Modeling method of cartoon character design cartoon image

Similar to general film and television production, Disney's long animation production process has three parts:

● "Pre-production", mainly creative design.

● "Manufacturing" means actually doing it.

● "Post-production" is the work of sorting out, synthesizing and modifying all elements and after-care work.

First of all, ideas

Animation production begins with creativity. Take Disney as an example. If the sponsor is not a Disney employee, he must first find a broker to help deal with legal issues, because the negotiation process may lead to many legal disputes. Take Mulan as an example. Hua Mulan disguised herself as a man and went to the army under the pseudonym "Faping", which is just similar to the name "Ping" of an American golf company. The company took advantage of this situation and accused Disney of stealing their store name, hoping to make money by taking legal action. Therefore, a big company like Disney is very cautious about legal issues and will not easily accept external personal advice. It is beneficial for both parties to send the script to the company through the broker. First, it can ensure the legal safety of the company and safeguard the author's own rights and interests.

In addition, as far as Disney is concerned, there are three ways to conceive the source:

● Administrative decision issued by the competent department: The Lion King was shot under the idea that it is time to shoot a film like Bambi at the behest of the President. Taking Bambi the Deer as a springboard, the production team joined the story structure of Shakespeare's Hamlet: Simba, the hero of the lion, found himself again after losing his father and self-exile.

● The company's annual Gong Xiu: The company arranges an occasion every year to invite important people of the company, including the president and chairman, to sit in a row, and then let everyone who wants to introduce their ideas use their own posters or sketches to introduce their stories within five minutes. There is a big gong in the venue. When the time is up to five minutes, the next one will be changed to "Kuang ~ ~". That's how Hercules was chosen.

● It is considered by the "creative execution" department within the company: this is the most common situation. The creative executive department, composed of about 7 people, collects fairy tales, legends and folk stories from all over the world, or studies children's books published in the market and scripts sent in from outside. Report to the company executives every once in a while and introduce ideas worthy of animation. That's how Mulan got here.

These channels operate and cross each other, so it is often difficult to define which specific channel a film was conceived from.

Second, the outline of the story.

After having an idea, the company will ask the playwright to write a "story outline" or "handling" first. I like Mulan because the company executives want to shoot a story set in the East. Because this is a theme that Disney has never explored, and for westerners, the East is full of dazzling and mysterious colors, which will be very attractive. As a result, creative executives began to look for it. At first, they considered a story called "Baby China", but the content was nothing more than the chauvinistic cold rice of white men who had been bombed in Hollywood, such as Miss Saigon and Lady Butterfly. It was nothing new, and then they gave up. At this time, a creative director met a writer who was editing World Folk Tales, and the company accepted his suggestion and adopted Mulan. Because Mulan's story is interesting, the heroine's character has the significance of the times, which is more in line with Disney's attempt to grasp the trend of the times in theme selection in recent years.

Third, the script

The next division of labor is to draft a "script" first. Disney animation is different from live-action movies. It inherits the profound tradition of comedy and mime, and emphasizes the visual expression of body language, so it is not suitable for scripts with a lot of dialogue. The role relationship and plot of animation should be expressed in the form of video as much as possible, not in words. For example, describe an angry character and let him beat his chest and show his teeth. It is better to say, "I am so angry!" More vivid and interesting, which is the advantage of playing animation. A good animation script can be written from the perspective of video, and the frequent interaction between animation writers and story painters is even more important.

Fourth, storyboards.

The story board is the most closely related to the script. In the past, there was no storyboard for filming and animation, so everyone picked up the camera and took pictures. The storyboard was first invented by Disney. It's like a series of comic books. Every grid in a cartoon is probably a storyboard. Before the official production, we can see the whole story. There are many "story outlines" on the story board, and dialogues are written below. Story artists, like rap artists, compare storyboards with their own voices and expressions and throw stories out, hoping that the audience can feel the plot in the storyboard and further convince the directors and producers under the stage to adopt their ideas. The same scene often passes through the hands of two or three painters, and sometimes there are several different versions. After full discussion by directors, producers and painters, the final version was decided. Disney pays attention to division of labor and cooperation, and a movie needs everyone's efforts to complete. The production of animated feature films has a huge structure and requires a lot of brainstorming. Make storyboards for everyone to learn and discuss. Finding out the fault of the story at this time can avoid unnecessary waste of time and money when making it. General TV animation, storyboard as long as the director has seen it, I think it is ok.

