Skip the exposition and cut to the chase.
Caravan Palace - Lone Digger is today’s featured animation.
If you can’t handle blood or cage dancing, don’t watch it.
If you don’t know what cage dancing is, don’t watch it.
Here we go!
And now begins my usual quest to dig up how the animation was made.
So here I am sifting through the Director and Art Director Double Ninja, the Production
Company Cumulus, the Illustrator Jérémie Balais, who is also one of the animators alongside
Jeff le Bars and my gosh I really need to learn French.
Also editing by Thomas Vernay.
Somebody had mentioned to me that this animation was probably rotoscoped.
What that means in animation terms is that an animator made 3D models, animated them,
and then made 2D animation on top of it.
That would be a very inefficient way to make this video.
I’m not saying it’s not possible, it would just take a needlessly long time.
Rotoscoping is something you do when you have a lot, lot of frames.
Say Freak of the Week level smoothness.
I’ve been learning how much of a pain in the butt 3D animation is.
So why would you make a 3D animation just to put papercraft style 2D drawings on top
of it?
Nope.
Given Jeremie Balais is credited as an illustrator, what we are looking at here is probably pieces
of 2D papercraft style drawings on top of 2D animation: a much more efficient way to
get this style of animation versus also dealing with 3D models.
Due to the anthropomorphic nature of the characters, you could actually shoot live action footage
and draw on top of that.
But if you look at Jeremie’s work, I say it’s just 2D.
He’s worked together with the other Lone Digger animator Jeff le Bars before.
Both of them are phenomenal 2D animators.
Jeff also knows 3DSmax.
That could account for a few of these backgrounds.
Some of the distortions here look like After Effects, which may be Jeff’s doing since
he has that program on his resume too.
The reason the motion of the animals in Lone Digger looks so human is because the animators
carefully study live footage of people to figure out how they should move.
It doesn’t mean they drew on top of the footage or used digital 3D models.
Jeremie’s “Making of Film de Cube” video shows you how he creates an animation by studying
references and then making original drawings in TVPaint.
Studying real life is key for animation.
Heck, we can even play a game where we watch Lone Digger and guess what parts would’ve
needed references to study, and whether or not that reference was human or animal.
The dancer is more animated than anybody else in the club and has very specific, smooth
body movements.
You would have to watch somebody dancing this way to know how to animate it.
Human reference.
Snakes have a very characteristic motion when they are about to strike.
Animal reference.
Hands.
I would be making the same motion with my hands and studying it to draw this.
Human reference.
Generic motion from the donkey - no reference needed.
When I say reference, I don’t mean exact video clip of the motion you need.
It’s more finding a similar motion and studying how it works so you could draw it from any
angle.
Watching how the muscles and anatomy and timing work out for that particular movement.
I draw a lot of animals so I frequently find myself watching slow motion videos of animals
running, walking, or jumping.
Slow motion of snakes catching prey.
Slow motion videos are the best.
Overall, I’d say the most interesting thing about Lone Digger is the art style.
It looks like somebody hit the Posterize button in Photoshop a bunch due to the thick pieces
of solid color with no outlines and drastic hardline shading.
Other than that I was surprised so many people wanted to hear about this since storywise
all it is is varsity jacket dudes showing up to a night club and everybody dies in a
bloody, sexy dancing massacre.
Hold on, let me just wipe the blood from my eyes.
Oh wow, you all died.
Ugh.
I need a paycheck and a shower.
After that mess, have a soothing animation by ClaweyesTheWingedWolf made in FlipAClip.
And some traditional art by Justin M. I still have to do the eating dog food episode.
Ultimate floofy cheeks on Laune’s drawing.
I brush them every day!
A sketch of my profile picture by Jonathan Z and me being regal and fuzzy by northstar576.
Here’s the link to places you can submit art.
Thanks for watching.
Thanks for writing.
Thanks for drawing and thanks for Patreoning!
Patroning.
Paparoniing ning aring nign ing.