3D Animation Tutorials in After Effects Are Lies!

Ok so for the past couple of days I’ve been searching the web for tutorials on how to animate in After Effects. I’m working on the second episode of my cartoon vlog for a character of mine and I grew envious of other people who has such amazing animations they did in After Effects. They looked awesome and it looked easier then just drawing everything out. So I went to look for some tutorials….you know what I found? SQUAT! Nothing!

The reason why I say that 3D animation tutorials in After Effects are lies is because every tutorial I found was either not the style I was looking for – which is ok, those tutorials aren’t what I’m talking about – or ones that are in the style but don’t explain anything! At least they don’t explain anything step by step. They just show you what they have and are like “yeah so…this it what it’s doing….yup.”

Which is helpful to a point but what I want is a step-by-step “how to do all this stuff that I just did” but no one did anything like that!  I wanted to know about parallax animation. I’m pretty new to After Effects so that’s why I wanted a step-by-step tutorial. I probably just didn’t search for the right thing but I never found any step-by-step tutorial which totally drove me nuts! I ended up having to figure things out myself which actually I’m very proud of! ^.^ But it’s still annoying that I couldn’t find the help I needed but that’s ok….

I think that once I get the hang of animating in the style I want and I”ll make my own tutorial. Another thing is that I wanted a specific tutorial for how to animate characters in this style which is all I’m really interested in right now. I guess I don’t really have the patience to search and watch/read all different types of tutorials to figure out this one thing I want to do.

I apologize if I sounded harsh at any point in my post but I just needed to rant haha plus I was pretty excited that I figured out about the 3D layer in After Effects xD Sorry if I seem slow – I’m still really new to After Effects! haha

Here’s a video that I’m looking at that is some what helpful and a great inspiration for me! This guy is an amazing animator! =D

Pencil Drawing and Shading at Work

So the other day I made a post about different shading techniques and tools for shading. Also I wrote a post on graphite pencils, which you can find here if you missed it.

I love drawing and I love Assassin’s Creed! Soooooooo I decided to draw Altair form the first Assassin’s Creed. So I put my love or drawing and Assassin’s Creed and put it with the two previous posts I wrote and made it into a video! It’s not a tutorial on how to use the pencils or shading techniques and tools  - that sort of thing you just have to understand what each can do and then practice with them to learn how to use them. If they’re really hard for anyone to understand, I’d be more then happy to make a video on how I use them in order to help anyone better understand how to use the graphite pencils and shading tools and about the shading techniques.

It might be a good idea to find a picture with high contrast – where it has a lot of dark areas and then a lot of light areas – to practice with. The image of Altair I drew was this one

(I added in the Assassin’s Creed hehe) I know his blade is suppose to be on his left hand but I liked this image and the fact that it was suppose to be on his left arm totally flew from my mind before I started to draw! haha But nonetheless, it’s a good image and I enjoyed drawing it.

Here’s the final image:

What do you think? Good? Bad? Let me know! =) Here’s the video process for it – there’s a cute surprise in it! ^.^

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From Photo to Cartoon!

So lately I’ve been doing a lot of work turning people’s portraits into cartoons on Fiverr.com and since a lot of people have been asking me to examples of my work and wanting the actual photo and then the cartoon version, I thought I’d make a post so people can see the before and after pictures look like. Enjoy! =)

Yes, some people send me cartoons to make them into cartoons…… lol people just seem to really like my style. =) And I enjoy doing this but the amount of time I put into these images aren’t worth $5 to me anymore, I’m sorry to say. So now I moved this gig from Fiverr to TenBux. If you’re interested in a cartoon, you can place your order here.

Shading and Blending Techniques

So one of the hardest but important aspects of drawing is shading. It took me a while to understand how lighting works and where to shade.  There are different types of shading and different ways to blend your colors.

Shading Types:

Tonal shading is where you have different levels of light and dark. The darker areas are where the light hits the object the least and the lighter areas would be where the light would his the object more.

Scumble shading is like a basic sketch for shading. You just put a light coat of whatever material you’re using to shade with.

