Morevna Project presents
“Pepper & Carrot” is an animated adaptation of a comic
created by a French artist David Revoy.
David makes the comic and our team produces its animated version.
Now we are working on a new episode,
And it is already at the phase of Production.
I can describe in general terms the steps we go trough
To make a comic an animated one.
Firstly, the director makes a draft animation
out of moveless pictures, decides on the duration of each frame
and on the general directions of moves made by the characters and other objects in the frame.
The author draws some picture and it does already imply
Some movement in itself. The director has to track this movement
and to understand what did the author mean by it.
Meanwhile we record a draft voice acting
We just record reading the text aloud.
Good morning, Sir
Could I have eight of these pumpkin stars?
Here. 60 Ko for all of them.
oops...
I am sorry I will have only four of them.
Rhrr!
We read aloud and record the words to understand
How much time the dialog would take and get its tempo right.
Simultaneously, we choose the music.
That is to say we create a soundtrack draft and
Combine it with the draft visual.
That's what they call an animatic.
It gives us the overall picture
and the general idea of what we need to do.
The potion contest
Lucky me, I still have a whole day to prepare!
Let's win this challenge!
Sometimes we add some new scenes, we discuss how to get
the best of some things that can be perfectly understandable in the comic
But need some correction when turned into an animation.
We have the comic, and it has already been directed, hasn't it?
The artist drew all of these scenes and arranged them in the right order.
However while editing I understand that some of these scenes
need an interlink to connect the previous one to the next.
That why sometimes I have to come up with something and to draw some extra details.
Take for instance this scene with Saffron and coins.
I thought it would be great to take a close-up
of them and her tossing them.
There's nothing of this in the comic, but it links the frames
that were there quite well.
All these done, we take up the phase of Production.
I am the director of the project. I know which aim
every single scene serves. Having arranged all of them, I assign
the tasks for the animators and artists.
Every picture is to be cut into several parts.
The characters should be separated from the background.
Then we must add some details to the objects or characters,
As, characters removed from the background,
We must fill the empty space left behind them.
If a character is meant to move, then some parts of this character
are also to be added and drawn by us. In a moveless picture someone's
can be hidden by another object but if the character is walking
the hand must be also drown by us.
Blinking is an ordinary case. We have to draw
Closed eyes, opened eyes and half-opened eyes.
I always try to assign as little work as I can
as it would be done faster, as I already now what is to be moved
And what is not. I just ask
For this head to be cut and that part not to be.
This is what our artists do.
My task is to draw the lacking parts
and prepare all materials for the animation.
We use an open source program Krita for drawing and editing pictures.
I draw the characters, the position of eyes and mouth
the background and some other details
for everything to be smooth and for the animator to be more comfortable to work.
Sometimes I have to edit some frames from the comic
and the changes can be quite dramatic.
Sometimes we can change the lighting
or composition of the frame. For instance in the sixth scene
I am sorry I will have only four of them.
Rhrr!
Good morning, dearest sir!
We decided to remove the fruits and veg to make an emphasis on the character
There were too much details and the scene was too overloaded.
So we redesigned the market a bit
and extended the background to take a panoramic shot.
It was very important to keep the author's style
and make it work with the other drawings in harmony.
Then we import all these pictures into Blender.
To scene has to be done right, everything must be prepared
for us to link the parts we need with the bones.
This is the work for a rigger and a scene assembler
In our team it is done by the same person.
For the preparing we use a plug-in call CoaTools.
The animators do the final version of what you will see on the screen.
The animating is the most labor-intensive step. Every single bit of attention
is being paid to creating of movements, for them to look good,
to fulfill the director's idea and fit the tempo
and composition of the animatic.
The animator works the movement trough and add some details.
If a character is walking then they must have their legs
arms, shoulders and head moving. And if they are speaking, they must have
their lips moving and eyes blinking,
The hair and clothes also move as the character moves.
We use the program Blender for the animating.
Blender is a powerful program for creating
3D animation and models. But we use it to create an animated comic.
It fits this purpose quite well..
Especially being used together with the plug-in called CoaTools.
There are some more peculiar things in our work.
For example our animators also work with Particle Systems.
No point in drawing the smoke when we can create
a beautiful smoke simulation in two clicks.
Some really small details, small effects, particles and the wind.
We apply them to the backgrounds very often.
After the animation is finished, of course,
there will be a final voicing. The cartoon will be shown
the actors who will do the professional voice acting.
They record the voices which are to be mixed to the sound effects
And only then we will have a finished cartoon.
The process of our production can be perfectly seen-trough.
We will leave a link in the description of this video. You can follow it
and see the list of tasks we are currently working on.
See precisely who is working on each one
track the process of its completing and the discussion in its topic.
For example there we can see a task for animating
we cal see all interim variants which are discussed with the director
And how we get this final variant.
Another example, here we have preparing of a picture for animation
There we have a precise task how to cut this picture.
The artist post the interim steps of the work
for everybody to be able to see and discuss it.
If something is wrong the director can intervene or make
some correction or say "everything is great"
At the moment we are working on the third episode. It's a simple one
if one were to compare it to the previous. However I think that it will take us
about four months to finish it. Which episode is to be done next
will be decided by voting of our sponsors
who support us on Patreon.
We will keep on tracking of the process of working on this episode
and the next ones. If you want to keep up with our work
you can follow us in social networks.
All the links are in description.
That was all. Thank you for your attention and see you later in the next episodes.
Goodbye!