To help with the animation of my episodes, I have decided to design and build my backgrounds and characters separately from After Effects in order to help make the process easier when I begin animating.
One of the biggest advantages I had by creating the backgrounds in Illustrator was that I could control the layers that I was using within After Effects. Within Illustrator I could create objects on different layers and then when I imported them into After Effects, I could split all the elements up in order to create depth by using blur settings or I could have moving elements go behind other foreground elements which helped sell the illusion of the characters being within the scene.
I decided to create all of the backgrounds for all three episodes to make sure they were ready to animate.
I recorded the process for creating the backgrounds, this shows the development of two of the backgrounds created for the final episode, one being the opening space scene and the other being the interior of the rocket. Here a time-lapse of the development:
Here are a few of my favourite backgrounds that I created for the episodes:
Characters
I also worked on the designs for the characters for the animations. As I am using the rubberhose plug-in within After Effects, I have not included arms or legs for the initial designs as I will be adding them when they are being animated.
Again, like the backgrounds I split up each layer of the characters so that they are fully animatable when I bring them into After Effects. For the animations I chose to make front on views and side views. This is so I can switch between the two when I animate to show the different poses that the characters will be in.
I also created a different design for the characters when they’re in space to represent their own personal space suits. As a nod to The LEGO® Movie I created the chest logo to be representative of the logo used for the character Benny (see below) within the film.
Here are the designs for the characters that I will use for the animations.
I focused on animating the title credits to be used for the series. I wanted the titles to be very simplistic and not be based around pre-existing episodes that a large range of animated series uses such as Rick & Morty. My main inspiration for the title sequence was the video-game Cuphead.
The main inspiration from Cuphead is the image used before playing the game (linked below). I liked the style and the characters and text behind a solid block of colour. I did try other colours rather than the yellow that is used in my inspiration, but yellow was the only colour that really stood out from the characters and offered a nice visual element to the piece.
Based on the techniques from the rubberhose tutorial I talked about previously. I created a run-cycle with my own characters that follow the same principals as the walk cycle such as animating the feet first and timing the correct rotations while also using easing in and out to help the animation look more natural.
My plan for the episodes is to have this title scene act as a prelude to title cards and then start the episode after the title card reveal.
To further my research into animating techniques, I figured I would have practice within After Effects to get to grips the to the animation I will be doing for my final piece(s).
I decided to test the rubber hose technique that I described recently by having a play around with it in After Effects.
Rubber-Hose 2.0
For After Effects there is a script made by independent creators Battleaxe.co. This script is able to function within After Effects in order to ease the process of creating rubber-hose style animations without having to manually keyframe all elements needed. The technique involved with working this script is by animating elements that attach to the hose such as a body or hand for an example and the script then automatically calculates the position and bend for the hose once applied and parented to the subsequent layer.
I decided to access this script and try it out to help my process when creating my animations. I found the process very easy, I decided to follow a tutorial (linked below). This gave more in depth looks to steps needed for a walk cycle and very quickly helps you learn the necessary steps in a short amount of time. The tutorial is only 11 minutes long, showing how quickly this can be done, I took around an hour and 20 minutes, though this was due to going back and forth from the video while also picking up useful keyboard shortcuts. From what I learnt from the video, I feel I can replicate another walk cycle in a similar time frame to the video.
One of the most useful tips I learnt from the tutorial is the ‘loopIn’ expression that you can type into the expressions section to control keyframes. The full expression is loopIn(“cycle”). Essentially it allowed me to to continuously loop an animation seamlessly rather than creating keyframes for the entire duration. This helped especially for seeing the end result.
Here is the tutorial I followed:
Here is the result that followed from the tutorial.
I also storyboarded the three episodes that I intend to create.
Episode 1
The first episode is a farm based episode where ‘Red’ is driving a combine harvester while ‘Blue’ is running away. Red chases Blue and ultimately runs him over with the harvester though while too preoccupied with that, the harvester runs off of a cliff.
Red is shown in a similar bad state to blue and is mocked by a crow that appears at the start.
The second episode is based within a bowling alley. Red walks over to blue and removes his head. Red lines himself up with the bowling lane and uses blue’s head as a bowling ball. Red scores a strike and slips onto the lane after he celebrates. He slips down the lane and into the machine. The bowling pins reset and Red has been reformed into a pin, while disgruntled the crow mocks him.
The final episode will be based in space. Blue is staring out of the window of their rocket when Red signals him over to the other window. Once staring out of the other side, Red presses the eject button and send Blue flying out of the spacecraft. Red doesn’t realise the rocket is crashing into a nearby planet. The rocket crashes and red is stuck head first into a crater. This time the crow and a local alien mock Red in his situation.
