Richard Bell's nature sketchbook since 1998
This morning at Newmillerdam I drew the fishing platform for the opening frame of my Ode to a Duck cartoon and photographed a beech tree for this background for the squirrel/wood pigeon duo. You can already sense the natural chemistry between them.
For his waddle-on cameo in my Ode to a Duck cartoon, the wood pigeon is supposed to be empathic and concerned rather than ranting and irate, but, if you’re familiar with wood pigeons you’ll know that they have a limited repertoire.
The line work was drawn in Lamy fountain pen in my sketchbook. I’ve combined two of my sketches and coloured them in Photoshop. I kept testing the Photoshop PSD file in Adobe Character Animator, to make sure things were turning out more or less as intended.
I haven’t added the blink yet, as I did for the squirrel this morning, but this character is evidently the unblinking sort.
Next up, a foraging moorhen . . .
I got the mouth working yesterday, this morning the eyes and, who knows, I might eventually get that bushy tail swishing around.
My latest sketchbook-to-screen character is the beech mast-gathering squirrel, partially inspired by seeing enthusiastic gardener and seed-collector Carol Klein on last night’s Gardeners’ World. I’d love to get her to do the voice-over.
My latest Ode to a Duck screen test and the great-crested grebe is struggling with his motivation in scene 2.
Using Adobe Character Animator and Photoshop, I’ve used a sketchbook drawing as the basis for my ‘puppet’. So, just the beak-sync to add . . . all 14 mouth movements.
We’ve started shooting, and the duck’s looking a bit worried about that.
I’ve dived in to the mysteries of Adobe Character Animator and I like the way the simple ‘puppets’ that you create in the program can be so expressive. Other aspects such as how to stop the character floating about are a mystery – although the duck might be quite relieved to hear that.
Lip-sync and bill-sync are working well though.
T'was the last week of summer And, down by the lake, We hear the sad quack Of a hungry old drake.
The grebes and the tufted ducks Dabble and dive But our poor drake is struggling Just to survive.
The foraging moorhen
Has plenty of luck,
But that doesn't extend
To the desolate duck.
In the woods, the grey squirrels
Eat beech-nuts galore,
But our poor drake is starving
Down here on the shore.
I know what you’re thinking:
‘I’ll give him some bread!’ –
But just one mouldy bread crust
Can leave a duck dead.
This ode to a duck Might not be the best, But what were you expecting? - I'm not Colin West!
Cartoon ducks drawn at Newmillerdam this morning. We didn’t see any drake mallards in breeding plumage, so my guess is that they’re all in eclipse plumage, and we’ll see their true colours appear in the autumn.
James, appearing on my most recent homemade birthday card, is the plucky test pilot for my latest experiment in animation. Like the fox, this was adapted from an existing pen and watercolour comic, using Clip Studio Paint on the iMac and on my iPad Pro. It’s a whole lot easier to cut out the component parts using an Apple Pencil for the Selection Pen and Eraser.
My thanks to Tielmanc for his step-by-step tutorial Animate Your Existing Characters | Keyframes Tutorial, which popped up in a Clip Studio Paint e-mail yesterday. He makes the point that you don’t need to redraw a character to animate it, just carefully break up your drawing into component parts and fill in the missing areas.
His example was a farmer dog, so I’ve gone for this cartoon I drew of the fox that visits our garden.
Now that I’m not completely foxed about the principles involved, I can go on to something more ambitious.
Animate Your Existing Characters | Keyframes Tutorial
I’ve gone Cinerama format for my latest birthday card which continues the Lost in Space theme of the previous card.
How would you serve afternoon tea in zero G?
