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We talk to 2D animator Marty Walker about how he animates his watercolour-style Ghost Kid webcomics and GIFs using Toon Boom Harmony animati

Had the honor of being Interviewed by Toon Boom about Ghost Kid!

what is the program - app you are using?

I do most everything in Harmony Premium. It’s just the program I’m most comfortable in.

Finished up that test for a hand painted animation workflow!

There’s definitely stuff I like and stuff I don’t like, but it’s a start

#animation #hand-drawn #2d animation #watercolor #Juggling

Printed out the frames and hand inked them all on watercolor paper. It’s working better than I’d hoped. Feeling a lot less sterile than the digital version!

All that’s left is to paint it!

#animation #2D animation #hand-drawn #juggling

Thumbnails and clean lines for a project I'm doing to test out a new ink and paint technique

#animation #2d animation #hand-drawn #juggling

Happy Halloween!

Thought I’d post one of the shots I roughed out for the David S Pumpkins Halloween Special.

A lot of talented people put a lot of hard work into this thing. It’s cool to see it come together

#animation #dance #skeleton #david pumpkins #2D animation #handdrawn

awesome work! love "ghost kid"

Thanks! That means a lot

Animation Process Part 2: Rough Keys/Extremes and Shift and Trace

Check out the last post in the series here:

Part 1: Thumbnailing, Keys, and Extremes

Last week I wrote about the process of thumbnailing out this dance animation. This week it’s time for the roughs!

The Drawing Stuff

The first phase of the roughs is to go over all of the poses I did last time, but this time think about the final forms of the character

The main things I’m focusing on are Solid Drawing and Staging.

With Solid Drawing I’m making sure that I’m constructing all of my forms with basic shapes and drawing through the forms when necessary. I don’t really have the space to get into all the minute details of construction in this post. If you’re interested in the subject I’d recommend checking out John K’s old blog. He has TONS of posts about cartoon drawing

http://johnkstuff.blogspot.com/2009/09/preston-blair-lessons.html

With Staging I’m making sure that the silhouette of each pose is clear with the final forms. For instance: In the thumbnail version of this pose the body is thinner so there’s a ton of negative space around his hands making the pose read really clearly.

The character ended up having a much fatter torso so I had to adjust those arm poses and tilt the head up a bit so that there was still at least some negative space in the silhouette.

The Technical Stuff

At this point I’ve broken the animation up into 2 layers. One for the body and one for the head. Doing this is nice because in Harmony I can move the head layer around using a peg, but still be able to go into the drawing view and animate the head turning in place.

Basically, without the peg it looks like this:

Just a head turning in place.

With the peg turned on it looks like this

If it’s not obvious, it’s WAY easier to inbetween the head tilting in place than it is to keep all the forms consistent as it moves around. This is basically a modern version of the old Shift and Trace technique in the paper and pencil days (as explained by Matt Williames here).

If this were Flash I’d do basically the same thing. I’d animate the head in place inside of a symbol and then move that symbol around in the outer layer. I’m not familiar with photoshop or TV Paint, but I’m sure there are similar techniques and tools in those too.

That’s it for my initial rough phase! Once again the main things I’m keeping in mind are

-Solidly constructing my forms while maintaining the energy of the thumbs

-Making sure that the silhouette of every pose is as strong as possible

Join me next time when we talk about breakdowns!

#animation #2d animation #tutorial #process

Animation Process Part 1: Thumbnailing, Keys, and Extremes

A week or so ago I finally finished this little dance animation that I’ve been chipping away at in my spare time! In the end it took me about 45 hours over the course of 8 months.

I documented each stage of the process in gifs and wanted to share in order to give anyone just starting out an insight into my workflow and how I break a complex motion into digestible, accomplish-able chunks so that I don’t get overwhelmed by the amount of work that’s ahead.

In this first part I’m going explain a little bit of my approach to thumbnailing. The great thing about this part of the hand drawn animation process is that I would approach it the same way in ANY piece of software. This stage is just about drawing and timing. Even the lowest tier programs can do that. It’s not until the cleanup stage that any of the bells and whistles matter.