The most important thing for a story painter is to fully understand the personality of each character and the emotional relationship between the characters, and then use this as a driving force to lay out the plot. Take Mulan as an example. If the story is as usual: Mulan appeared in front of her father disguised as a man's suit, and after her father cheated him, she was asked to join the army to fight. This kind of plot is just scripted, lacking the depth of the role, without emotion, and without thinking about the reaction of the characters to this situation from the heart. Mulan's story is based on human feelings. A weak woman disguised as a man goes out to war. Unless her parents care about her life or death, she will be very nervous and will try her best to stop her from going. The story painter should be able to put himself in the other's shoes, so as to profoundly describe the human reaction, and such plot deduction is reasonable. Therefore, Mulan of Disney left without saying goodbye in the middle of the night, which is different from the general story.

The charm of Disney animation lies not only in the plot, but also in the "characterization" (). All characters start from the heart, which is why Disney's characters look real, like real people, not pictures. In Mulan's movies, what we see is a naughty, lovely, lively and temperamental girl next door, not an cartoon. For a long time, Disney animation has won by this, which is also the consistent method of Hollywood movies, that is, to create a "star" role with personality and charm.

In order to see the trend of the story more comprehensively, you can also arrange the "story beats" written in sequence on a board, or draw a curve of emotional ups and downs and climax positions on it, which can help the story painter understand the relative tension of the scene.

Verb (abbreviation of verb) video development

Apart from storyboards, the most important thing to make stories concrete is "visual development", which is what China people generally call "artistic design". However, Disney pays more attention to the freedom and tolerance of the design process and emphasizes diversity, change and development, hence its name. This part of the work is to interpret all the visual images in the script in the early planning stage, from the overall style, character design, modeling and color matching, road set design, atmosphere creation to color planning, all of which are the work contents of visual design.

Video design is very conceptual at first, and it is also the happiest time for artists to create. At this time, the story has not been fully finalized, and the plot is still very vague. Therefore, every video designer has great freedom and can give full play to it with personal feelings and imagination. The scope of work is not clear, and there are roles, scenes and colors. Everyone, like an illustrator of a picture story book, "illustrates" the key points of the story in his own way, and a hundred flowers blossom, providing various possibilities. In this development process, the director finally chose an artistic direction, decided the leaders of various departments, gradually divided the work and narrowed the scope of work, and everyone was moving in the same general direction.

Font design

The author's work in the production of Mulan is the part of role design. He is the "artistic director of role design" of this film, responsible for modeling design. In order to let five or six hundred people draw like me, I have to imagine a set of artistic style principles of character design for everyone to follow. Taking Mulan as an example, "S arc" is the key to the whole style, such as "Yousi Miao" in ancient figure painting, which is an element I found in China ancient painting and can be used in animation; The ancient sculptures of deities and buddhas in China, especially the bergamot, are my inspiration. This S-shaped arc has an elegant and flowing aesthetic feeling, which is especially suitable for describing the costumes of ancient people in China. S-arc is the benchmark of Mulan line processing, and the plane spacing between lines is adjusted by tangent "triangle wedge". The principle of Mulan's figure art is not discussed here. As for the overall style of the film, the knowledge of department designers is to be "concise and poetic". Therefore, from characters to scene design, they all try to accurately capture the artistic essence of blank space and dense line contrast in oriental painting with the simplest shapes and colors.

After the design of all the main characters is roughly worked out, the designer and the animator in charge of each role will trim the shape back and forth, so that the shape can be easily mastered by the passive painter without losing the flavor of the original design.

