Industry Elites Added As Judges for Webcomic Contest

[AutoDMC]

Well, titankore, I'll take that as an invitation to say Hello, as I'd been simply lurking to keep up with stuff. An artist friend of mine and I collaborated on a couple of pages for another one-page-a-week-ish webcomic I run, and we'd been looking for a good excuse to work on a new project together, which lead up to our entry in this contest.

For those interested, the previous collab (which is completely unrelated to our entry) looked like this:

http://i42.photobucket.com/albums/e330/autodmc/01-23.jpg
http://i42.photobucket.com/albums/e330/autodmc/01-24.jpg

(The comic follows a couple of NPCs who own a mart in a fake Pokemon game region; these pages were simply a joke comparing the "guest" artist with the standard pixel art for the rest of the pages.)

So good luck to everyone! Can't wait to see how it turns out... and to eventually see everyone's entries either by judicial fiat or spontaneous sharing after the fact.

Said hello... check. Told everyone that I work on a personal art project... check. Shared sample art... check. Wished everyone luck... check. Anything missing?

Such a slow crawl to March 8,wish they post the submissions,most everyone here are getting antsy paranoid speculating on Judge's taste and formulas for the best webcomic.I hope the Escapist staff are enjoying our torture.

Technically, the rules state the week of March 8, which runs all the way to the 13th... or 14th for those cultures who start their calendar weeks on Monday.

Increased forum angst... check.

 

[Secret Idenity Man]

I think the most ironic thing is that now the contest is over the traffic on here has doubled at least. I guess it's better than say, biting off your fingers because you run out of nail or running through a small town on fire due to a drug induced state of invincibility.

 

[Satoshii]

Eh, people work at different paces. The comics I draw are pretty art-heavy, but that's how I work. Back in my OCT days I did something in the neighbourhood of 107 pages in eight months on top of school and a job, and the last place I worked had quotas of 15 seconds of traditional animation per person per day. Keeping on task is the biggest part of the battle and all that.

No way that's true. Even on 4s that's about what, 90 frames a day. Even if the art was super sloppy (and if it was done on flash), I still can't see that happening. Most pros only manage 1 second on 1s (24 frames per day) if that.

 

[Coelasquid]

No way that's true. Even on 4s that's about what, 90 frames a day. Even if the art was super sloppy (and if it was done on flash), I still can't see that happening. Most pros only manage 1 second on 1s (24 frames per day) if that.

We had to do an episode a week for the month of January with about a 50 person crew. It was traditional-in-flash so the pipeline was broken up into layout, key animation, and inbetweens/lip sync. The layout artists take the storyboards and draw the characters on model in the poses that had to be hit, then the inbetween people take the heads and work out the lip sync. The key animators get the next crack at it and do all the finesse bits and the timing charts, shrugs, blinks, follow through, all that kind of stuff. Then the inbetween animators get it again and fill in the blanks.

Animation plays at 24 frames per second, but you don't actually do 24 drawings. We were working on twos like you do with most American animation. You only draw on ones if it's an absolute necessity, like when a character is moving so quickly that it looks like it's popping around the screen, or the background is panning while the character is moving on top of it. The only person who's ever attempted to make a feature film with the full 24 drawings per second was Richard Williams with the Thief and the Cobbler, and that was in production for decades before the producers finally cut the purse strings, took the project away from him, and tried to salvage something profitable out of it.

Also, remember that characters don't move all the time. Especially in dialogue-heavy animation, a character will hit a pose, say their piece, hit another pose, etc. So say in a seven second scene you have three poses, with three or four inbetweens leading into each pose, that's half your quota in like 12 drawings. It wasn't a huge deal if you didn't hit your daily quota, some days you'd have a scene full of characters running around and you'd only get a couple seconds done, other days you'd get a bunch of talking heads and manage like half a minute. Usually it worked out on average at the end of the week.

