Animation Pictss

We sure hear a lot of complaints about how hard it is to break into the 3-D animation business and Hollywood. Many in the US are complaining that most of the jobs are now going to India, and whereas, it is true that the Indian animation entertainment sector and electronic arts industry is growing by leaps and bounds, we must also realize that there are many more animation films every year than there ever have been in the past.

We should also realize that Disney, Pixar, and DreamWorks are each putting out a couple of animation films a month, usually they might be able to do one, two, or maybe on a blue moon three in the same year. It should also be noted that television is using much more animation than they have in the past, and not just for kids programs and cartoons anymore. Worldwide, we are watching more animation films, and cartoons, so the reality is the entire industry is moving upward and more jobs are needed.

Of course, the computer technology and software is also getting much better and a good computer operator is able to do what 100 animators used to be able to do in a week's time. So whereas, there are more animation films, it can be said there is a need for less people. And more folks with creative ability + excellent computer skills in manipulating and designing on 3D software.

Still, we need people, lots of them to do animation, and this is why so much work is going to where jobs are the cheapest in India. Nevertheless, there are jobs in the United States in animation related industry subsectors, such as 3-D animation for presentations of new inventions, innovations, concepts, or products. There is also a huge need for things like 3-D animation to help companies and corporations improve their distribution supply chain flows in their factories and warehouses.

Before, anyone gives up on their dream to have a job in animation, they should look at these ancillary industries as well. From there they just might be able to get the experience they need to break into the more glamorous, and "sometimes" higher-paying animation entertainment industry. I sure hope you will please consider all this.

Ref.

1. Wharton Business School Newsletter; Story on Animation Industry in India.
2. Strategic Business Magazine; recent article on 3D Animation in Warehouse and Supply Chain Efficiencies.

Source : http://ezinearticles.com/?Animation-Jobs---3D-Animation-to-Improve-Your-Factory,-Warehouse,-and-Supply-Chain-Flows&id=3064878

Have you ever wondered how some cartoon characters became so famous - with hundreds or thousands of merchandise bearing their names and images? Remove the ones with animated series out of the equation since they have a marketing medium - and you still have a handful of characters out there who became famous through the merit of their designs. Examples are Julius the Monkey and Emily the Stange.

This article discusses some tips for creating and selling cartoon characters.

Cute VS Cool

Are your characters cute or cool? Cute characters easily attract the females and the young children markets - two of the largest consumer markets. Character merchandise is often cheaper and more affordable. Therefore profit through sheer volumes of sales can be quite astounding.

Cool characters are more suitable as collectibles, and often cater more to the male market. As they are often more exclusive and expensive, sales volumes are seldom as impressive as cute character merchandise.

In the spirit of games development, decision makers might simply want to pick a design that is most suited for the game concept. But as far as possible, if the game concept so allows, do try to go for cute characters because they stand a higher chance of getting licensed for merchandising.

Character Bible

A character bible is the foundation for every product that would stem from an intellectual property - be it a game, animated series, comic, story book etc. Regardless of the resulting product, everything should refer back to the character bible. This is what the bible is all about - a kind of blueprint for an intellectual property besides being a showcase for the intellectual property.

Style Guide

A style guide to showcase your characters in their full glory is absolutely necessary if you plan to license your characters. The average licensee is often quite unimaginative and seldom sees beyond what you show them. So if you are showing them screen captures of your game, hoping that they would see the full potential of your character designs, chances are they will not. A style guide with multiple poses and designs of each character would help them understand and appreciate your character designs better.

Product Concept Boards

In your style guide, it would be good to include product concept boards. These are renderings of mock products with your character designs integrated within. Product concept boards are great for letting potential licensees see how they can use your character designs on their products.

Source : http://ezinearticles.com/?Tips-on-Selling-Character-Designs&id=1137688

The cartoon effect has caught on in so many different ways. We have the little assistant cartoon person step out onto our desktop at several service sites. We have the cartoon logos identified with our products and more recently we have the cartoon caricature used for our social networking presence. We find offers in our mailbox to have our profile image 'cartooned' for us.

