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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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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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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.”
…
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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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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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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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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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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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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Animation director Jamie Caliri has produced some stunning animation using 2D art, in 3D. But not in CGI 3D, but in stop motion. And since I am always interested in re-purposing 2D art into animation I thought I would share some oh his work.

The first piece of animation I saw from Mr. Caliri was ‘Dragon’ one of the unique commercials produced for United Airlines. Here a fathers trip becomes a flight of fancy for his young son. It’s made of 2D art, used with stop-motion animation in 3D. Beautiful and magical animation.

Interestingly, the software used to film the commercial is also called Dragon.

Another commercial for United Airlines is ‘Heart’ with a simple love story.

Mr. Caliri also has posted on-line a proof of concept test ‘The Escapist v.s. The Iron Gauntlet’ for a filmed version of The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay. This film might not be using stop-motion, but is has some unique ways to add motion to the superhero comic being drawn by the character.

I hope you enjoyed these fantastic animation pieces. Feel free to also check out his title segment for United States of Tara Titles, the titles for the movie version of an A Series of Unfortunate Events and the short The Sun and the Seed.

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(via Cartoon Brew) Cartoon Brew shared a video that has since been all over the place on Blogs and Facebook since it’s really really good. Below is a really well done one-minute of traditional drawn animation with a retro classic Superman by Robb Pratt that (I hope) should be a proof-of-concept for a bigger project someday.

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re-purposing comics and illustrations into animation

(via Cartoon Brew) Check out this wonderfully animated trailer for an upcoming picture book by veteran animator Frans Vischer, Fuddles the Cat. While the animation is not like some book trailers since it does not use artwork directly from the book like some do, this one has animation by the author that tops any computer manipulation. It seems there have been quite a few gems of 2D animation in the last few weeks HERE and HERE.

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a post on Motion Comic Magic

Cartoon Brew today posted a really neat short animated film by Fran Krause (Moonraker, Utica Cartoon). I wanted to share it here because it ties into my interest at the possibilities of using techniques to re-purpose art in other forms for animation. In this case the art has not been published in some form, but since it was drawn entirely in a sketchbook first that made it fit for me. I am excited since I also thought of doing the same thing years ago after visiting Muir Woods here in the Bay Area. The film is really simple an nicely done. Maybe this would be a great weekend art project or even for a larger event similar to 24 Hour Comic Book Day. I love how technology makes it possible to do something that is very analog to start with. Of course the bear is a favorite animal of mine too so that makes it all the better.

Just so cool.

Here is the short and a making of video too…

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Well, here is my second post of sample Motion Comics and Motion Illustration videos I have found on-line. Motion Comics and Motion Illustration is the art of taking art from a book, comic or other source and animating it. It’s becoming more and more visible as entertainment and entertainment. It’s really an exciting way to take one medium into another.

I would love to know on both this post and the one from Wen Nov 3 which videos you like. I have made a few animations with comic art and am curious what works for you.

Where the videos on part 1 was more about charm and whimsy, today’s videos are Action and Adventure!

Leviathan trailer (Simon & Schuster)

From a young adult novel. Very dynamic.

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Batman – Black & White Motion Comics – 2 – Broken Nose by Paul Pope (DC Comics)

DC comics really has done some of the best motion comics. They work with the art and not try to take it too far (which some others have done in the past).

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Spiderwomen motion-comic trailer (marvel)

Marvel’s trailer for the motion graphic created by artist Neil Adam’s studio. A lot of the effects you see in these started with animatics (animated storyboards) for Commercials and Movies which Mr. Adam’s company also does.

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‘The Walking Dead’ motion comic

OK, this one is kind of more PG13-R, but with some really nice animation done on the comic art.

also, an animator who is a fan has made his own opening credits for the new Walking Dead TV show using comic art that fits in here. He even has a making of discription on-line! Really great stuff.

THE WALKING DEAD “Opening Titles” from Daniel Kanemoto on Vimeo.

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Murena #8 from Dargaud. (france) Dramatic.

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Barracuda from Dargaud. (france) Looks interesting!

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Blacksad teaser Dargaud. (france)

A trailer for one of the best french comics out there. The art is so awesome.

Don’t forget to check out the video I did with comic creator Alexis E. Farjardo for a trailer for Kid Beowulf and the Song of Roland.

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As some of you might know, I am very interested in not only animation and comics, but combining them together into Motion Illustration and Motion Comics. Motion Comics and Motion Illustration are where artwork used for different medium or format (usually an analog one) is adapted to tell a story with motion and sound. Some of these trailers and shorts use new material that was created specifically for the video that goes beyond just touching up some images in Photoshop, but they are included here as part of the same “family.”

Just a bit of disclosure is that I have made some videos like these myself. In fact I just posted some work two weeks ago that I did with comic creator Alexis E. Farjardo for a trailer for Kid Beowulf and the Song of Roland.

This is part 1 or 2 with these videos having more charm, humor, fantasy and whimsy.

First up we have Chris Ware’s poem, Falling. This goes to show how it does not take a lot of bells and whistles to add life to a video version of a comic. One thing that seems to run through all of these is having the right music though.

Luis Grane’s contribution to the Totoro Forest Project (www.totoroforestproject.org)

Some nice simple animation that works with the music to really give you a little treat.

Tim Sievert’s ‘That Salty Air’ Trailer (Top Shelf)

Here the folks at Top Shelf have actually created new animation based on the comic for this moody piece.

Jeffrey Brown’s INCREDIBLE CHANGE-BOTS (Top Shelf)

Lost Colony Trailer (FirstSecond books)

Diana Thung’s Captain Long Ears

Suzy Lee’s Wave (Chronicle books)

This is another nice simply done piece from a childrens book.