 

[Axzarious]

Bah, what the heck. Heres a rough of something I though of after I already made my entry. dont know if its funny or not, but its what my sleep deprived mind conjured. My stuff always seems funny till I actually draw it.

http://i253.photobucket.com/albums/hh65/Axzarious/comic001.jpg

 

[Phillip C]

Bah, what the heck. Heres a rough of something I though of after I already made my entry. dont know if its funny or not, but its what my sleep deprived mind conjured. My stuff always seems funny till I actually draw it.

http://i253.photobucket.com/albums/hh65/Axzarious/comic001.jpg

GALACTUS HUNGERS!!

 

[Satoshii]

No way that's true. Even on 4s that's about what, 90 frames a day. Even if the art was super sloppy (and if it was done on flash), I still can't see that happening. Most pros only manage 1 second on 1s (24 frames per day) if that.

We had to do an episode a week for the month of January with about a 50 person crew. It was traditional-in-flash so the pipeline was broken up into layout, key animation, and inbetweens/lip sync. The layout artists take the storyboards and draw the characters on model in the poses that had to be hit, then the inbetween people take the heads and work out the lip sync. The key animators get the next crack at it and do all the finesse bits and the timing charts, shrugs, blinks, follow through, all that kind of stuff. Then the inbetween animators get it again and fill in the blanks.

Animation plays at 24 frames per second, but you don't actually do 24 drawings. Most American animation is done on "twos", which means you only draw things on half of those frames. Anime usually works on threes, with new drawings on eight of the 24 frames. You only draw on ones if it's an absolute necessity, like when a character is moving so quickly that it looks like it's popping around the screen, or the background is panning while the character is moving on top of it. The only person who's ever attempted to make a feature film with the full 24 drawings per second was Richard Williams with the Thief and the Cobbler, and that was in production for decades before the producers finally cut the purse strings, took the project away from him, and tried to salvage something profitable out of it.

Also, remember that characters don't move all the time. Especially in dialogue-heavy animation, a character will hit a pose, say their piece, hit another pose, etc. So say in a seven second scene you have three poses, with three or four inbetweens leading into each pose, that's half your quota in like 12 drawings. It wasn't a huge deal if you didn't hit your daily quota, some days you'd have a scene full of characters running around and you'd only get a couple seconds done, other days you'd get a bunch of talking heads and manage like half a minute. Usually it worked out on average at the end of the week.

Ah, see that isn't 15 seconds per person per day. That's 15 seconds per day for a whole team of animators. Not what you said.

Also I majored in 2D animation, so i'm aware of how animation works. I don't think Dick Williams is the only person to do a movie in all 1s mind you (although granted he may have done the parts he finished for The Thief in 1s, I don't know).

On the plus side it seems you've got some experience in the industry. How was it? I looked at going into animation, but after doing just degree level animation (which killed me, lol), I couldn't be bothered. Just private commissions for me at this time.

(And yuck to Flash, haha, not a fan myself. ^_^ )

 

[Mr.Squishy]

Hm...writer here if anyone needs one. Not intending to have a on-going story, but it could happen *shrug*. Hope that made sense..

 

[Coelasquid]

Ah, see that isn't 15 seconds per person per day. That's 15 seconds per day for a whole team of animators. Not what you said.

Also I majored in 2D animation, so i'm aware of how animation works. I don't think Dick Williams is the only person to do a movie in all 1s mind you (although granted he may have done the parts he finished for The Thief in 1s, I don't know).

On the plus side it seems you've got some experience in the industry. How was it? I looked at going into animation, but after doing just degree level animation (which killed me, lol), I couldn't be bothered. Just private commissions for me at this time.

(And yuck to Flash, haha, not a fan myself. ^_^ )

Each individual's quota was 15 seconds of whatever their job was (except layout, their quota was based on number of poses). Granted I haven't had many industry jobs, but as far as I know it's a common practice to have different key and inbetween animators. 15 seconds of keys for a series or 15 seconds of inbetweens is still 15 seconds of drawings, and it's still a big number to shoot for. I was in the studio 29 straight days in January, and almost everyone working there was putting in at least six day weeks.

