5
LECTURE NOTES
How are you doing so far? I hope that you are getting used to the process and thinking up ways to combine the media and reasons why you should. Once you have everything broken down into the basic patterns of problems—2D leads, 3D leads, using
Bouncing 2D/3D balls, by Jessica Toedt, 2009, SCAD, 2D/3D Compositing course.
© 2010 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. DOI: 10.1016/B978-0-240-81205-2.00005-4
cameras and textures to flatten 3D or using tones and shadows to round 2D (we’ll cover that soon), rendering in layers, composit- ing, and using masks—then it’s just a matter of finding the best ways to achieve your look with whatever techniques you need.
By now you have probably lost a little fear and do not believe that you need to stay in one package for your scenes; heavens, no. By now, you should be thinking in layers of images. You should be thinking that the output of any given software package is just an image and that your character is made up of multiple passes of images. Good, you have come far.
Often in class (or even the industry) I see those who become mesmerized with the 3D package. They get stuck in that 3D Car- tesian world and think that everything has to be done there. Stu- dents get stuck into thinking that they need to render the whole frame in one go and overlook the concept of breaking things into levels. Breaking things into levels allows animators to use mattes in a compositing package to adjust colors and to isolate elements into levels so that if something needs to be tweaked or adjusted, they do not have to re-render the whole frame, just the one level. Ah, the time savings that process gives; it makes me happy.
The same thing goes for our characters, as we have found. They do not have to be stuck in one medium or software package. For many reasons, we have discovered you might want to use 3D to help along your 2D animation, whether it be to reduce line mileage or help with perspective and complexity of the character. We have focused on why one would use 3D. But why would one use 2D? Can’t everything be done in 3D nowadays? If I were in a class- room, in front of you, I would have a perplexed look on my face and would be trying hard not to let my sarcasm show. Yes, many things can be done in 3D. But should they be?
In my classrooms, the students have to produce a senior film (with a passing grade) or they do not graduate. I’m sure this is the case in many campuses: the films tend to be mono media. It is a monochromatic sea of 3D-ishness, and it all looks the same. Of course, if it were all 2D films it might look the same too because of similar animation style emulation in the curriculum. However, more than likely, it will not all be similar simply because of the different artists’ hands. I am generalizing, of course. The 3D work doesn’t all look exactly the same, but there is a trap that young artists can fall into. When they create something using the 3D tools, the same 3D tools that the next 500 artists are using, they become satisfied with what they see on screen and think that it is the vision they were after, when in actuality, it is the easiest thing that the tool has offered them and the other 500 to 1000 artists. Only the few, who know what their artistic vision is and push to make the software do their biddings, produce images that are not in that monochromic 3D sea. Because the tools produce some-
thing that can be labeled as the 3D package programmers’ artistic vision, those without their own clear artistic vision settle for the programmers’ vision. Even if you do not use 2D/3D in your inde- pendent films, at least, push beyond the programmers’ artistic vision. I will put away my soapbox.
On our campus, only in the past few years after introducing this 2D/3D class, I have seen the nonmono films created. It is nice to see this transition. I hope that we will see more. I’m counting on you to try things and post it on the website at www. hybridanimation.com (I have a quota for how many times I have to remind you about the URL.) We must break free from the monochromatic sea. How did I get back up on this soapbox?
We have done a 2D character with 3D parts, where the 2D char- acter leads. Now we will turn our attention to a 3D character with 2D parts, where the 3D character leads. The question to ask then is, why use 2D parts?
Why indeed should we use 2D? With enough time for research and development, nearly anything can be done in 3D that can be done in 2D. Back in Chapter 1, we discussed that no longer is it the subject matter that decides. Human characters do not have to be done in 2D, because they can be accomplished in 3D. Fuzzy characters do not have to be done in 2D. 3D has come a long way. So it isn’t exactly the subject matter that decides the medium. What was that? The student in the back row, you had an answer? Yes. You are correct. The look, supporting the artistic vision, is a great reason to choose 2D over 3D. You have been listening. Very good. This is my point: once the student or young filmmaker gets beyond the thought process that the programmer’s artistic vision is a good one, simply because it is easier to push a button, then that filmmaker can grow into seeing which method will best support his or her own personal artistic vision.
Then you can start to see that sometimes 2D can be the answer. We’ll look at some industry and student examples further on in this chapter. First, let’s categorize some reasons you might decide to use 2D over 3D.
line look
What if you truly needed to have a certain style of line that cur- rently can’t be replicated with 3D toon lines? Perhaps you need a lovely cleanup thick and thin line. Perhaps you want a scratchy hand-painted line? Possibly you could create it with 3D, but that brings us to the next reason. Read on.
time
Sometimes it takes less time to draw it than it does to do all of the research and development to figure out how to do a given
thing in 3D. We’ll examine the element of time in the industry examples section.