It’s A Book by Lane Smith (Macmillan)

This is just funny and charming and really well done.

Zits: Drive Her Crazy (Jantze Studio)

Not sure if Mike and his crew did new art or used art from the actual comic strip, but it’s really fun and well done. I am guessing we will see more of these coming in the near future.

Look for part 2 on Friday Nov 5 for a little Action and Adventure!

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updated 7-4-10

Well, my students this past week were really doing some amazing things, and they wanted me to let them know of the tools and software that was used in class and I want to share with all of you in webland what they achieved.

First off we did some Pixalation and Stop Motion. Those are both the same thing, the moving of objects filmed one frame at a time. For Stop Motion we were using and older version of iStopmotion (version 1). It’s Macintosh based and very simple to use which is why I like it. I have not really had a chance to work with version 2 yet, but would like to try in the future. www.boinx.com/istopmotion.

The program was used with just a DV camcorder on a tripod pointing down at a table surface and connected to the computer with a firewire cable. We animated clip art from Dover: http://store.doverpublications.com/0486995666.html which I printed out from the files that came with the book. There was also a battle of Fish vs. Birds with the students drawing their own art.

iStopmotion was also used to film some classic style drawn animation pencil tests of a ball bouncing. The students also went off and drew some new stuff on their own which made me really pleased.

Next off we enter the digital realm with a demonstration of Adobe After Effects CS4. http://www.adobe.com/products/aftereffects/ The program is used for special effects, animation and motion graphics. One strength of the computer is that it can manipulate and re-purpose artwork. Below is a video sample of some Dancing Bears done with one drawing that was first scanned in and  had it’s background removed in Photoshop (http://www.adobe.com/products/photoshop/family/)and then using the puppet tool in After Effects. Then there is a Mysterious Man walking and Spaceships done with the digital version of cut-out animation.

Many of the same effects can be done in other programs like Adobe Flash, but After Effects handles the bitmaps better and is a lot more powerful even with a bit more of a learning curve. I also love the manipulation of flat layers in 3D space to get a ‘multiplane’ effect.

This is the same way they do the Motion Comics, which was one of my inspirations for this class. Artwork being re-purposed for animation.

AFX character animation tests from Brian Kolm on Vimeo.

Last we needed to come up with a simple idea for a short piece of animation in which the students would draw the art which would be brought into the computer and manipulated creating a whole story. After the class agreed to some story elements, everyone sat down to work on some drawings of what characters would look like. The drawings were placed up on the board and assistant artist Chris Conroy and I combined ideas into final designs.

The final result was always planned to be more of a motion comic, but with the art being created specifically for animating. To speed things up I roughed out a simple storyboard and the students worked on making the art which was scanned after class and prepared to be structured into an animation. A big thank to Graham Wong for his help on Friday working in After Effects to animate the drawings and having some of the students assist him.

The voice of the Nanny Ninja is Heather Plunkett and the lip assignments were done in JLipSync, and older java script based program. It’s a bummer since it only uses 8bit mono .WAV files which are very outdated by today’s standards, but it did still get the job done.

The student really did an amazing  job of creating some fantastic art that helped tell our story. GOOD WORK GUYS!

Sadly time and technical difficulties have prevented the finished video to appear yet, but it will be finished up in the early part of July with the missing art and missing music, but a close to finished version is presented here as a Work in Progress.

Note: I also found a few drawings did not get scanned in the last rush to finish on Friday and so they will have to be replaced with something else. No art was left out except for that reason. A final version will be on-line in the next week or two with a few missing drawings, music and sound effects — but will look close to the video below.

STAY TOONED FOR THE FINAL VIDEO!

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I have been learning to use the open-source free program Blender 3D and have found the experience to be pretty great. Such powerful piece software that won’t cost you a thing. Plus there are lots of tutorials and help on-line to get you out of a tight squeeze. I also broke down and upgraded my Adobe After Effects to CS4 so the experiments below do contain some elements that were composites on top of the Blender 3D renderings.

I have always loved to find ways to combine traditional art and new media and this is one way to do more of that. Expect to see some more interesting projects this year including a dark ride simulation and some motion comics. I could also see some of these techniques for documentary films and music videos.

Below are a few of my experiments I did in the program.

This clip uses the Blender to After Effects export plug-in which allows the camera data for a 3d scene to be used to add additional elements out side of the 3D program. The plug-in by Paolo Ciccone’s is here: http://library.creativecow.net/articles/ciccone_paolo/ae-exporter-blender.php

This clip uses 3D shapes mapped with watercolor paintings that I scanned in and elements added in After Effects CS4.

This is another attempt at mapping traditional art on 3d shapes. The art is by my friend Linda Carothers. (here is my previous test with the same artwork HERE)

Continue reading »]]> I am a big fan of the film, The Triplets of Belville. The film was really great to watch, especially since the animation is really well done. Here is some of the first clips from director Sylvain Chomet’s new movie, the Illusionist. It’s part of a German interview, so I am not sure what is being said. But the visuals are really beautiful. This clip comes from animator Victor Ens who worked on the film.

As a bounus, here is the music video from The Triplets of Belville. Note that the singer has been animated into footage from the movie. Great song.

Continue reading »]]> Well, this is pretty wonderful stuff, some footage for Disney by way of CartoonBrew.com of the new villain Dr. Facilier. I can’t wait to see the final film.

In the video, supervising animator Bruce Smith (Bebe’s Kids, The Proud Family) discusses the character of Dr. Facilier, the villain of the film, and how voice actor Keith David influences the animators work and the character’s performance. David is shown performing and being directed by John Musker and Ron Clements. There are also some brief bits of pencil tests and color footage that hasn’t appeared anywhere else on the web.