10. Animation and Film with Painter

Introduction

WHETHER YOU’RE AN ANIMATOR, film artist, designer, or 3D artist, Painter’s capabilities offer you dozens of practical techniques. Concept artists appreciate the creative freedom offered by Painter’s brushes, textures and effects. If you’re producing an animation or making a movie, many of the techniques and effects shown in this book can be applied to frames in a Frame Stack, Painter’s native animation format, or to an imported movie clip. Although it isn’t a full-featured animation or film-compositing program, Painter is good for making comps so you can preview motion. And Painter gives 3D artists a wide variety of choices for creating natural, organic textures to be used for texture mapping. In addition, the ability to record painting scripts lets you make tutorials to show others how your painting was built and even lets you batch-process a series of images.

Award-winning film artist Ryan Church created Catamaran City using Painter’s brushes and effects. To see more of Church’s work, turn to the gallery at the end of this chapter.

Working with Scripts

Painter’s versatile Scripts feature lets you record your work, and then play the process back, either in Painter or as a QuickTime or AVI (video for Windows) movie. But if you use this feature a lot, you’ll soon discover its limitations—for example, its inability to record some Painter operations can produce a different effect during playback.

The Scripts panel (viewed in List view) with a script chosen. The automatically recorded script is identified by the date and time at the bottom of the list. Click the button on the right side of the Scripts panel bar to open the pop-out menu.

There are two basic kinds of scripts—Painter’s automatically recorded scripts and scripts that are recorded by enabling the Record feature. When you install Painter: The icons with pictures represent scripts that were manually recorded by artists while they worked, to demonstrate various kinds of images that can be created using Painter. If you record your own scripts they will also appear in the Scripts panel. To automatically save a background script as you work, Windows users choose Edit, Preferences, General and Mac OS X users choose Corel Painter, Preferences, General and enable the Auto-record scripts checkbox. Specify the number of days you want Painter to save background scripts in the Auto-Save Scripts For box. The auto-recorded script automatically records all of the operations that you perform during the time limit you choose.

Athos Boncompagni saved a series of scripts when creating La Luna e le Stelle, and played them back at higher resolution to build a larger image. For more information about using scripts in this way, see the tip “Increasing File Resolution with Scripts,” on page 346.

Understanding auto-recorded scripts. When you enable Auto-record script, while you work, Painter transparently records your actions automatically in the background as you work. If you have launched and quit Painter several times during a day, you’ll notice several icons in the Scripts menu list, with the dates and times for each work session listed in the Scripts panel (for instance, “8/12/11 12:46 PM”).

Playing back a complete Auto-recorded Script in which you created and saved more than one image can cause problems. For instance, if you opened a file, added brushstrokes and saved it, playing back the script may result in Painter finding the first file, redrawing your strokes over the image and then resaving over the file.

Editing a script. You can edit the instructions in a script. In the Scripts panel, choose the script that you want to edit from the Script library, then click the button on the upper right of the Scripts panel to open the pop-out menu, and choose Edit Script. The Edit Script dialog contains the script’s instructions in the Script list. Expand the instruction that you want to edit and double-click a parameter within the script. In the parameters dialog, make the changes you desire. Close the dialog box. Click Done to save the changes to the script.

You can use these buttons on the front of the Scripts panel to begin recording a single script (circular button) and to stop recording when you’re finished (left square button).

You can also edit a script by exporting the script and then opening the script file in a text editor. To export a script, open the pop-out menu on the Scripts panel, and then choose Export Script.

Recording a planned script. To record a series of deliberate actions into a script (instead of copying and pasting from the automatically recorded script), click the button on the upper right of the Scripts panel to open the menu and choose Record Script to begin recording, or click the Record button (the circular button) on the Scripts panel. When you’ve finished working on your image choose Stop Recording Script (or click the square Stop button). Painter will prompt you to name your script. The new named script will appear in the pop-up list in the Scripts panel, available for later playback. To play the new script, select it from the list and click the Play (forward arrow) button or choose Playback Script from the menu.