The Research Stuff

Before starting any drawings I like to search around youtube for inspiration; especially if it’s an action I’m not entirely familiar with. I had just watched the webseries The Earliest Show in which Lauren Lapkus and Ben Schwartz do a lot of really great dancing, so I studied a couple of those frame by frame. I also looked at some swing dancing competition videos to get a feel for the basic steps.

https://youtu.be/plOMomN9F5g?t=25m25s

For stuff like dancing or even playing an instrument I’m not familiar with I like to sometimes look up a couple beginners’ tutorials just to get some ideas for how to approach the movement.

This isn’t days of research. It’s just half an hour to an hour to get a feel for what you want to accomplish. Anything more than that and it can easily turn into procrastination.

The Drawing Stuff

Once I’m satisfied with my research I begin the thumbnailing process. As you can see, my drawings at this point are only slightly more detailed than a stick figure. I’m not worried at all about mass, I’m just trying to nail down some simple, clear poses.

The Animation Stuff

In order to not be overwhelmed by everything I like to approach scenes in a very systematic way. I’d say 90% of the animation I do is Pose to Pose meaning that I break actions up into 4 different types of drawings

Keys: The main storytelling poses. If the story of the shot is “Man hears news and is disappointed” then you only have two keys to do - the man hearing the news, and the man being disappointed. I’m not thinking about how he’s going to get from pose to pose at this point, I’m just thinking “What’s the best drawing to show that this man is really disappointed”.

Extremes: These are all the poses that have to be there in order for the action to work. If someone is walking across the room it’s every drawing where their feet make contact with the ground. If someone’s jumping in the air it’s the anticipation down and the highest point of their arc. The way I think of them is that they’re the furthest up, down, left, and right the character is going to go as well as any drawing where they make contact.

Breakdowns: These are the poses that establish or reinforce the physics behind the motion. If an arm is swinging forward and the hand drags behind this is the drawing that shows that. When a character does a high kick and puts the entire weight of their body into it this is the drawing that shows the hips shoving forward as the foot just starts to lift from the ground.

Inbetweens: The drawings that smooth out and polish the movement. Here I’m focused solely on the spacing of the drawings. Is it slowing out or slowing in? How far do I want to favor one way or the other? What’s the shape of the path of action? Are the drawings following a nice arc?

This is one of many ways to categorize the drawings. I’ve seen a lot of people who combine extremes into their keys phase, and others who combine extremes into their breakdown phase, and others still who do breakdowns while they’re inbetweening. This is just what works for me.

(For a more thorough explanation of Keys, Extremes, Breakdowns, and Inbetweens see pages 64-68 of Richard Williams’ The Animator’s Survival Kit)

For the thumbnails I’m only focusing on the Keys and the Extremes.

First I do the keys which for the first dance involve these four drawings:

As you can see there’s no thought about the weight of the movement. That’s fine. I’m just establishing how he’s going to hit each accent.

From there we go to the Extremes

Here I start to add a little bit of weight to it. The main things the extremes (in green) are establishing is the foot pattern. How is he passing his weight from one leg to the other?

With the torso I wanted to loosen it up a little bit. If you look at the keys they all have a really similar line of action. I reversed the line of action for the extremes which adds more change of shape and helps it feel more lively - even at this early stage

The arms are just establishing the passing positions of the arm swing. They’re fairly straightforward.

If you notice, these extremes have a lot of qualities of breakdowns in them. If I had to label them more precisely I’d say that what I’m calling the extremes are the contact drawings of the legs combined with the passing positions (breakdowns) of the upper body. I call them extremes instead of breakdowns because the legs are the most important part of these drawings and I wouldn’t consider those legs broken down at all; they’re just contact drawings. These hybrid drawings are the reason that so many animators categorize drawings differently. At the end of the day it doesn’t matter what you call any of this stuff as long as it makes sense to you and the end result looks good.

The Technical Stuff

At this point the entire animation is just a rough drawing on one layer. I would do this exactly the same in Harmony, Flash, Photoshop, or TV Paint. As long as you have drawing tools and a timeline you can thumbnail out animation like this

Extra Pro tip: It’s really helpful at this stage to establish some kind of basic ground plane or perspective - even if it’s just a character dancing in a void. This really helped keep the 3 Dimensional space in mind while planning his footwork. It also reminded me to have the character lean a little forward and backward in Z space as he’s moving. It’s easy to forget that kind of stuff when a character’s facing camera. Without it the animation will always feel a little flat.