The cartoon effect in After Effects is great for a banner, a photographic image or video providing a simple way to give an other worldly look to your subject. It is also easy to create a 'French impressionist' look with bright colors and exaggerated texture and features. Fortunately the cartoon effect is quite easy to apply, very easy to experiment with. Like any animation or special effect, giving some thought to what your finished product is going to say, how you want it to look is a great start. A comic effect is typical for the animated helper but it is just as easy to create a little drama with bold features and shadows. Picture the Hulk or Superman.

Why not a Picasso incarnation?. These exaggerated colors and lines of definition, texture that you can touch can be ingredients for expressive emotion and 'super reality'. When you apply cartoon you have three 'high level' render options: fill, edges, or a blend of the two. These choices are just what they sound like. The edges will highlight an outline of your video in black and white. It reminds me of a black and white charcoal sketch with white fill, dark grey and black outlines. This is an extreme cartoon and while it might serve in a logo or symbol, I doubt this is what you will want for your expressive video.

The fill option does the opposite. It exaggerates only the fill portion doing nothing to the edges. Imagine puffy fill with soft textures and because you haven't used the edges attribute, edges are very rounded and reveal curves. With fill chosen you see shadowing and darker shades highlight the fill creating the cartoon effect in this fashion. There is no better subject for the cartoon effect than a human being complete with face color, lines, and texture and the clothes we humans wear. This 'fill only' approach, creates the true comic book cartoon likeness with shading and color describing human features and clothing fabric. The fill option has two adjustments for shading steps and smoothness. At the higher setting for shading steps, the shading is less pronounced producing a softer image. At it lowest settings approaching zero, the fill shading produces much more noticeable differences in color and shadow, a much more noticeable effect.

To get a different and perhaps the preferred cartoon effect, use these two together combining fill and edges under your render option. You will see an immediate profound difference. You see the soft textures, colors, the fabric you can touch, but you also see powerful dark lines outlining everything from your human subject to the objects that share the video. If your subject is sitting in a chair, for example, your subject and the chair share powerful outline and animated description, sharing similar descriptions providing a seamlessness to the entire image.

Remember that because the cartoon effect has graduated settings, you can use After Effects 'brainstorm' tool to get help producing some random combinations of the available settings, assisting you discovering that 'certain look' you are looking for. As you use 'brainstorm', you are presented with different combinations of the settings introduced in this article. Clicking on the ones you like will include them in a second 'brainstorm' random creation. You also have the option to add one of the 'brainstorms' presented to your current composition or save it as an entirely new composition.

Of all the effects that will help you achieve the preconceived image you are seeking, cartoon is a worthy assistant but cartoon will do much more. Cartoon will give flight to your imagination taking you to new visions you have never seen before. Enjoy!

Source : http://ezinearticles.com/?After-Effects---How-to-Cartoon-You&id=2598531

It is often said that in movies and television, sex sells. But never is this claim more true when tracing the history of Western animation which is supposedly for children. Let's turn back the clock a bit and do a retrospective on the Queen of the Animated Screen: Betty Boop.

There wasn't anything hardcore about her but she was overflowing with charisma and appeal - for an animated cartoon character. During her heydays during the early 20th century, she was the Marilyn Monroe of paper frames.

Betty was a brainchild of the iconic animator Max Fleischer who also worked on the legendary animated series Superman. With her popularity, Betty became the star of many films including the Talkartoon series and the self-titled Betty Boop films. Paramount Pictures knew they had a gem in Betty; this is why it sustained such success that is still recognized up until today.

The crazy thing about the character design of Betty Boop is that it wasn't even a human to begin with. She was designed to be a walking and talking French poodle - similar to other animal anthropomorphic character such as Mickey Mouse. However in 1932, its creator Fleischer finalized it as a human, owing it to its sex appeal success. Its poodle ears were turned into hoop earrings while its black nose was turned into a sexy button-like nose.

For the most part, Betty was just a supporting character. Her first appearance was documented on August 9, 1930 in the Fleischer cartoon series entitlted Dizzy Dishes, the sixth part in Fleischer's long-standing Talkartoon animated series. It was supposedly inspired by the actresses Helen Kane and Clara Bow, two popular actresses during their time in the 1920s.