In the final stage of role design, a "model table" must be made. There are various roles' angles, expressions and postures on the modeling stage, which helps to unify the drawing methods of animators. Once the styling table is finalized and approved by the director, try not to change it.

After that, designers, production designers and "color stylists" design and implement the color concept according to the character's personality. For example, the pink dress of Mulan blind date is used to compare with the pink magnolia that opens late in the back garden; Lao Yao, Xiao Lin and Jin Baosan are sworn brothers, who changed the three primary colors of red, yellow and blue according to their personalities.

After the figure modeling is established, the main figures should be arranged side by side to let everyone know their "size contrast or lines." Up ",which is especially needed by graphic designers. From the scale diagram, we can also see that Disney animation modeling pays great attention to the changes of modeling design; Take Mulan as an example, for example, Jinbao is round, Laomo is square, Kobayashi is triangular and so on. Each shape should have its own unique shape, with obvious and contrasting differences, and at the same time, it should be able to reflect the personality of the role. A successful styling design, even if all the silhouettes of the characters are blacked out, should still be able to see who is who.

Next, the sculptor will create a three-dimensional "prototype" with the same shape according to the plane modeling table, and its main function is to help the animator draw. Because the modeling table is flat, sometimes some special angles, such as the face looking up from the chin, may not know how to draw or be uncertain when drawing. With this clay figurine, it is like having a model around at any time, and the animator can draw a difficult angle to the clay figurine, which is of great help to the animator. After painting, these clay figurines are also popular collections. ● Scene design

The style and design of the scene should match the characters, and a pro-action designer should roughly draw and set the story according to the location of the plot, and then supervise the implementation together with the pro-action designer, the page director and the background director. An art designer must conceive a set of artistic style principles for composers and background teachers to follow. Every grass, tree, brick and tile in each scene is drawn according to this principle. For example, in Mulan, in order to capture the contrast between blank space and reality in China's traditional paintings, a large number of simple color blocks are used in the scenery. Except the details in the focus are clearly defined, most of the other parts of the picture are painted with hazy and freehand colors, leaving the audience with their own associative space.

Disney painters like to joke or leave some footprints in their designs. For example, at the end of Aladdin, after the bad guys came to power, in the gold and silver jewelry in Man Cang Palace, if the audience stops to pay attention, they will find things that should not appear, such as toasters, Mickey Mouse watches, boomerang balls and so on. We carved the names of our planning colleagues on the stone tablet of Mulan Temple with seal script, which gave me a chance to make our names immortal like Disney movies.

● Color script

Scripts include text scripts, and in video design, there is a so-called "color script". A color script is a series of color scene drawings. After the production designer or "background leader" selects a series of key "story sketches" from the storyboard of the whole drama and narrows the scope, TINT is set to switch scenes according to the mood and atmosphere of the plot. In order to give people a sense of freshness, like the scene where Mulan dressed up before the blind date, the production designer designated a more pink color, and the background painter drew accordingly. In addition, like the scene of Mulan in training, the background turned orange at last, just because it gave people a feeling of blood rushing. And the scene of burning down the village. In order to highlight the play, two strong colors, red and black, are used to create a murderous and bloody color contrast.

According to the color script, you can also decide whether to switch from one scene to another, whether to have strong contrast or to be smooth and harmonious. Color affects the changes of the audience's subconscious emotions, and the ups and downs can be fully grasped by using color scripts.

Sixth, sound.

This part is in charge of the "sound department" of the studio, and its work includes role dubbing, sound effects, songs, music and so on.

● dubbing

The "voice director" in the department is responsible for finding voice actors and singers who are suitable for the role of the story. This part must closely cooperate with the modeling design and personality of the role, for example, give a lovely little girl a naive and lovely voice to make her sound like a person; Or, uncharacteristically, give a big fat man with a kind character a sharp voice to create the opposite effect; Or "Lao Yao", like Mulan, looks like Zhang Fei, and has the hoarse and careless voice of movie actor Harvey Fierstein, which is very consistent with Lao Yao's character and is a very successful example.

