How to design traditional comics

The meaning of animation is broad and vague. When we say animation, we mean cartoons or cartoons. For example, Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck, Teenage Ninja Turtles, Cherry Maruko and so on. Admittedly, animation creation is a complex and huge project, which is usually designed by some powerful companies, such as Disney Company of the United States, Toyo Corporation of Japan, Animation Design Department of China CCTV, etc. However, with the development of science and technology, especially computer technology, many small-scale animation design companies and private studios have begun to appear in the animation design industry, which was originally monopolized by these big companies and studios. These small-scale animation design companies and private studios can also create excellent works.

Let's take a look at the design process of traditional animation. On the basic design steps, traditional animation and modern animation are basically the same in design. Designing an animated cartoon is a tedious process, which requires the cooperation of many departments, including Qi Xin. We can divide the traditional animation design process into 17 steps.

(1) planning. Planning can be understood as planning. Animation design companies, publishers and developers of related products, such as toy designers, plan cartoons that should be developed, predict whether there is a market for such cartoons, study the development cycle of cartoons, raise funds and other issues, and reach a * * * understanding, and there will be a good start.

(2) the script. After making the development plan, you need to create a suitable script. Generally, this task is done by writers. You can write your own scripts, or you can learn from and adapt other people's works. In short, a screenwriter should have a certain cultural background and rich life feelings, and be able to express his understanding and love for life through specific story lines, characters' language and actions.

Compared with creation, adaptation is relatively easy. Whether it is creation or adaptation, scripts are different from novels and have their own characteristics. Generally speaking, the characters' environment should be marked, their movements should be reflected and their dialogues should be accurate.

(3) the story script. After the script is created, it should be changed into a story script, that is, a comic language is used to describe the script. Story scripts are composed of images, words and label descriptions, which are used to express specific scenes. In the story script, the characters, background, photography angle and action in each picture can be drawn simply, without being as detailed as the real animation draft, but the dialogue and sound effects should be clearly marked and the corresponding time should be calculated. Mark the shots and special effects to be applied, such as close-ups and backlighting.

(4) Modeling and art setting. Animators need to create characters in movies. It should have characteristics, but it should not be too complicated. Exaggeration can be used in creation. The shapes of the front, side and back of each word should be clearly explained. The contrast between different characters can be stronger, such as tall, thin and short.

(5) Scene design. The focus of scene design is the environment in which the characters live, whether it is mountains or plains, indoors or outdoors, which country and region, and the places mentioned in the comics must be designed at one time.

(6) composition. With story script, scene design and character modeling, can you draw animation? Of course not. Before that, there is a process of composition. Generally speaking, composition is the dividing line, and planning to composition can be used as the design stage. The process of composition is also very important, and its purpose is to make operation diagrams. The homework map is more detailed, indicating how the characters move, such as position, movement and expression, as well as the lens to be used at each stage. Generally speaking, some people draw characters and their postures, some people draw background pictures to let the characters move in the background, and some people mark the shots to be used.

(7) draw the background. Every frame of animation basically consists of two parts. The lower part is the background, and the upper part is the role. The background is a color picture drawn according to the background part in the composition.

(8) Original painting. The characters, animals and props in the composition should be handed over to the original painter, who will draw the key movements of these characters, animals and so on. Note that this refers to key actions, not every action. The original painting should portray the characters with a sense of life and vivid images.

(9) animation. The animator is the assistant of the original painter, and his task is to make the movements of the characters coherent. The original painting of the original painter only shows the key movements of the role, so the movements of the role are incoherent. Between these key actions, it is necessary to insert and supplement the middle action of the role, which is animation.

The three processes of background, original painting and animation can be summarized as one stage. Usually, in these three processes, people need to draw by hand, so it can be called the hand-drawing stage. This stage is the biggest and most complicated. Because this stage is purely manual work, for a TV cartoon, shooting an episode requires thousands of drawings to be completed every week.

