Category: cartoon

Rhuben

Rhuben

Let me introduce head gardener Rhuben Cushstead, a man so well-versed in all things rhubarb that you’d go to considerable efforts to avoid striking up a conversation on the subject with him, if you spotted him in the pub.

gardener

I’ve designed Rhuben to be a narrator in the opening Brief History of Rhubarb section of my animation for next month’s Rhubarb Festival. In the original comic strip, a Victorian gardener makes a brief appearance, followed by a couple of frames about the cultivation of forced rhubarb, so it made sense in my animation to have the gardener himself addressing the audience directly.

I can think of several gardeners I know who would be brilliant doing the voiceover for Rhuben, but to keep things simple, it’s going to have to be my voice. But that’s quite appropriate as whenever I record a voiceover it always sounds exactly like the kind of character ‘that you’d go to considerable efforts to avoid striking up a conversation with, if you spotted him in the pub.’

Culpeper on Rhubarb

When rhubarb arrived in Europe, it was prized as a medicine:

“It is under the dominion of Mars . . . It is good against venomous bites.”

Nicholas Culpeper, 1653

In my Rhubarb Festival animation, A Brief History of Rhubarb, herbalist Nicholas Culpeper will be giving the 17th century equivalent of a TED Talk. In the final version he’ll have his own version of a Power Point slide to point at: a scroll nailed to the wall. I’ll record a line of dialogue, so his mouth and eyes will be animated and, yes, that impressive moustache will twitch expressively too.

Marco Polo’s Rhubarb

Today’s snippet of animation: Marco Polo visit the mountains of Tangut, China, where he finds rhubarb in great abundance.

In the final version there will be some lip-synced dialogue, eye movement and some twitching of the moustache. And I won’t be able resist having the top of his hat moving a little.

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Categorized as cartoon

Ghengis Khan’s Rhubarb

Ghengis Khan’s men bring two camel-loads of rhubarb back from China in today’s test animation. Still going through the basics, I’m adding voiceover, titles and sound effects (yes, me tapping on a cardboard box is intended to represent a camel’s footsteps).

Chinese Rhubarb Medicine

Chinese rhubarb medicine

My next cartoon illustrates the use of powdered rhubarb as a medicine in China, 2,700 years ago.

Strong medicine

Experimenting with animation, I came up with this warped out-of-register effect, which could be an appropriate way to suggest the malady affecting the over-indulgent mandarin.

Mammoth

mammoth

This mammoth looks exactly like my original frame from the Short History of Rhubarb comic strip from my Walks in the Rhubarb Triangle, except that it isn’t cropped (the tips of the tusks and the mammoth’s rear end are missing in comic) and, despite the flat colours, I’ve now reformatted it in eight separate layers, so that I can animate individual features like the trunk and the eyes.

Mammoth’s Trunk

My next step in Adobe Character Animator has been to rig my drawing of the mammoth’s trunk by adding a fixed point and a movable point, joined by a series of nine ‘sticks’ which act like a string of beads, so that the movement of the trunk isn’t too shapeless and elasticated.

The background is added to the scene in just the same way as you’d add an additional character, although so far I’m not intending to add any movement to it. I can always come back and add a ripple effect to the river or have the rhubarb leaves swaying in the breeze, but so far I’m concentrating on the essential action needed to tell my story.

After Effects

I’ve added a couple of finishing touches in another Adobe program, After Effects, with a title and a snow effect. I probably won’t go for snow in the final version, but I couldn’t resist trying it out.

Siberia, 30,000 years ago . . .

Siberia

For my Rhubarb Festival animation, I’m going right back to the beginning, to ‘Southern Siberia, 30,000 years ago . . .’

My first little sequence, A Brief History of Rhubarb, goes back to the last ice age, when rhubarb thrived in the cold winters and in rich, moist soil. It’ll be an epic production, I’ve already got my mammoth poised to stroll across the vast open spaces of the tundra.

I’ve redrawn this illustration from my Walks in the Rhubarb Triangle booklet in HD format and in several layers, so that I can animate the mammoth’s trunk appearing from the top left of the screen and plucking what looks like a luscious leaf. Spoiler alert: that mammoth is going to be disappointed.

Character Animator

Lesson one, in Adobe Character Animator is to edit and lip-sync a simple face. The built-in microphone on my iMac seemed a bit distant. Once I’d exported the animation to Adobe Premiere Pro, I deleted the original track and re-recorded the voice using a microphone. I used a filter on the vocal track to make it sound more close-up and tried a special effect that aims to ‘thicken’ my voice.

My attempts to add a music track were, predictably, dreadful but just to try out the process of adding a backing track, I tapped on an empty treacle tin.

Hopefully having learnt some of the principles, I can now get on and produce something more intriguing.