In film, though more commonly found in television, comedy duos usually appear as two significant characters being the forefront of the comedy in the piece. Good examples of this usually are in the form of television shows or live acts. Famous examples are Laurel & Hardy, The Two Ronnies, Ant & Dec and so forth.
More often than not, the humour usually comes from the contrast between the characters, usually one is more foolish and bumbling where as the other is serious and is always in direct conflict because of the others actions. A good example is the famous Four Candles sketch by The Two Ronnies. In this sketch, the customer (Ronnie Barker) is reading his shopping list to the shopkeeper (Ronnie Corbett). However, the humour comes from the misinterpretation and annoyance from the shopkeeper as the items on the list aren’t clear as they sound just like another item through the customer’s accent and use of language. In this scene the shopkeeper is the more serious character, who is being affected by the fool, which in this case is the customer because of his incoherent shopping needs.
Most comedy duo acts follow the same idea of mismatched character humour, it often brings out more comedy within the responses of the more serious character. Another good example is Laurel & Hardy. These two are said to have been the founding figureheads for comedy duos and a lot of similar acts follow the same suit as the sketches the two feature from the 1920s and 1930s. Hardy is the more serious of the two and Laurel often inadvertently causes mischief for Hardy. Hardy usually reacts in an angry matter which again more situations arise.
Slapstick & Cartoon style
Slapstick comedy is a more visual based comedy through the use of comic violence, and actions that the characters make, just like the kind of visuals we see in Laurel and Hardy films which are themselves classed in this genre. An older form of the slapstick, violence based humour is Punch and Judy. Punch and Judy is a puppet show that performs shows from a booth that acts as a stage for the puppets (the puppeteer is in the booth also). These shows often do a pantomime-esque show that uses audience input though a lot of the humour behind the show revolves around the slapstick nature.
(Example of Punch an Judy show in Lincoln).
A lot of cartoons often adopt this type of humour for comedic sequences especially those with opposing characters such as (frequently mentioned in my blog) Tom & Jerry, Bugs Bunny, Sylvester and Tweety. Usually the violence that the antagonistic characters in these shows tend to fall back upon the antagonist, this is either due to the protagonist reacting or being blissfully unaware of the situation.This is a very staple practice for cartoons and is very easy to relate to for most audiences such as children and adults.
For my own duo of characters I want to use this style of mismatched characters to easily show the difference between the two characters. Drawing from more slapstick based comedy such as Laurel and Hardy as well as cartoon comedy styles. For my project I want to aim for more visual based humour, this means it is more understandable for numerous audiences as well as making the sketches a lot less complicated. For my project I will use the similar theme of having a more antagonistic character and a more bumbling character, however, within cartoons the common theme for the antagonist is that they never succeed. For my antagonist, they will always succeed. Although, they will always pay repercussions humorously afterwards when they do.
Skeletons in Cartoons
Funnybones (1992)
Funnybones was an animated children’s TV program that aired for one season in 1992. The show was based upon the books of the same name. The main characters are two skeletons who are brothers appropriately named “Big” and “Little” as well as their dog who is, again, appropriately named “Dog”. The episodes tend to revolve around problems that impact the characters, specifically Big and Little rather than Dog and their solutions to them. Often the problems are to do with the spooky theme that the characters entail such as other elements that can be associated with Halloween, this includes black cats, ghost trains etc. The pairing does however contain some elements of comedy duos with Little being the more serious and leading character whereas Big is shown to be more dimwitted. This is shown as Little has all of the ideas for the episodes and Big never comes up with solutions and only agrees with whatever plot Little makes, with his signature phrase “good idea” always following.
This show stylistically shows the skeleton’s in a world that matches the theme and all of the occurrences are very thematic. All of the extra characters and animals are skeletons and the environment that they live in is a “dark, dark town.” The show always opens and finishes with narration describing how the skeletons start and finish the episode. This is always narrated by the moon, offering a sort-of fourth wall break in the show as the moon is describing to the audience.
http://www.toonhound.com/funny.htm
Silly Symphonies – The Skeleton Dance (1929)
The Skeleton Dance is a 1929 short animation film by Walt Disney Studios. In this short, four skeletons simply come out of their tombs from a full moon and simply spend the night dancing with music until the night ends and they scurry to get back into their tombs before sunrise. Just like Funnybones this piece uses the themes that skeletons are associated with and uses these to push the narrative, such as graveyards, black cats, full moons etc.
