Hey, this is a show. Here’s what it’s called. It’s about animation. Today’s
topic of choice is animating with vectors versus animating with rasters. Now, if you
don’t know what that means listen up!
Raster based images are made out of pixels. MS Paint, Photoshop, and pretty much the majority
of drawing programs are raster based. The important thing for animation about this is
that with images made with raster programs get more and more pixelly as you zoom in.
That’s bad news for animation. It means if you didn’t make your drawing big enough,
when you go to zoom in, the quality is going to be ptbbhphph. Bad.
Which brings us to vector images. Vectors are made out of math. The computer calculates
what goes where, so you can zoom in or out and the picture stays the same. This is great
for animation, because you can move your camera around and do whatever you want without worrying.
You can distort the heck out of something, and it's not going to get pixelly. See. Here's
the difference.
So then the question is why doesn’t every animator use vectors? Ah, my answer to you
is this episode’s featured animation, The Bear King. Have a look.
The Bear King is made purely out of raster images. And this is where rasters dominate
vectors: detail. Painted backgrounds, hand drawn characters, things with edge, detail,
painted effects, complex lighting and shading - to accomplish that in a vector program is…
difficult. It’s like comparing a painting to paper craft. If you wanted to make the
painting out of cut up pieces of paper, it would take a very long time and in the end
it still wouldn’t have the same feel as the painting itself.
And The Bear King’s backgrounds are all painted in Photoshop. Ah, but that’s not
all! Notice how these pieces are independent from the main background? How the camera is
zooming in here, but the trees don’t turn into pixels? That’s because animator Kristin
Rakochy planned these shots. She knew the biggest the tree needed to be was this much,
so she drew it that big. Then she was able to zoom out to here. And that's where the
zooming starts. See, zooming out with a raster is fine. No pixelation for zooming out. The
problem is when you zoom in to larger than 100% of the original drawing, and then it...
it.. like look at what I’m doing right now. See. I’m doing it. But I’m a vector, so
you can get as close as you want - OH GEEZE come on! Not that close. I know it’s the
internet and everything, but personal space. Sheesh.
The characters in The Bear King are also rasters. In fact, they are all hand drawn on paper,
scanned into the computer, and then colored in ToonBoom Harmony. Again, this is fine,
as long as the drawings on the paper are big enough for your animation. If they’re bigger
than needed after scanning it’s easy to scale them down on the computer. So bigger
is better. With rasters, yeah. Better to draw too big than to draw too small.
I really wish we could get a 1080 or even 720 resolution of The Bear King. I want to
see this spectacular scene transition sharp and clear, without the blurriness! (sigh)
By the way, the style of Kristin’s hand drawn animation is what gives the characters
that raw edgy look to them. Even when they’re standing still the lines are moving. It’s
a technique that is time consuming because when the character isn’t moving you still
have to draw it again anyway so the lines around it are different every time and they
keep changing to give you that effect.
In terms of the story of the video, what I want to know is - which animal is this guy?
Or does he not have an animal side?
That’s all for now. See you next week.