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.

Okay I’ve been into UE4 for some time.  I wanted to share with you this really awesome video showing you step by step how to animate a scene.

While UE4 is for making games its built in Sequencer could be used to Render and create great looking animations for you.  I’ve spoke about this in the past but here is a more in depth tutorial.

If you want to make something that resembles GANTZ  I could see combining UE4 for rendering with DAZ and Poser for animation and characters.

https://youtu.be/FUc49HYJeL0

Also a really interesting idea is to make a 3d VR anime film.   That would be awesome.

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.

I’ve been also keeping up with this guys tutorials.    I’m always looking for easier and faster ways to animate an entire film.  This guy has it right.

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.

 

I eat up everything I can to learn from the masters.  Just watching how they work can give you so many clues into how things work and how you can put it into action.

Here is one or a few of my favorite Behind the scenes looks at the making of anime.

 

 

So when working on my upcoming secret projects I have been looking for several different pipelines that would lend to the speed and quality of my animation.    I have worked on 2 different pipelines for both my manga and my Cinematic comics.

I am using UE4.  If you have seen some of the quality coming out of it and others it seems pretty fit to tell a good story with good visuals and add to the SPEED of creating good looking art.

Paragon was a recent game featured on Unreal Engines Youtube page and they shared their animation techniques.

So here is a pipeline you can possibly use.

Daz for characters > Iclone for animation and scene setup>Export to Ue4 for realtime render.

Or you can have someone model your characters and have it rigged for DAZ and Iclone to export into Ue4, Unity or Cry Engine.

Right now Ue4 is best for me due to the upgrade in their cinematic program, Sequencer.

 

 

I have been following Milton for years.  I love his style.  It has a Disney meets Anime look to it.  Milton has recently been featured on various websites with his newest animation She Thor vs Hulk Zombie.   I posted it above.    He posted a nice commentary and breakdown of what he does.

 

I hope this gives you ideas on putting things together.