Smudge shading is, well, where you smudge your shading to blend it together. I’ll go more into this one and different tools to smudge and blend with later in this post.

Hatching is where you draw strokes in one direction. The more lines you put, the darker the area will be. This is like tonal shading in a sense you put in lighter areas and darker areas. The way you make the areas darker is by putting more lines and the lighter ares have fewer lines.

Cross hatching is a lot like hatching expect you have lines going in two directions instead of just one. This is the technique most comic book artists use. I love this method of shading but for some reason I can’t really seem to get it. haha

Accent lines are used to do basic shading also.

Tools of the Trade:

Here are some things I’ve used to smudge and blend my lines together. Each has a different effect and you use them depending on what kind of look you want to go for.

Tortillions are tools used by artists to smudge and blend. They’re basically rolled up pieces of paper and you use the tip to smudge with but I tried making my own and it’s just not the same as using store bought! haha you can try rolling up a piece of paper and using it as a tortillion but it doesn’t work for me personally haha They come in different sizes. They’re not really use to blend out into large areas but for smaller areas or if you just want to soften some lines. You can get a lot of good detail work done with the fine point tortillions. They blend smoothly but you can also get some harder lines out of them if you know how to use them.
You can use Q tips to blend as well. This will get you a very smooth service, not very ideal if you want to have texture. I wouldn’t use a Q tip to blend skin tone.

Kleenex tissues are really good to get smooth services too but these I would use to more broader areas and not so much detailed work.

The easiest and cheapest way to blend is to use your finger! Your finger won’t get you very smooth blending because fingers have lines on them haha but they’re good if you don’t mind getting messy and want some texture in your work.

I’ve also heard people using paint brushes for blending but I haven’t personally used this technique  but I imagine you can get a wide range of smooth and rough textures depending on the type of brush you use. =) I’ll try this out sometime and let you know how it goes haha

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Copic Markers

Today I found out about a new tool for designing. Copic Markers  allow you to make drawings that look like digital art! I watched some video on youtube of people drawing with copic markers and their drawings really looked like the coloring (and inking) was done in photoshop or something!

What are Copic Markers? Well they are alcohol based markers that don’t ruin your paper, as many markers tend to do. They come is 4 different types: Original, Sketch, Ciao, and Wide.

All of the different types come with two ends except for the Wide and they all come in a load of colors! The Original, Sketch, and Ciao come in over a hundred colors and the Wide comes in about 30. They are also refillable and recyclable. Who doesn’t like environmental friendly tools? lol

These markers look amazing! I haven’t used them but I really want them! They look fun to use and they make normal paper drawings look like they’ve been digitally colored! Check out this video I watched of someone drawing and using these markers. It’s amazing!

Artists on Youtube really don’t get that much exposure and they really should!  But anyway….this video is amazing and it wonderfully demonstrates what I mean about how they make drawings look very well colored and blended – almost like how they would look if they were done in Photoshop.

The only thing about copic markers that really suck is that they are kind of expensive. I looked on the AC Moore website and they sell for about $7 per marker! =/ I just wanted a small set of starter markers but the smallest one was about $40. I’d love to get it but I can’t afford it right now haha but maybe Micheals or other arts and crafts stores might sell them for cheaper. Here’s hoping! haha If all else fails – there’s always ebay! lol

You can watch this video on what Copic Markers are . =)

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After Effects video

So after a couple of weeks of filming, editing, and fight with my computer, I finally finished my video! I’ve been playing in after effects and I had two effects in my video that was a lot of fun to do. One of which I had to find out on my own.

The cloning effect in my video was done by a method I didn’t find online. I saw many tutorial online that said to use the rectangular tool, for those of you who know After Effects and it’s tools, but instead I used the eraser tool! My lighting in my clips wasn’t consistent even though I tried and made sure that nothing changed so I can do the clone effect flawlessly, my shadow in one clip ended up in the other video so there was this ugly line and it didn’t make it look like smooth blending,

BUT the eraser tool made the two clips fade together and it turned out awesome! So to see this method in action, check out my video. =)

By the way, the opening animation was done in Photoshop and Flash – I haven’t figured out how to make super cool intros in After Effects yet haha!