Other people have used animation on ones in movies, but it's more or less unheard of to use it for the whole production. Like I said, it's mostly for fast action and camera moves. That's one of the reasons Roger Rabbit was the landmark that it is, it's such a herculean effort to get everything to match up on the right frame count that people thought it wasn't possible to do a movie with live action and animation interacting outside of fixed cameras. Richard Williams' intent with Thief and the Cobbler was that it all be on ones, and what he did of it before the project was taken away was. The version that they put out in cereal boxes was finished on twos, and some scenes had every other frame removed for the sake of making the style more consistent. I've never heard of any other studio trying something like that. Maybe some indie guys out there, but I'm not sure where they'd be getting the money from.

I guess as far as doing it for a living, it's an acquired taste. Personally, I love it. I got to do my thesis for a legit bachelor of arts about Barbarians and zombies, and then I went from that to a job where I drew beefcake demons and warlocks and more zombies all day. To me, animation is being able to make anything you want do anything you want. Plus, bringing zombies to life all day like that makes me feel justified telling people I'm a professional necromancer.

Having done traditional the old fashioned way with a stack of paper and a light table, and in flash, I can honestly say I prefer flash for the style of stuff I do. It does some finnicky things I don't like, but once you get the hang of it it's pretty efficient. And you can more or less forgo cleanup and scanning (I work pretty clean so I usually go straight to final lines without roughing things out). No stacks of paper all over the place, you can check your progress as you go without line testing everything. It's chok full of bugs, no doubt about that but comparing it to say... Digicel Flipbook it gets the job done. I hear Toon Boom is pretty good, but I don't have much experience with that.

http://i6.photobucket.com/albums/y202/Squids/glassjoe.gif Have some totally unfinished glass Joe stealing precious artifacts. I did it before I really knew how the program worked at all so it's not a great testament to what you can do with Flash.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bDc-iJRpNTQ I did this Bison for a friend to code in MUGEN with flash and an afternoon of dicking around too, he's kinda fun.

Lip syncing Ganondorf to Sean Connery quotes at the moment, it's the first thing I've done since my contract ended, so it's got a little more polish to it.

 

[Satoshii]

Having done traditional the old fashioned way with a stack of paper and a light table, and in flash, I can honestly say I prefer flash for the style of stuff I do. It does some finnicky things I don't like, but once you get the hang of it it's pretty efficient. And you can more or less forgo cleanup and scanning (I work pretty clean so I usually go straight to final lines without roughing things out). No stacks of paper all over the place, you can check your progress as you go without line testing everything. It's chok full of bugs, no doubt about that but comparing it to say... Digicel Flipbook it gets the job done. I hear Toon Boom is pretty good, but I don't have much experience with that.

http://i6.photobucket.com/albums/y202/Squids/glassjoe.gif Have some totally unfinished glass Joe stealing precious artifacts. I did it before I really knew how the program worked at all so it's not a great testament to what you can do with Flash.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bDc-iJRpNTQ I did this Bison for a friend to code in MUGEN with flash and an afternoon of dicking around too, he's kinda fun.

Lip syncing Ganondorf to Sean Connery quotes at the moment, it's the first thing I've done since my contract ended, so it's got a little more polish to it.

I know what you mean about doing stuff on paper, just the effort of scanning, cleaning and editing for colour is a nightmare. I do my stuff directly into photoshop working with layers and a Wacom intuos 4 (a4), then I stick things into Adobe premiere. I haven't used other programs like Toonboom much, I got the chance at uni but I prefer my own ways, haha. Flash is good and works well for other people, but just not me, lol.

The Bison one made me laugh, haha. But I like the animation on the pencil test, nice creep. You seem pretty good with showing weight. Hair could do with some follow through but I suppose it's a pencil test so no big.

And yeah, doing things on ones would kill me if I had to do even a short on my own. Not only the amount of extra work, but also the you have to step up your game and increase the quality and the detail of the animation to make it worth it.

 

[Coelasquid]

The Bison one made me laugh, haha. But I like the animation on the pencil test, nice creep. You seem pretty good with showing weight. Hair could do with some follow through but I suppose it's a pencil test so no big.

