Conclusion::
After the compositing, it was clear that there were a few combinations which worked well. In particular these were the sequences with no shadow, and no background. The background was then left either as white, or the original paper. Both are sucessfull in slightly different ways. The animation with white background is very clean, as you would expect from a 3D style perhaps. The animation with the original paper background is much grittier, with much more character.
Backgrounds aside, the overall process has been sucessfull. The 3D animation now has a distinct 2D effect which does not look like anything I have seen produced before, certainly not using the same techniques. The 2D fluidity is there, brought across from the accurate 3D animation. The character has lost the hard shape and volume that 3D gives it though, with a much softer character jumping accross screen.
Of course there are problems with this approach. For one, there is a lot more work involved in producing a piece. All the usual planning has to be carried out, but this time none of the usual pipelines match. Each task has to be broken down into which technique would be best for the job, or whether a combination is called for. The 2D work is time consuming in itself and anyone attempting this should consider other ways of achieving the same thing, such as shaders which immitate hand drawn media.
Three dimentional animation will never replace traditional methods, or vice versa. What is interesting to see is when both techniques are combined to achieve something that neither could do alone. Here this can be seen first hand, with 3D modeling and animation together with 2D hand finish and compositing skills combined to produce a short animation of a cute puppy jumping through a hoop.
Innovations Project:: Daniel Canfora MMI
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