Hello everyone!
Hello everyone! This is your contest host Eric! Today, I’m excited to share Declan Walsh’s workflow as a demonstration for the 2D Animation Contest WIP Post. We also suggest you to document/record your workflow, because you are required to submit a Work-in-progress video and your animation entry at your final submission.
For more information, please visit the contest rules page.
*Declan has worked on eight features for renowned American film director – Don Bluth, both in Ireland and the USA for Fox Animation as a director.
More recent works have been for animated efx on Disney titles such as Marvel’s Thor, Epic Mickey, KHO online, Anastasia and Wreck-It Ralph.
Let’s talk about storyboards! First, remember: you don’t need to be a skilled artist to create one. Stick figures or written descriptions work just fine.
The key is to focus on the camera angles and how to convey motion clearly. Consider the character’s path and how it interacts with different scenes. Get your ideas down on the page, you’ll find that your animations will flow much more smoothly as a result.
To illustrate, he recently created an animation of a character breathing under a blanket. He used the Free Form Deformation (FFD) editor to manipulate the blanket, enhancing the scene’s realism. By keyframing the transformations on the timeline, he effectively brought both the prop and character to life.
In one of his scenes, he depicts a character seated on a massive lantern, gazing at the Moon character in the water. This provided a great opportunity to add a candle flame to enhance the scene’s atmosphere without overpowering the main focus on the characters.
Cartoon Animator (CTA) now supports importing GIF and APNG motions. Previously, these files remained static as individual graphics when dragged onto the stage.
He chose the GIF format for the candle flame because it would be positioned behind a soft glow, ensuring it wouldn’t dominate the scene.
In the scene featuring the Moon sitting in the water, he wanted to add ripples around the character’s body and feet. Since the feet remained stationary, he separated them into their own element. Within CTA, he disabled the character’s feet and animated the ripples in Photoshop, allowing for easy layering and achieving the desired effect. He anticipated needing some adjustments after completing the animation, whether aligning elements or tweaking timing. Previously, switching between CTA and Photoshop to set up frames in the sprite editor felt daunting, but the recent update provides a more streamlined workflow.
Within CTA, he used the “create in PSD editor” feature by opening the file in the top right corner. This also works with SVG files, adding flexibility. By selecting the PSD file, CTA launched Photoshop and linked the two programs. Changes made in Photoshop automatically update in CTA, allowing him to switch back and forth seamlessly without redoing frames. This real-time workflow significantly enhances efficiency, whether using Photoshop for PSD files or Illustrator for SVG files.
In the initial scene where the Moon tumbles out of bed, he animated the bedclothes cascading away. As the scene progressed, the Moon fell past the camera and through the clouds. To add motion, he set up spring bones on the cloth in the character’s hand, which automatically created realistic flailing during the descent. Spring bones are a fantastic feature that adds secondary motion to characters or props, making it easy to achieve the desired effect with simple adjustments.