The Edit Script dialog, with an open script showing the instructions for an application of Apply Lighting and Apply Surface Texture.

Recording and saving a series of scripts. If you want to record the development of a complex painting (so you can use the script to demonstrate how you created the painting) but you don’t want to finish the painting in one sitting, you can record a series of work scripts to be played back. First note the dimensions of your file by choosing Canvas, Resize, and then click OK to close the dialog box. Click the button on the upper right of the Scripts panel, and choose Record Script. Include a number in the name of your script (such as “01”) to help you remember the playback order. Then begin your painting. When you want to take a break, stop recording (Scripts panel, Stop Recording Script). When you’re ready to continue, choose Record Script again and resume working on your image. Record and save as many scripts as you need, giving them the same basic name but numbering them so you can keep track of the order. To play them back, open a new file of the same dimensions as the original, and then choose Playback Script from the menu on the Scripts panel bar. Choose the “01” script, and when it’s done playing, choose the next script: It will play back on top of the image created by the first script. Continue playing back scripts in order until the image is completed. (You can also record a script so that it can be played back on a canvas of a different size; see the tip below.)

To add lighting and a paper texture to this Mediacom video clip, we played a special effects script (using Effects, Surface Control, Apply Lighting and Apply Surface Texture) on each of the frames.

Automating a series of operations. Recording a series of actions can save you a lot of time when you need to apply the same effect to several images. Test a combination of operations (such as a series of choices from the Effects menu) until you get something you like. Choose Record Script from the menu on the Scripts panel (accessed by the button), and repeat the series of choices that produces the effect you want. After you’ve stopped recording and have saved your script, you can apply the operations to a selection, a layer or a still image by selecting your script in the Scripts panel and clicking the forward arrow button on the front of the panel.

The Frame Stack panel for Donal Jolley’s animation Rattlesnake showing the movement in frames 32–34.

You can also apply your script to a Frame Stack. Turn to “Automating Movie Effects” later in this chapter for a detailed explanation of this technique.

Saving a script as a movie. This is a great option if you’d like to “play back” a painting for someone who does not have Painter. QuickTime movies can be played on Macintosh and PC/Windows computers with a freeware QuickTime projector such as Movie Player. First you’ll record your work as a script, then you’ll play it back on a new file, and then you’ll save it as a QuickTime/AVI movie.

Begin by clicking the button on the upper right of the Scripts panel and choosing Script Options. In the Script Options dialog box, turn on Record Initial State (otherwise Painter will play back the first few commands or brushstrokes of your script using whatever colors, brushes and textures are active, instead of the ones you actually used during the recording of the script). Check Save Frames on Playback. You can leave the time interval Painter uses to grab frames from your script at 10, the default, but you may want to experiment with lower settings instead, to get a smoother playback result.

Next, open a new file of the dimensions you want for your eventual movie file. Click the button on the upper right of the Scripts panel, choose Record Script from the menu, and make your drawing. When you’ve finished, from the same menu, choose Stop Recording Script; name your script and click OK to save it. Now Painter will convert the script to a movie. First, watch your recorded script played back as a Painter Frame Stack by opening a new file (same dimensions) and choosing Playback Script from the menu, choosing your script from the list and clicking the Playback button. Painter will prompt you to enter a name for your new movie file. Name it, click Save and then specify the number of layers of Onion Skin and color depth by clicking on the appropriate buttons. (For most uses, select 2 Layers of Onion Skin and 24-bit color with 8-bit alpha.) Click OK, and your script will unfold as a Frame Stack. When it’s finished playing, save it in QuickTime/AVI movie format by choosing Save As, Save Movie as QuickTime. The QuickTime/AVI file will be smaller than a Frame Stack (if you use a Compressor choice in the Compression Settings dialog box) and will play back more smoothly. (Because most compression degrades quality, compress only once—when you’ve completed the project. Film artist Dewey Reid suggests using Animation or None as the Compressor setting.) To read more about preserving image quality when working with movies, turn to “Importing and Exporting,” on page 350.

