Mixing 2D + 3D (Making of Cowboy Story 5)

Hello Patrons, for this post I'll be delving into the process and my lessons learned for the three "3D" scenes in Gildedguy & the Green-Eyed Cowboy. These were some of the more spectacular cuts in the animation, and a lot of work (maybe too much work!) went into them.

Palace Scene

With the attention span of viewers becoming ever more demanding, I always attempt to "WOW" viewers on the very first "drop" of the song. Musically, the drop tends to be the catchy part of the music, sometimes referred to as the chorus. 

The first drop of "Jesse James" occurs just 0:42 seconds in. To distinguish Gildedguy's dream world, a distinct change in color palette and animation quality had to occur. Hence the idea of using THREE DEE!

3D modelling allows for more aggressive, ambitious camera movements. Instead of me eyeballing the perspective, the computer can automatically calculate the right angle to draw rigid structures like houses. Or in this case, a giant palace.

After modelling the palace in Blender (~2 days work), a PNG sequence of a Blender camera movement was exported, then imported into Flash. A week was spent tediously tracing, and inking over the PNGs. I was aided in this endeavor via inking assistance. 

The palace was inspired by the Roman temple featured at the end of Civilization 4's Baba Yetu animation (computer game). I felt it was important to animate the stairs bursting out to depict that Gildedguy was imagining the scene into existence.

Throne Room Scene

The following 3D cut was to further depict Gildedguy not as just rich, but also wealthy with seemingly endless income. I think it's important to represent not only current material wealth, but also the potential for future prosperity. Invest wisely! It's just another form of freedom that Gildedguy (and most artists) dream of. 

The palace exterior scene was rather tedious, so for this cut, traditional Flash motion-tweens were used to automatically move 2D shapes around. There was still tracing involved, but significantly less this time around.

Although the final look appears less 3D, I am happy with the time saved in labor.

Rotating Bar Scene

The final cut where I heavily integrated 3D was the rotating bar scene, which was by far the most difficult scene I've ever animated. The point was to show the Cowboy as not merely greedy, but generous as well. 

It was important to spin the camera so that we could see the Green-Eyed Cowboy's expression. Because, like any donor would, he takes a moment to soak in the praise from happy peers.  

An existing Patreon Post further covers the techniques employed, which is available here. 

Lessons Learned

• Do not underestimate the labor involved in rotoscoping 3D of any kind (3D models, live footage).
• Expect to animate on SINGLES (1 frame per every 1/24 second) if you want a seamless look.
• Keep the object count LOW. I failed pretty hard on this for the bar scene. 
• Abuse automated motion tweens where you can. Static objects that can be treated like front facing billboards (only root position change, no perspective change) are good for this.
• If you can, utilize 2D looking textures on your 3D models so that you don't have to trace them at all.
• Get proficient at using your choice of 3D modelling software (I use Blender).

Although I moan about all the extra work thrown into these scenes, I am thankful I had the opportunity to tackle them. 3D opens a lot of doors, and has forced me to think more economically and intelligently about how I plan these "spectacle" scenes.

(◙◙)