Yeah, the hair there isn't done at all. I roughed the character in as a mannequin and didn't decide to make it Joe until the last minute, so it was all a HAIR GOES HERE suggestion to hold the place until I had the timing and all that how I wanted.

 

[boybokeh]

I hear Toon Boom is pretty good, but I don't have much experience with that.

You should give ToonBoom a try if you like working with Flash, since they're very compatible. (I even remember an older version of ToonBoom feeling like a Flash hack designed for animation of the more traditional variety.) It's pretty handy. That said, some of the features are a bit redundant to me in the sense that I like to move all my assets out to After Effects and work with them there to complete my final product, so there's some overlap (e.g. having the 3d camera in ToonBoom is useful, but that's the kind of thing I'd do in AE).

Sadly, my computer is dying, so I rarely start anything as CPU-intensive as AfterEffects, hence no animation experiments for me anymore

Don't get me wrong, I'm sure you workflow is wonderful and probably works great for you. Just spreading some ToonBoom love up in here

 

[Coelasquid]

You should give ToonBoom a try if you like working with Flash, since they're very compatible. (I even remember an older version of ToonBoom feeling like a Flash hack designed for animation of the more traditional variety.) It's pretty handy. That said, some of the features are a bit redundant to me in the sense that I like to move all my assets out to After Effects and work with them there to complete my final product, so there's some overlap (e.g. having the 3d camera in ToonBoom is useful, but that's the kind of thing I'd do in AE).

Sadly, my computer is dying, so I rarely start anything as CPU-intensive as AfterEffects, hence no animation experiments for me anymore

Don't get me wrong, I'm sure you workflow is wonderful and probably works great for you. Just spreading some ToonBoom love up in here

I've played with it before. It was what they used at the first studio I worked at, but I was a layout/design person there so I was working with pencils and paper. I got a crash course in it, I just haven't invested in a copy of it for myself because I familiar with the flash interface so I work faster with that for personal projects.

 

[toadking07]

Such a slow crawl to March 8,wish they post the submissions,most everyone here are getting antsy paranoid speculating on Judge's taste and formulas for the best webcomic.I hope the Escapist staff are enjoying our torture.

You know they are. Chances are they peek in on this thread from time to time and laugh at our constant speculation.

Yep, in between pouring over our submissions they probably just watch us squirm and writhe as we wait here, speculating. I mean, what's the last rumor I say on this? That they might pick someone because of comments and web presents? :/ I doubt they're looking at anything besides our submissions.

 

[titankore]

I think the only time they will take a comment seriously is if you say something so offensive that the ban hammer nails you. Other then that it probably just amuses them in between judging sessions.

 

[LACKT]

Such a slow crawl to March 8,wish they post the submissions,most everyone here are getting antsy paranoid speculating on Judge's taste and formulas for the best webcomic.I hope the Escapist staff are enjoying our torture.

You know they are. Chances are they peek in on this thread from time to time and laugh at our constant speculation.

Yep, in between pouring over our submissions they probably just watch us squirm and writhe as we wait here, speculating. I mean, what's the last rumor I say on this? That they might pick someone because of comments and web presents? :/ I doubt they're looking at anything besides our submissions.

The forum is just to see what interest their contest has garnered,only to find the contestants using it as a place for weeping and gnashing of teeth...pure entertainment!

 

[The_root_of_all_evil]

I hope we get to see all the comics.

 

[Comradeyak]

With the very volume of this thread of I very curious about how many entries there are after all.

I'm wondering that myself too. Have all the people that entered actually posted here saying they did or did they enter and just wait for the results.

 

[Dizko]

With the very volume of this thread of I very curious about how many entries there are after all.

I'm wondering that myself too. Have all the people that entered actually posted here saying they did or did they enter and just wait for the results.

I entered =)

 

[titankore]

Yay I just figured out how to post images, sorry its a little big I'll shrink it down next time.
I have some new pics uploaded to this site as well.
http://titankore.newgrounds.com/