So I posted about this animation yesterday.   I thought it was pretty cool to see someone create an entire movie all by themselves.

So if you want to create your own animation/anime/manga you can.   Here are some of the questions I asked and some of the answers I got from the creator.

1. How did you make this so quickly by yourself? 18 months felt like a really long time for me to make this.

2. Was it self financed or is someone sponsoring you? It was self financed but it was only to pay my personal bills while I was making it. So about $15k total.

3. What do you think about perfectionism while creating? Are you a perfectionist? Or do you think that would hurt productivity? Do you just move on? I mean a see a lot of great shorts which usually take folks about the same amount of time you took to make an entire movie. Perfectionism definitely hurts productivity, sometimes I would get lost in the details while texturing the characters in Mari, or when creating the blendshapes in Maya.

4. Where can I see Kaptara and Chance? Chance had me in my seat. No one has ever created this theme before in animation. Very unique. Kaptara is up on Google Play store, ITunes, XBox, etc, don’t think its hard to find.

5. What is your day job if you don’t mind me asking or is making movies it? Right now I am the Animation Director at Arconyx.

6. Do you have any making of? this is the only known compilation of my behind the scenes work on Battle Oasis.
https://vimeo.com/101570429

7. What did you start with? Do you have several shorts before attempting making a movie? I started this process about 12 years ago, learning each aspect of 3d just enough to be able to create what looked like a shot in a movie, then you just have to duplicate that work 1000 times, (1000 shots in a film about).

8. What advice would you give CG artists about making their own movie? My advice for making your own movies, is only learn the basic fundamentals of each stage, just enough to get the job done. Don’t over complicate things like, rigging, or rendering, just go with basics then try to make the lighting look unique.

9. I’ve commented alot about the cost of making animated films. I don’t think it should cost as much as it does 250 Million for Tangled. Folks told me to basically shut up and I don’t know what I”m talking about but for someone who has made 3 films themselves what do you think about the inflated budgets and what could you do with 40 Million dollars for a movie? You think you could reach Tangled quality? What if you had a 2 million dollar budget like they do on Asylum films?  It’s definitely possible to make animated films a $100k budget, its just if you have a small team, no one wants to work for free, especially in this industry.

I really enjoyed watching this film.   I like that this artist Mike Johnson was able to create an entire movie all on his own.  Personally I’ve seen a lot of haters in the CG World basically telling folks making a movie can’t be done, you need 100 Million dollars and utterly hating the quality of a film when it doesn’t look like Pixar.

That is really sad to think.   The fact is it can be done.  Someone proved it can be done.   It didn’t take even 1 million dollars to make and it does not need to be Pixar quality.    We would all like Pixar quality but at this time it is not possible for a one man team but most audiences really don’t care.   I’m sure most people would love to drive a Bentley, Porshe or Lambo but that doesn’t mean we don’t buy a car because we can’t have those.   We buy the Toyotas, Hondas, Kias and Fords.   They have nice cars even though they are not as fast or fancy.

Your audience is the same.   You can still make a good looking CG film.  Yes it may be lower quality but it does not mean that audiences will not like it.

There are 100s of stick animations out there that have Millions of views and people like them just as much as they would a Pixar movie.

So never let anyone tell you that you cannot make a movie especially if it will not look like Pixar.

Eventually technology will catch up and a one man person will be able to make a Toy Story movie but it will be the people who start now that will be there when it happens.

Yes you can make your own ANIME!   I hope this site inspires and helps you.

Here is a video breaking down a rig for Puppet Animation.  Personally I’m okay with it if it is creative and good.  I guess because I come from the old flash days when you had to do things differently because there was no streaming at the time.  Tween animation helped keep file sizes down.    Because of this I’m okay with this type of animation if done correctly.

Here is a tutorial breaking down a rig.

Here are examples of good old fashioned tweening.  Funny thing is this has become really popular over the years even in mainstream work.

Here is an artist showing us how to use Sequencer to make cinematics.  First let us show you the level of work you can do in UE4

 

Here is the making of this awesome looking cinematic and here are some videos that can show you how to do it yourself.