Moreover, Betty would go on to play supporting roles in movies - more notably as a girlfriend to the popular character back then named Bimbo. Betty Boop was called Nancy Lee and Nan McGrew during these roles.

Betty's voicing was largely popularized by Mae Questel who took the role from 1931 to 1938. Other notable actresses who voiced the sultry character were Margie Hines (the first one), Kate Wright, Ann Rothschild, and Bonnie Poe. The name Betty was said to have been derived from the 1931 Screen Songs cartoon Betty Co-Ed - but animation historians are debating that it is not the actual Betty Boop but just a prototype of the real Betty.

Her only theatrical movie appearance in color was with the animated movie entitled Poor Cinderella in 1934. In 1988 she would have a cameo role in the movie Who Framed Roger Rabbit? But most of the stardom of Betty became apparent when she became the lead role in the Talkartoons series of 1932 as well as her own series starting with Stopping the Show.

Betty's importance as a sex appeal icon was stylized in glamourized fashion from short dresses to high heels and then make-up. However, this was more given prominence in two landmark movies in 1932; Chess-Nuts and Boop-Oop-A-Doop. In Chess-Nuts, Betty was shown tied in a bed by the White King who exclaimed that he will have her. But before anything happens, the bed runs away and she is eventually saved by Bimbo. In Boop-Oop-A-Doop, the title of the film came to refer to her virginity as it was threatened by the Ringmaster of a Circus. Inside a tent, the Ringmaster starts to harass her with Betty begging off "Don't take my Boop-Oop-A-Doop away!" Eventually she go rescued again by Koko the Clown who beat the Ringmaster with a mallet.

These instances were early portrayals of sexual harassment in the silver screen - taboo subjects during those times. This was a brilliant illustration of how animation can go well beyond entertainment. Betty Boop certainly deserves its place in the animation hall-of-fame. In fact, just this year, Betty Boop was still voted as the second most cartoon character through a poll run by a newspaper in the United Kingdom.

Source : http://ezinearticles.com/?Betty-Boop-Queen-of-the-Animated-Screen&id=2431421&opt=print

If you are involved in the world of animation as an upcoming animator then more than likely, one of your major aspirations is to getting a cartoon animation series produced. If you of a realistic nature you also realize that it is not going to be very easy but it is possible.

Step 1:
Let your imagination kick in. You need to come up an idea for your series. Being as it is a series you need an ongoing theme. Probably if you look back at your old sketchings, you will see where you drew perhaps an action figure doing several different things. The theme is what your action figure does. Now you will need to build your theme and once you do this, it becomes your foundation.

Step 2:
Naturally, there are going to have to be various characters in your series. You are going to need to think about each of them and what roll will they play. This does not mean you are designing the plot of the story, it means you are assigning traits to your characters.

Step 3:
Most cartoon animators do not consider themselves adept at script writing. This is where they will rely on an expert in that field. Your job will be to present him with your theme and your ideas regarding that theme. Your scriptwriter is the one who brings your characters to life. He will do this by utilizing the traits you have provided him. Make sure your choice of scriptwriter is one that is well versed in this type of writing.

Step 4:
One of the key factors of your success is making your characters remarkable. You can enlist the services of a good design company for this segment of your project. They almost have to become household names. Hopefully to the point where various products will be designed after them. Imagine a super hero you have erected becoming the hottest action figure on the market. I would class that as the ultimate success.

Step 5:
You are very close to the point of now compiling your character bible. This is where you start to put things into action. This book, which has now become a very valuable commodity of yours, will contain all of the information you have gathered so far from the different venues you hired. You will take your character bible to an animation house in the hopes of having a pilot episode produced.

Step 6:
Now you will have reached a decision-making period. You can approach a distribution company with your pilot to see how marketable the finished version would be.

Step 7:
The other alternative to a distribution company would be to approach the television media to see if there would be any interest by them to produce your show. Here is the step where you have to be confident in your work. You know it is good and now you have to sell others on that very fact.

Step 8:
As you can see, you have a long road ahead of you and there are costs involved. You just have to be determined enough and believe in yourself and your work and go for it.

Source : http://ezinearticles.com/?8-Steps-to-Getting-a-Cartoon-Animation-Series-Produced---3D-Animation&id=2439334