A storyboard frame from the MGM movie Stargate. Peter Mitchell Rubin used Painter to build digital storyboard illustrations for the movie, saving them as numbered PICT files and animating them with Adobe Premiere.

Making movies using multiple scripts. You can save a series of successive scripts, and then play back the scripts as frame stacks and save them as QuickTime movies without compression to preserve quality. Then you can open the movies in a program such as Final Cut, Adobe Premiere or Adobe After Effects and composite the movies into a single movie.

Animating with Frame Stacks

If you open a QuickTime or AVI movie in Painter, it will be converted to a Frame Stack, Painter’s native movie format. Frame Stacks are based on the way conventional animators work: Each frame is analogous to an individual transparent acetate cel. You can navigate to any frame within a stack and paint on it or apply effects to it with any of Painter’s tools (see “Animating an Illustration” on page 353).

Artists accustomed to specialized animation and video programs such as Adobe After Effects and Adobe Premiere will notice the limitations of the Frame Stack feature (there are no precise timing or compositing controls, for instance). If you use one of these programs, you will probably want to work out timing and compositing in the specialized program, and then import your document into Painter to give it an effects treatment.

A frame from an animation based on a video clip. We began by using Painter’s Watercolor brushes to illustrate the frames, which created a Watercolor Layer. Because a Watercolor Layer sits on top of the entire Frame Stack, we copied the layer to the clipboard, and then dropped it to the Canvas when we had finished painting the frame. We advanced to the next frame and pasted in the copied watercolor and added new brushstrokes, repeating this copying, dropping, pasting and painting process until the frames were complete. As a final touch, we applied an effects script (with Apply Surface Texture, Using Paper) to complete the piece.

When you open a QuickTime or AVI video clip in Painter or start a brand-new movie, you’ll specify the number of frames and color bit depth to be used in the Frame Stack. You will be asked to name and save your movie. At this point the stack is saved to your hard disk. A Frame Stack will usually take up many more megabytes on your hard disk than it did as a movie (depending on the kind of movie compression used), so have plenty of space available. Each time you advance a frame in the stack, Painter automatically saves any changes you have made to the movie. When you choose Save As, Painter will ask you to name the movie again. This is not a redundant Save command, but an opportunity to convert the file to another format: Save Current Frame as Image, Save Movie as QuickTime or AVI format, or Save Movie as Numbered Files (to create a sequence of frames to edit in another program such as Final Cut or Adobe Premiere).

Creating animated comps. Painter provides a good way to visualize a rough animation. An animatic (a comp of an animation, consisting of keyframe illustrations with movement applied) can be comprised of images drawn in Painter, scanned elements, or numbered PICT files created in Painter, Photoshop or even object-oriented programs that can export PICT files (such as Illustrator). (See “Making an Animated Comp” on page 356, featuring Dewey Reid’s illustrations in a demonstration of an animatic technique.) You can also alter individual frames in a movie with Painter’s effects or brushes. For a demonstration of frame-by-frame painting, see “Animating an Illustration” on page 353.

Rotoscoping movies. There are numerous ways to rotoscope (paint or apply special effects to movie frames) in Painter. Many of the techniques in this book can be used for rotoscoping—brush work, masking, tonal adjustment or filters, or Effects, Surface Control, Apply Lighting and Apply Surface Texture, or Effects, Focus, Glass Distortion, for example.

Basing an animation on a movie. You can use Painter’s Tracing Paper to trace images from a source movie to a clone to create an animation. This feature lets you shoot video and use it as a reference on which to base a path of motion. This process is described in the tip “Using a Video Clip Reference” on page 349.

