.

Here is a video for MacmillanChildrens books “Peaceful Pieces”. What’s I like about this trailer is that it animates the book illustrations which are photos of quilts and gives snippets of poems from the book. Poetry is hard to sell, but maybe videos like this one is one way to take it to a new level and get new audiences.

And last are viral videos for the Starz series Dexter. In these animations we learn how the main character serial killer became who he is. I am not going to post the videos here do to my audience here on the blog. But you can see them here http://www.youtube.com/show?p=evLlAyxiXcE&tracker=show_v1

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Mar
11
2011

2D animation in Adobe After Effects

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a post on re-purposing comic art and illustrations for animation.

I love Adobe’s After Effects program. It’s complex, but open ended in it’s possibilities for doing animation, motion graphics, and special effects. After Effects is also the most popular program that animators use to create Motion Comics too. It seems that artist are just starting to delve into the program as a character animation tool and there seem to be more and more video tutorials on how to do different techniques showing up on the internet all the time. Of course these techniques can be used for Motion Comics and Motion Illustrations as well as to allow artist who normally don’t do animation to add new life to their art.

Bellow are a collection of helpful video tutorials by some talented folks on the web who explain techniques to do character animation in After Effects.

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In this episode, the team at Tiny Inventions shares their unique work flow for mixing real-world models with computer animation. They’ve used these techniques for music videos, advertising, and their new short film: ‘Something Left, Something Taken.

At about  5:24 they talk about how they rig the characters to animation with a cool interface.

– Visit SlipperyRockNY where they have tutorials at using the Puppet Tool in After Effects for character animation.

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DuIK Tools is a revolutionary Inverse Kinematics script for After Effects developed by Nicolas Dufresne a.k.a DuDuf (vimeo.com/?duduf) which brings the principles behind 3D rigging to After Effects, giving greater precision and faster, more lifelike animations!

- Animator Daniel Gies (via After Effects Portal) has posted some very cool tutorials for animating 2D art. Very cool looking stuff.

Here is the first part of a tutorial on doing a walking characters: (see more tutorials HERE)

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