This is Scribble Kibble, a weekly show about animation made by an animator. Most episodes
feature an animation and talk about how it was made, some episodes are tutorials, and
there is the rare guest episode or cartoon here and there.
Scribble Kibble comes out a week early in Full HD 1080p on Vessel and in the Scribble
Den for Patreon (or Paypal) members.
Today’s feature is a very short sequence from a game called Transistor. It’s one
of those games, hm, how can I describe it? Words can’t describe, the game is a song,
it’s a story, it’s an… it’s an experience. Every piece is so well intertwined you can’t
tell where one begins and the other ends.
The cut scenes are painted illustrations. Illustrations are detailed pieces of still
art. They have many more colors, lights, and shadows than animations. You cannot make a
long animation using illustrations by traditional means. It would take a lifetime.
But you can still make animations out of illustrations. I’ve talked about motion capture, puppet
pin tools, backgrounds. Transistor is more simple than that. I’ll show you.
There. A story. With nothing more than some carefully planned art, music, and a little
bit of effects.
Each of these elements is a separate piece of art. That way you can layer them on top
of eachother and move the pieces around without revealing unfinished artwork or white space
underneath.
To make them move at different speeds, you could do it by hand, say, put a keyframe at
the beginning and at the end and adjust the positioning. OR, much easier, set up a main
camera that pans from left to right, and position each piece of art at a different z-axis position.
The z axis is your 3D plane. Y coordinates are up or down, X coordinates are left or
right, Z is forward or back.
With these different Z coordinates, we create depth in the shot. Things closer to the camera
pan faster, and when you zoom in or out, pieces get bigger or smaller faster depending on
how close to the camera they are. That’s how I set up Scribble Kibble environments.
But in this Transistor sequence, the characters farther away are moving faster. So these position
coordinates are likely done by hand, either all individually, or in addition to the base
3D camera. You set up the 3D environment and then also tween stuff because it’s moving,
not just standing there. Like the sword, which gets launched in this direction. And the man
who rushes out to take the blow.
By the way, he is one painting, duplicated, with a mask over the top half so when the
sword hits it, it slides over the bottom half of the painting but under the masked top half.
The sword is sandwiched between the two copies of the man.
On top of your art are lighting effects. Some are simple faded circles. Others are particle
effects that create little floating sparkles and light flashes. And there are light rays
placed here and on top of the triangle symbol on the jacket here. There is also a very light
fog effect on top of the art. All of this is to make the piece more dynamic and animated
looking than it would be with only the still art.
The whole piece is timed to the music, so the climactic moment here in the animation
is punctuated by the climax in the song itself. The lyrics give additional meaning to what
is happening, but you miss out on that part without the context of the game.
The animation seamlessly fades into the 3D game environment.
It’s so simple but so incredibly effective.
Planning the lyrics in the music, the instrumentation, the art, and the events to all work out to
happen at the same time is a skill for sure, but you could make this without being an animator.
If you can make illustrations but not animation, you could still make this cut scene.
Cease and desist Cease and desist
You want me to stop what I’m doing now And put my pencil down
Doesn’t matter if it’s paid or free Stamp out every bit of creativity
It won’t stop you if the use is fair You don’t care
Cease and desist Cease and desist
You want me to stop what I’m doing now And put these lyrics down
Put ‘em down.
Well I won’t.
Hmph.