Some time ago I decided to recover my animation skills and make some videos for the YouTube shorts format. The main challenge was to do them as quickly as possible and with the least effort and with the highest possible quality that will turn out.
I had thinking a little and decided that it would be useful to share some working progress details.
I used my exercise of running cycle. It was an ugly thing drawn for a minute: runing thing.sifz (16.0 KB)
I cut out from original picture parts of the character (legs and body with car) an place it into right places of scene. Also I used deformation bones to make legs flexible. Here is a zip file sources of that: man with car.zip (770.6 KB)
Next one is pretty unusual work for my. Almost whole things in it was done just with pencil drawing on paper using sort of light table. So it is as close to traditional animation as it possibly. I’ve used Synfig only to bind all the parts together and to make a movement of rainy cloud on background.
Sounds I found in internet but one of them (birds singing) recorded by my own in local park. Also narrator is me.
Original picture by borya_spec:
Link to video (eng subs included): Мордоворот #анимация #странныйюмор - YouTube
New day new reel! This time I used composition of still picture and pencil animation over it. water rippling was made with Skeleton Deformation. The fish cut out from another picture by same artist.
Background sound was recorded by my in local park (except splash. It was found in internet). Men’s voice is me, and women’s is AI.
Next one contain the really strange humor. It is also based on the picture by borya_spec. The point is in the text on the picture. It is wrong quote of very famous in Russia song from early 80-th. Originally it should to be something like:
the antique clock is still ticking
the antique clocks - witnesses and judges
But the artist changed just one word “clock” (in russian sounds like “chasy”) into “scales” (weight measuring device in russian sounds like “vesy”) And we got a wierd sentence:
the antique scales is still walking
the antique scales - witnesses and judges
An then the artist depicted it literally.
This animation rise from two my exercise of walking cycle. For reason of authentic soundtrack should be taken from that old song and I really tried to but it turned out boring and dull. So I used a little part of song “The Moonflower Society” by AVANTASIA. You can find it on youtube it has amazing animated clip!
One more time I widely used classical animation technique of pencil drawing. In Synfig I composed different little pieces together. Aladdin’s arm was animated with Skeleton Deformation same as arms of Kind Gas Mask. Also bone deformation was used for waving of water and little tree.
Video was clued up from two shots which was animated separately.
All the sounds downloaded from internet, narrator is me.
An ordinary miracle.
Aladdin rubbed the lamp.
Sparks erupted from the lamp, and a Kind Gas Mask appeared.
Instead of three wishes, he gave Aladdin a wooden protractor
Next video based on old 4-panel comix from 2000-ths (and it’s not by borya_spec). In far 2010 I tried to animate this but result was bad. At that time I not yet discovered Synfig. Now I made new attempt using my new skills and new advanced Synfig’s features. The ability to work with sound is especially fantastic! Now lipsync in Synfig is as simple as never before.
There is no frame-by-frame animation (except for background) just work with vertex and move- and rotate- layers.
Voice acting by me but with light pitch correction.
