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Learning Blender 3D’s Grease Pencil – Day 1 & 2

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After much temptation I have now finally started my attempts to try to learn Grease Pencil in Blender 3D. I have dabbled for a while with Blender in general. Doing some abstract models and animations. But now is the time for me to jump in to do what I have spent most of my hobbies doing. 2D animation.

This will be an intermittent series of posts where I simply document what I am doing in Grease Pencil. Following various tutorials and trying to find ways to learn this thingamajigg enough to be able to call myself proficient in it.

Day 1 consisted of just getting a hang of the interface. How to draw simple lines. How to make the keyframes play in the order I want. And what better way to do that than to bring out ye olde bouncing ball. When all else fails. One never can go wrong with the bouncy ball.

Day 2 is today and I went ahead doing some more bouncy balls.

But balls are fun and all,, though I wanted to try out colors. So instead of a bouncy ball, here’s a blinking ducky… thing…

Ok… I realize now that exporting these as videos might not be that great of an idea as I they are very short loops. But with that ducky thingy I did find a rather nice workflow thing where I basically set up each color as a material. And I can then hot-swap them after I did the coloring of the drawings and it automatically updates on all frames that uses that material/color. I mean… this is a feature I have heard of for years and it seems like a very nice thing to have when doing big projects. So in a sense, it’s basically just me being late to the proverbial party.

Oh, well..

I’ll see if I can get some more stuff through this thing.

Oh, and holy heck it’s been a long time since I did anything on this site.

Blog, SMA, SMA - BTS

Yes! Yet another reboot of the SMA-project! (rules and such)

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Yes! You read that correctly.

In an effort of continuing the streak I’ve been having with streaming. (well. I’ve done them at least. I have yet to gain followers.) In that attempt I will now revive the old idea of making a feature length movie using random chance as my sole guide.

The deck of 85 cards I started out with is still present and it’s been complemented with another one with 60 cards.

So, The rules I’m setting out for myself (subject of change if need be):

  1. The work will be live-streamed to anyone who cares to look in. (viewable on twitch.tv/jmalmsten_com )
  2. Choosing of the timecode to work on will be done with two decks of cards each streaming session:
    – Deck of 85 cards will select the minute
    – Deck of 60 cards will select the second
    Once drawn the minute card (from the deck of 85) will not be returned to the deck until the project is done!
    Before drawing the seconds card, the timeline will be checked to see that there are no animation already done inside the minute. If it is, then the corresponding cards for those seconds will be set aside until next full draw.
    – It is then up to me as a creator to come up with what will happen during this particular point in the narrative and draw frames accordingly. This can be more than a minute worth’s of content but beware of point 3 below.
    – The method of animation is all up to the animator at the moment. Again. Beware point 3.
  3. A new timecode to work on will only be drawn from the piles when the last timecode is fully finished. Once finished it will not be adjusted in any way until project is finished in full. This includes all visuals. Soundwork may be done according to point 4
  4. The soundwork for each timecode can extend to outside the animation. But once finished, it too should not be touched.
  5. The project will be created in 2K DCI Cinemascope resolution (2048×854) 24 fps and 5.1 surround sound. The finished timecodes will be uploaded to youtube in full HD Cinemascope (1920×800) 2.0 dolby stereo downmix.
  6. THERE IS NO RULE SIX!
  7. The Finished 4K form will be in two versions. Timeline Corrected where the narrative flows as on the timeline of the NLE. And a second one will be created that keeps the randomised shot-order mainly for fun of the viewer.
  8. Two playlist will be maintained on youtube ( youtube.com/jmalmsten ), the timeline-accurate order and the randomised chronological uploaded order. Gaps in the timeline will have placeholder footage.
  9. Once project is over. A remix of the audio with voice-acting and music will probably ensue before the final directors cut will be released alongside the other two versions.
  10. I’ll probably add something or subtract… we’ll see how things goes. This is a project mainly for fun anyways… (nervous laughter).
Artwork, Blog, Pics, Videos

Itano Circus Test 2

Holy Moly! It's been half a year since the last post? Man. I need to get back into this gambit. Well. Here's a quickie test. It's basically another Itano Circus. But it's done in a bit more unusual way.
  • I first filmed the background, using my GH4 in 1080p 2 fps video mode.
    – (In variable framerate mode it actually only records in the framerate that you set it to. It saves it as a standard 24 fps file for playback but the framerate difference can make either super-speedy footage (if recorded with framerate slower than the playback) or slow motion (if recorded with a faster framerate than the playback). And that works great for my experiment as I want it suuuper speedy in this case. 2 fps recording makes it 12 times faster. Playing that back at 8fps makes it… uhhh… ok, I don't know, but it looked like I wanted it to at least!)
  • Then I took it into after effects.
  • Time-reversed it (I walked forward during filming to be able to get footage that was traveling backwards without risking tripping over stuff in my messy apartment).
  • Then. I exported that as a png-sequence (I found a great youtube channel btw that mentions importing video into flash as png-sequences)
  • And then using that as the background, I drew the whole circus thingy in flash in 8 fps… sorry, Adobe Animate.
  • Then I exported it (the animation layers, that is) as a png sequence again and…
  • imported it to After Effects, layered it back on top of the original footage interpreted as 8 fps and finally exported it.
Kind of worked out better than expected in my opinion. I may be using this method more in ongoing projects… because I still suck at drawing backgrounds… 🙂 Anyways… Be seeing you!
Artwork, Pics

Standing n Pointing

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Just me messing around with some animation. Animation drawn “on three’s”

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Udda Tisdag: Rock & Rule (1983)

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Filmrepubliken.com!
Tar äntligen fram en favorit ur hyllan. Den är lite schizofren i hur målgruppen följs, men musiken och animationskvaliten gör den så jävla sevärd. Och man undrar vad som egentligen hände med Nelvana som animationsstudio.