That’s it for my thumbnailing process! If you found it helpful check out the next posts in the series! Part 2: Rough Keys/Extremes and the Shift and Trace Technique

#animation #tutorial #thumbnails #handdrawn #2danimation #process

Finally finished up this little dance!

#animation #2d animation #dance #dancing #jazz #handdrawn #toonboom

Where’d the time go

Now streaming on twitch sometimes!

https://www.twitch.tv/chipsandsolstice

#animation #2d animation #animated gif #walk cycle #toonboom #elephant #hipster #handdrawn

bentoboxent

ARTIST PROFILE—MARTY WALKER

Meet Marty Walker—Animator at Bento Box Animation Studios Atlanta

Are you a Georgia native? If not, where are you from, and what brought you to Atlanta?

I’m originally from Maryland, actually. I grew up there and went to school in Northern Virginia for animation. I spent a couple years there freelancing and doing a lot of commercial work for PBS Kids, pilots, and informational film work for places like the World Wildlife Fund and the U.S. Department of State. I heard from a friend that Bento was opening a satellite studio in Atlanta and he recommended me to the guys here; that’s when I moved down. I’ve bounced around a bit since then, but I’m happy to be back working with the guys down here at Bento.

Growing up, did you know you wanted to be an artist? Who or what inspired you to become an artist/animator?

Yeah, for sure. I’ve wanted to be an animator since I was 8 and found out it was a job, haha. There was a VHS I had when I was younger with a preview of Hercules on it that was mostly pencil tests, storyboards and footage of the animators animating. I couldn’t tell you what the movie was, but I used to watch it over and over just to see that preview. It was so inspiring to see the raw unfinished footage and realize that these were actually drawings that people brought to life. I’ve known since then that this was what I wanted to do, and I’m really lucky to be able to do it for a living.

What do you enjoy most about your job?

Animation’s an incredible blend of art, science, and storytelling that I just find endlessly fascinating. You have to understand not only how to draw, but how to give a physical, visual performance with a character, understand how the body moves, and know how to use whatever tools you’re working with to create the coolest final end product. It doesn’t matter whether I’m feeling artistic, analytical or technical, each day there will always be something interesting to delve into.

Based on your own experiences, what kind of wisdom would you share with young people pursuing careers in animation?

Take a break. Get some sleep. Let yourself not be constantly working. There’s a myth going around that if you don’t stay up all night—every night—drawing, you’ll never be good enough to make it. Not only is that not true, it’s really unhealthy. It’ll just make you miserable and burnt out. Obviously you have to work hard, but there’s more to life than drawing. You’ll be fine.

What was your favorite childhood cartoon, and why?

When I was 12, my friends and I were obsessed with Dragonball Z. Any game we played or comics we drew were all just DBZ ripoffs. Who knows why I loved it so much, it was just really cool and different from the other shows on TV at the time.

What do you like to do for fun?

I try to get out of the house a lot and go hiking or just hang out in the park. It’s been way too hot down here for me lately, but I’m hoping to start getting out more once the sun calms down, haha. I also really like having board game nights with friends. It’s always a good time.

People call you “Party Marty,” how did you earn that nick name?

I can’t really remember to be honest, haha. I’d like to say it was too many keg stands and blackouts in my early days at the studio. The truth is that one day I wore a shirt with balloons on it and the directors just started calling me that and it stuck. At one point there was actually a person who thought that was my full name. First name Party, last name Marty. I actually ended up changing my artist folder from “MWalker” to “PMarty” just so my director could find it.

Lately, it’s just been shortened to “PM.”

What do you love most about living and working in Atlanta?

The food here’s pretty stellar. There’s a ton of small local restaurants with amazing food. Growing up in the suburbs the only options we ever had were giant chains, so it’s cool to be in a place with more authentic, homegrown food.

Where would you take someone who is visiting Atlanta for the first time to eat; and what dish would you insist they try?

That’s a tough one, haha. There’s a place called Hankook/Takorea that feels like an obvious choice. It’s a Korean taco place that everyone here universally loves. Can’t go wrong with any of the tacos, but if they have the Tempura Avocado tacos on special that day you should grab one. Get an order of Sesame fries for the table. It’ll blow your mind. If you’re vegetarian I’d recommend getting the bibimbap with tofu.