On the role dubbing, Disney adopted a "pre-recorded" way, which is different from the "post-dubbing" of Taiwanese or Japanese animation. Disney recorded the sound first, and then the animator animated it according to the sound track, so that the characters and the sound would be opposite and the expression would be easier to grasp. If, like Japanese animation, you draw first and then call the voice actor, then there will often be flaws in the emotional connection. For example, if the character says a sentence, if the length of time is not well controlled, there will be a dilemma that the character's mouth is still moving, but the sentence has been finished, so the voice actor is forced to think of redundant lines taken out of context.

After the pre-recording is recorded by dubbing, the sound reader decomposes the weight of syllables and lines on the sound tape on the machine, and marks them on a piece of paper called "rule table", "exposure table" or "exposure table" (X-Sheet for short). The vertical bar above the law table represents the hierarchy, and each horizontal bar represents a frame of the film. Every eight frames is a segment, two segments are a segment (35mm film), and three segments are 24 frames per second. After each syllable is decomposed, the animator draws the export pattern according to the syllable. This is why Disney's characters speak absolutely vividly. The director and animator must be present when recording. They must communicate with the dubbing staff and tell them what kind of emotion they want. For example, a simple "no!" Different emotions will have different expressions, depending on how the director asks.

● Songs

Song is another weapon to express inner feelings in drama, especially a good song that makes people unforgettable and catchy. Disney comics have risen in the form of Broadway music in the past decade, and songs are everywhere. But the song must be able to cut into the plot naturally, not abrupt, and promote the plot; The lyrics should be more suitable for the role situation, not just for singing, otherwise the whole plot will stagnate and become a "concert", which will destroy the tension of the drama. If the voice actor and singer are not the same person, it is more important to find a singer with the same tone. Disney usually finds famous composers and lyricists to write songs.

● Sound effects and music

In the pre-production stage, only the music and sound effects materials that can be found in the workshop are used temporarily. Of course, the "sound department" is also actively looking for composers suitable for the film soundtrack. Character dubbing, sound effects, songs and soundtracks are simply mixed together for story video.

Seven, the story video

At this stage, it is a very important step in animation production. Generally, the domestic animation industry often omits or fails to make good use of the "story scroll". The story video is actually the same as the so-called "Animatic or Leica Scroll" in the general industry. The "Development Editorial Department" scans the story outlines on the story board into the computer one by one, with dialogues (sometimes artists are temporarily arrested to dub the background characters) and short sound effects and music, and edits them into story videos in the form of movies or videos; Is to add the element of "time" to the storyboard. Through the story video, we can further and more accurately grasp the time sequence and ups and downs of the plot in the film.

When the production team watches the story video together, they can clearly see whether the story is flawed. Especially for non-production audiences, because their positions are objective and fresh, which can more faithfully reflect the effect of the film. If no one laughs at the intentional joke in the film, then we know it's wrong. We should consider whether there are not enough jokes, or whether they happen at an inappropriate time, or whether they need to be deleted and redone completely. Through story video, finding and solving story problems before making can avoid a lot of waste of manpower and financial resources in future making, which is particularly important for cartoons.

The story outline in the story video will be gradually replaced by the draft animation with the progress of production, and then the animation will be gradually replaced by the painting scene and gradually evolve into the final animated film. The sound part also evolved into the final result.

Eight. exercise book

Another important part of feature film production is the "workbook", which is a storyboard for further imagination. Before all storyboards were sketches, there was no clear information about mirror movement and background details, only sketches of characters (movements and expressions). In this stage of the works, film visual language will be added, such as the movement of mirrors and the change of photography angle, so as to strengthen the tension of the drama. In TV animation, storyboards and workbooks are the same thing, and there is no difference.

"Pre-production" is the most interesting part of the work, and the planning department is full of laughter, music and reading. If you are quiet, you will know that the film has hit a bottleneck or something is wrong.

At this point, the "pre-production" part has come to an end, with the final color, styling table and workbook, which are the blueprints for future production, and all the "production" operations will be subject to this.