Las cosas de Lohen: enero 2009

How to make your own animation movie (Like mine, BWAHAHAHA)
Haz tu propia peli de animación (Como la mia, JUAJUAJUAA (Es mi risa malvada)

BY LOHENHART
Por Lohenhart (esto no hacía falta traducirlo, creo)

This is my response to all that people who wants to know how I make my movie: DUEL. Of course, this is just the way I did, and is not the best to do, but I hope it could be helpful to all you.

Como mucha gente me ha pedido (tres personas) he hecho un tutorial de como hice mi cortico de animación: "Duelo", hace ya unos años atrás. Pero vamos, no es más que una excusa pa poner algo aqui en el blog.

¡FROSTIS!

Also, you can watch here the animation shortfilm:

Ansqui podéis ver la mierda, amiguitos:

1-Materials.
This is what you need: Pencil, rubber, sharpener, a paper packet (500 sheets aprox). And a Pc with scanner and programs like Photoshop and Macromedia Flash. And of course, lots of patience, folks.

Look for a great music you like and imagine a story in it, if is your first time, look for some thing easy and dont complicated, this is very important, dont try to create the best story of your life, this maybe turn really confunsing and boring.

If you have the music, make your first drawings, dont try to make it great, this draws is only for you, be fast and follow the rythm of the music. Many draws, many ideas you have to use after.

3-Plannig all together
Before to start animating, choose all the drawings you did (in the last step), and build your story, like an Storyboard, from the start, to the end.

Is a good idea, to hear the music at the same time, and count the time where is sounding that part of the drawing in the music.

4-Animate it
This is the most difficult part. I can´t explain you how to animate, because thats is very extend and complicated to explain in a few lines. My advice is you must learn from the best animations you like, and make it yours. If you´re idea is to did more than 3 mins, man, good luck, thats is TONS of work. Look, my animation was 2 minutes aprx, and I did 854 drawings. If is your fisrt animation try with something more short, like 1 min or less. And, of course, enjoy! Animate is hard, but at the end, is very funny!!

Anime series like Afro Samurai or Samurai Champloo inspires me a lot when I did this animation. And of course, the little Naruto.

5- Photoshop and Flash.
Once you have done all your animation, is time to scan, the most boring part of the process.
After, use Photoshop to resize the images, make transparency, or coloured it (I did it in Black and White). With all that, mount it in Flash, making the layers you need for your characters, and your backgrounds.

Set your preferences first. 25 fps is the full, but works great at 12 frames to.

Import your images scanned to the Flash library. You can use PNG with alpha to work with transparency, thats a great idea, to put your character in front of the background.

Now, First, you must take your drawings and put them in each layer (For example, your character in the top layer, and the background on the bottom)

Use the panel "align" to fit the images to the dimensions of the stage.

6-FINISH!

Whoah, now is finished! Maybe it take to you to finish a few weeks, or months, but never discourage, if you hate what you are doing, start again, and again... And remember, you never will do it, if you dont try to do it! (this is my advice, like Yoda or something) I hope, this was helful to you, see ya!