(10) quality management means quality control. Any product has quality requirements, and cartoons are no exception. There are many processes in making an animated film. If a certain process fails to meet the corresponding requirements, it will definitely affect the future production work. Therefore, there must be one person in charge of quality control at each stage.

(1 1) photocopying trace. Photocopy tracing is to copy the lines on animated paper to celluloid. As mentioned earlier, each frame of animation is basically composed of characters and backgrounds. People are superimposed on the background, so you can't directly put the drawings with people on the background, because ordinary paper is opaque or translucent, which will cover the background. Therefore, people need to be transferred to a transparent medium, which is celluloid. Celluloid is a kind of transparent film. The lines on the animated paper are photocopied on celluloid. If some lines are colored, they need to be inserted manually.

(12) Fixed color and coloring. The marked celluloid pieces should be handed over to the coloring department. First of all, determine the color, write the color representative number on each part, and then paint the color. It should be noted here that the colored part is on the back of the celluloid sheet. If painted on the front, the paint on it may cover the animation lines.

(13) General inspection. Overlay the prepared colored background with colored celluloid and check for errors. For example, some characters on a celluloid forget to draw, whether the picture is clean and so on.

(14) photography and printing. The photographer superimposed different layers of color celluloid film and took each photo. The photos taken should be sent to the printing company for development. Note that there is no sound in the picture at this time, and it needs to be edited.

Let me make it clear first that the steps from copying lines to photographic printing have disappeared in the modern animation design industry. In the modern animation design industry, scanners and digital cameras are used to import the background, original drawings and animation drafts into the computer, and then the original drawings and animation drafts are colored in the computer and then mixed with the background.

(15) splicing and nesting. Cut the printed copy into a standard version, which can be called a "set of films" at this time.

(16) dubbing, music and sound effects. The sound effect of a movie is very important. You can invite some stars familiar to the audience to dub. For example, Peisi Chen, who voiced the Monkey King in Lotus Lantern, and Tom Hanks, who voiced the protagonist in Toy Story, can play a very good role. A good soundtrack can add a lot of color to a movie. Even after several years, the story of the movie has faded away, but once you hear the theme music, it brings back infinite memories.

(17) Filter publishing. The pilot film is to invite people from major media, cultural circles, entertainment circles and critics to appreciate and evaluate it. It is good to have a high evaluation, but the most important thing is to be recognized by the audience.

The above process is a traditional animation production process. Modern animation production process is similar to its steps, but there are great differences in processing methods. The most fundamental difference is the introduction of computers. As early as the 1960s, people began to try to process images with computers. In 1980s, with the popularity of personal computers and the development of cg animation processing technology, an unprecedented field-computer graphics manufacturing was opened up. Nowadays, as the most powerful tool for human beings, computers are playing an important role in industrial product design, film and television field, architectural decoration design and so on. Animation design industry is no exception. Can be found in almost all the individual steps above.

Planning, script, story script, modeling and art setting, scene design and composition are indispensable in modern animation design industry, which is called the design stage of animation design here. Of course, compared with the traditional animation design industry, it is still slightly different. For example, you can use a computer to help you design shapes and edit scripts.

Background, original painting and animation are also indispensable in the process of modern animation design. You can draw by hand on paper with a pen, or you can do it completely in the computer. If you can use Metacration's painter software, you can create various types of background images, such as gouache background, watercolor background, oil painting background and so on. You can draw characters in Photoshop and so on. But these are still difficult to achieve, mainly because high-precision plotters are expensive. And our most commonly used handwriting board and drawing board, the mainstream products in China, are still home pressure sensitive, with low accuracy and inaccurate positioning. On the other hand, the price of high-grade plotters is too high, and sometimes they can't be bought, so they need to be customized by special production companies. Conditional users can buy high-grade plotters according to the specific situation and create directly on the computer. There is no condition to completely hand-draw. In the process of modern animation design, all the remaining steps must be completed in the computer.

The main reason for designing animation with computer is that it can reduce the production cost and improve the production efficiency.