#knittcartoon

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Neuer Strickfilm! Joscha Sauer ist die Polizisten.

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ZAHNPASTA! (German/Deutsch)

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Eddsworld Hide and Seek Animatic

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The Making of Eddsworld Hide and Seek - Part 3

Today is the day after tomorrow.

Part 3 Design and Style

Designing the Eddsworld characters was really hard. My first drawings of the characters looked like shit. (This is a few years old.)

Wait... are you saying you designed the characters? Don't the characters already exist?

Sure. But every animator has his own drawing style. Since I wanted to keep the style of my Eddsworld drawings as closely to the original I first had to figure out how the style works.

We're talking about two different things now: Style and character design.

I guess style is a lot about what the outlines look like, which forms are mostly used and how detailed things look. Style defines the tone of a show, and it is influenced by the way the artist sees the world. It defines the look of the world in which the characters live.

Character design, following the chosen style, defines a specific character and his personality.

Both tools are based on really theoretical thoughts. What is this Eddsworld-world like? Who are those characters? Are we watching a cartoon or a drama?

I thought about that and here's what I came up with. My description may not be how the rest of the Eddsworld team thinks about it. It's only my interpretation of Eddsworld.

Eddsworld is funny, ironic and over the top. The show doesn't pretend to be real it screams „I'm just a cartoon“ all the time. Sometimes the characters themselves know that they are just drawn characters.

So Eddsworld stories exaggerate and tend to be over-dramatic rather than dramatic. For example the music always carries an intense emotion.

Eddsworld stories don't follow any logic. They create their own logic. Cars can fly. Tom survives explosions. They seem to be written by some guy and not by a professional screenwriter. That makes the stories authentic and adorable.

Edd, Matt and Tom are often egoistic and driven by their own needs. 

Edd wants cola and he would kill to get a can full of it. Matt loves his face and he does everything to save it from any damage. Tom is addicted to alcohol. They are silly in most situations. But that's what makes us love 'em. They are (in a exaggerated way) people like us and we can relate to them.

The tone of the show is divided. Some scenes are pretty moody; but then there are those funny moments with bright colors, funny music and the dumbest puns you could imagine. It's the contrast between those two which makes the videos so dynamic. You can see it in the timing too: Some scenes are slow, but then suddenly there are those action sequences which have a fast timing or extremely fast slapstick moments.

Maybe that was a lot of text and I could have written even more. But those are the kind of thoughts that have to be thought before adapting a style for a show. The style has to fit the context.

To make the drawings look rather drawn than real I chose thick outlines. Thick outlines tend to show that it's a drawing, while thin outlines make the drawings seem more realistic.

Also, I wanted to give the lines the aesthetic of a fineliner pen. This means the lines have a monotone thickness, which is easy to create in Flash.

An early animation test showed that it was still too stiff. So in the final animation I drew three versions of the lines, which makes them wobble. It gives the animation a sort of hand-drawn asthetic.

The detail level had to be as low as possible since it's difficult to draw details with thick lines and it works better this way.

When you look at the Eddisodes, you might notice that the characters look a little bit different in every scene and every episode.

Some people call it „off model“. I actually like that. Sometimes it adds to the pose in the scene. I wanted to do that kind of thing too, but first I had to decide what the 'average' Edd, Matt and Tom should look like. I made some studies and a lot of scribbles and than I made a model sheet and than that was done. Yeah.

The design changed a little bit again when I began animating but the sheets were a good reference.

I made Matt's hair a little bit curvy and big to make it look fancy. I wanted him to look like he has his hair done everyday. Tom's hair is pointy, which makes him look a bit aggressive I guess. Edd has that normal haircut. I don't know.

The eyes were a big problem: If they were too big, they made the characters look like children, when they were too small, they looked like monsters. I had to find the nice size inbetween.

Fun fact: Did you notice the hoodie strings? Matt's are exactly the same length, while Tom and Edd don't take care of it.

Next time: Animation

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The Making of Eddsworld Hide and Seek - Part 2

Part 2 Script and Storyboard

A few days later, Tom sent me an awesome script. I mean it! It's awesome! It's clever, funny and the characters really act real. There's a nice twist in the middle of the story.

After reading it a couple of times, I began storyboarding the short. I started with a page of thumbnails to sketch out my thoughts.

Thumbnail storyboards are useful because they help develop the whole thing and prevent getting stuck in details. You can still add fancy details later. I love this stage because there's no risk to it: You can throw in new ideas and throw them away in the same second. The drawings are not really detailed and you don't put a lot of time into them, so you don't fall in love with poses or compositions.

With the new character design in mind (I'm going to write more about that the day after tomorrow) I drew a more defined storyboard. Usually storyboards are drawn digital because it's easier to move stuff around and you can set the timing really early. But I was on holiday and there was no computer for me to work on. But I wanted to storyboard soon. So everything's pencil on paper.

Here's the first storyboard, dude.

http://knitti.deviantart.com/art/Hide-and-Seek-Storyboard-425406759

As you can see, a few things are different to the final version. Some of the ideas I came up with, didn't fit the story. Also, I had no sound when I storyboarded. When I received the recorded lines, some parts of the board didn't fit, so I re-edited them.

Tom, Eddie and Matt were very kind recording new lines for new ideas I threw in.

„Where should I hide? Where should I hide? Where should I hide?“ is one of the lines that are not in the script.

The day after tomorrow (because I'm lazy): Design and Style

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The Making of Eddsworld Hide and Seek - Part 1

Hello and Welcome to...

Part 1 Getting the Job

First I stared at the computer screen for 2 years, refreshing the Eddsworld twitter page every 5 seconds, waiting for this tweet:

When it appeared, I grabbed pencil and paper, made lots of Eddsworld sketches, looked at a lot of Eddsworld drawings, made lots of sketches again and finally created some Eddsworld concepts. I sent them over to Eddsworld.

Tomorrow: Script and Storyboard

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Tom sent me soundtrack and stuff happens!

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You have to be proud of me! I drew this with a computer mouse!!