This piece humanises the skeletons in a way that they are doing more fluid movements, less like the stick-like bone movements skeletons are perceived to have. (Perceive being a loose term since there aren’t proper movements for real skeletons). It also uses common imagery such as using one of the skeletons ribcages as a xylophone as the two look somewhat similar.
Both of these examples share the same characteristics from using common themes and techniques that people associate with skeletons, especially in comical animation. I mentioned the xylophone above for physical imagery, however, this same instrument is used I both examples for the movements, most notably the steps for the skeleton characters as if this is the common sound for the bones. This technique possibly counteracts a more grotesque sound of crunching or crackling that bones have and makes the characters seem lighter and more cartoon-esque. Differences mainly lie within the nature and designs of the characters. Design-wise the Funnybones’ have more basic shapes and less details towards the bodies whereas the Disney skeletons are more detailed and have less traditional shapes within the designs. A reason for this could purely be down to reputation as there is a lot more content for Funnybones though the dancing skeletons are only featured within this one short film. Another difference is within the personalities of the characters, the Funnybones have talking characters with their own developed personalities and features, although the dancing skeletons don’t speak and all have the same design. This again can be down to the nature of the pieces, one being a TV show (adapted from book) and one is a one-off short film.
For my own characters I think keeping themes that are associated will be a good idea to keep within my own sketches. Though, looking at breaking the norm and trying a different way of displaying skeletons within their own world would be an interesting idea to play around with.
Noodle arms & gloves… a staple in traditional animation.
Rubber hose animation
What I like to call ‘noodle arms and legs’ the rubber hose technique is a common practice that was used in traditional animation. This technique was used as a way to simplify the process of posing animated characters bodily features such as arms and legs without having to worry about sophisticated poses which knees and elbows caused for animators. This technique is said to be conceived by Bill Nolan with his animations of Felix the Cat in the 1920s.
One of the most iconic characters that was drawn with this style of animation was Olive Oyl.
The rubber hose technique often shows the over-stretching of limbs and showcases characters doing ridiculous poses due to the unnatural flexibility of their bodies. This gives a very comic look to the films and gives a lot more whacky characteristic to the characters.
This technique eventually was eventually faded out of use for cartoons due to the demand of more realistic, human-like movements that Walt Disney demanded for his own characters. due to this success other studios followed suit and the rubber hose style was left as it wasn’t realistic enough for the characters.
Gloves
Gloves are a very common theme for many cartoon characters throughout history. However, from a logical standpoint looking at a character, they don’t make sense. Why humanised mice, rabbits and dogs wear gloves is a very peculiar topic, though it isn’t actually to do with the character design, it is more to do with character limitation, though there is also a racist background behind this also.
This video essay explains that the main reason for the gloves for a lot of the characters is down to characters being black in colour and it being hard to differentiate between their hands and their bodies, especially in motion. In the book The Disney Version: The Life, Times, Art and Commerce of Walt Disney. Disney is quoted saying that;
“We didn’t want [Mickey] to have mouse hands, because he was supposed to be more human. So we gave him gloves. Five Fingers looked like too much on such a little figure, so we took one away. That was just one less finger to animate.”
Though this is a simple way of finding a solution to the problem with mixing hands with other body parts, the white gloves were significant for a another type of show of a similar era. Vaudeville shows in the 20s were shows that featured mixed forms of entertainment including comedy, music, magic etc. A comedy show that was a regular feature for the vaudeville lineup was minstrel shows. Minstrel shows were acts where caucasian men applied blackface and made fun of black stereotypes. This included being stupid, acting animalistic and sold the racist portrayals of blacks as the main punchline for their show. One of the main features of the characters was always white gloves, very similar to the ones Mickey Mouse wears. The gloves were often to show what they “minstrel” characters were doing with their hands and became very recognisable with the shows.
For the rubber hose technique, I’d like to include similar styles to the cartoons of old and have this kind comic style with my own animations. I feel this is a very good method and is very stylistic in choice. I think it would add a good level of detail to my work and help with the artistic style.
As for the gloves, I wanted to research into this as I figured hands would be a problem within my own work as they are very problematic features, especially as I don’t aim my characters to have line-work surrounding the body parts, splitting each limb apart. I think due to bad history behind the white gloves idea I will definitely avoid that technique. It is very easy to ignore the history and purely state the reasoning similar to the Mickey Mouse glove situation however, I do respect that the gloves are recognised with racist backgrounds and would rather not include them for ethical reasoning.