Here is the making of…

I hope you can see the possibilities.  This animation was done in real time/live.   They used characters and motion capture.

Motion capture is getting a lot cheaper.  .  I showed a video in the posts that shows just how much cheaper they are getting.  So the question is can you combine Cheap motion capture, with say Poser, Iclone or Daz characters?

http://kadaj777.deviantart.com/

Imagine using something like the characters below.  Popping some mocap ln there and using Ue4 for the render?

jia_by_kadaj777-da94u80 aiko3d

I was looking for videos about how to make anime and came across this.

 

Here is the making of video

Now I know what you are thinking.   What can I learn from this?  Actually you can learn 3 important things.

1. You want to make money out of your anime you have to reach an audience.   Or if you simply want as many people to enjoy it you must find an audience.   Notice how may hits this guy has. It is in Spanish.  There are tons of fans in the world who love, love, love anime.  Why not create something specific for some group especially if you are part of said group.  Like this guy.

2. Get out and film live action shots and learn how to piece things together without having first sit down and animate.  It will greatly increase your skills and who says your story has to be animated?

3. If you want it animated then try this…..film it in real life, then animate on top of it.

 

Now I wanted to touch one this subject because some people have a bad view of Poser in the art community.  They think that you MUST do everything yourself.  But what does that get them.  At most it is a nice looking short but never anything epic or long lasting.

Some of you have asked me about that fact.  You are trying to tell your story but then some in the CG community tell you not to use Poser.  But truth is Poser can help you get up to speed much faster and tell stories.

If you push the tool that Poser is you can create wonderful artwork to tell your story.

Poser1

One of my favorite comics ever was created by Brian Haberlin.  He uses Poser to help him make one of the largest graphic novels in the world with cool augmented reality.  If you have checked out his novels please do for an inspirational aspect into what can be done with Poser as a tool but also as good awesome fun.  I loved Anomaly.  Oh and by the way, this guy has TV and movie deals.  So you tell me it is not a legit tool to create great imagery and tell stories.  In the end don’t let anyone discouarage you.  There are some elitist out there but they are purist.  They care about what program was used and at the end of the day it is just foolish.

End result is all that matters.

anomaly

poseraomaly

Poseranomaly

 

I have talked to several people about making their own animated series and telling their own stories.

There are many people with large ideas on what they want to create but sometimes they are limited in what they can do in way of TALENT.   Some folks no matter how hard they try will never really ever be able to draw, 3d model, etc.  But that doesn’t mean you cannot tell stories.

I remember in 1998 when I first saw Poser.  I believe it was Poser 2.0.  It had some ugly looking models and such but at that moment I could see the potential.   It made my imagination fly.  At the time I couldn’t model.  It was out of my skill set.  Poser at the time was very limited but then came Poser 4.0.  From that point on I was totally hooked.  I think I’ve bought every Poser version that came out since except 11 at this point.  I really want 11.

But starting from 4.0 it allowed me to start making all kinds of animations, very quickly.

I wish I had all my animations but here are some animations I did with Poser 4.

I know not the best but those were my first attempts.

Here is a link to some more work.  No just remember there was no streaming back then so I had to build it more on being able to get it small enough to be online.

http://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/146408

Now I know those are quite crude but it was years ago.

The reason I write this article is I know there are tons of storytellers out there who want to tell a story.  I’m sure you would love to have artists help you create all these cool worlds.  But the truth is they won’t.   It is a lot of work and you could go on for decades looking to create a team of skilled folks who you will work together with to make a cool project and usually only then it is a short or some fan film.

No you want to tell stories and so do I.  The truth is Poser made me understand and see that I could do it on my own if no one else would help me.

Combined with ZBrush and other methods Poser is a very powerful tool that could help you bring your stuff to life especially if you apply a little imagination and ingenuity.

Now there are other folks in on the game as well including MakeHuman, Daz3d and Iclone.

 

Categories: Masters of Anime Tools Tags:
September 24, 2016 by admin