Importing and Exporting

With a little planning and understanding of file formats, still and animated files can easily be imported into Painter and exported out of Painter to other programs.

Preserving image quality. Because compression can degrade the quality of image files, when you obtain source files to bring into Painter, choose uncompressed animation and video clips. And because quality deteriorates each time you compress (the degree of degradation depends on the compression choice), save your working files without compression until your project is complete. If you plan to composite Painter movies in another application, such as Adobe Premiere, After Effects or Final Cut, save them without compression. For an in-depth explanation of compressors for QuickTime or for AVI, see the Painter 12 Help.

Importing multimedia files into Painter. Painter can accept QuickTime and AVI movies from any source, as well as still image PICT files and numbered PICT files exported from PostScript drawing programs, Photoshop and Premiere. To number your PICT files so that they’re read in the correct order by Painter, you must use the same number of digits for all the files, and you must number them sequentially, such as “File 000,” “File 001,” “File 002” and so on. With all files in a single folder, choose File, Open and check the Open Numbered Files option. Select the first numbered file in your sequence and, when prompted, select the last file. Painter will assemble the files into a Frame Stack.

Jon Lee of Fox Television used Painter’s brushes and effects to progressively modify the logo for the comedy Martin, creating numbered PICT files for an animated sequence. The modified files were animated on a Quantel HAL.

Exporting Painter images to editing applications. Since most animation work is created to be viewed on monitors and the standard monitor resolution is 72 ppi, set up your Frame Stacks and still image files using that resolution. Files that will be used in editing for standard NTSC have a 4 × 3 aspect ratio: for instance, a max resolution of 720 × 486 pixels. Files prepared for HDTV have a 16 × 9 ratio and max resolution of 1920 × 1080. Familiar formats are NTSC DV Widescreen, NTSC D1, NTSC D1 Widescreen, HDTV 720p and HDTV 1080p. For digital television the pixels are slightly taller than they are wide. Many artists and designers who create animation for broadcast usually prepare their files at “D-1 size,” 720 × 486 pixels. Digital television uses a “.9” pixel (90% the width of standard square pixels). The narrower pixel causes circles and other objects to be stretched vertically. To create a file for D-1 maintaining the height-to-width ratio (to preserve circles), begin with a 720 × 540-pixel image. When the image is complete, it is non-proportionally scaled to 720 × 486. This will “crush” the image slightly as it appears on your computer screen, but when it’s transferred to digital television it will be in the correct proportions.

Highly saturated colors can smear when output to video. Choose Effects, Tonal Control, Video Legal Colors to make the colors in your file compatible with NTSC or PAL video color. In the Preview, press and release the grabber to toggle between the RGB and Video Legal Colors previews; click OK to convert the colors in your file.

QuickTime movie files can be exported from Painter and opened in film editing programs such as Final Cut and Adobe Premiere. Some artists prefer to export their Painter images as PICT files rather than as movies because they can easily remove frames from the sequence if they choose. To export Painter still images to applications such as Premiere and After Effects, or to other platforms, save them as single PICT images or as a series of numbered PICT files. You can include a single mask in a Painter PICT file that can be used in compositing in Premiere or After Effects.

We used a modified photo to create this repeating pattern. To generate seamless, tiled textures for 3D, use any of the commands in the menu of the Patterns panel. Turn to “Exploring Patterns” on page 289 in the beginning of Chapter 8 and to “Creating a Seamless Pattern” on page 294 for more about working with patterns.

You can also import Painter-created QuickTime movies and still PICT images into Adobe Director. A QuickTime movie comes in as a single linked Cast Member in the Cast Window, which means it will be stored outside the Director file, keeping file size manageable.

Animating an Illustration

Overview Create an illustration; open a new movie document; paste the drawing into the movie and onto each frame as a layer; copy an area you want to animate; position it and drop it as a layer into a precise position; advance to a new frame and repeat the pasting, moving and copying process; use brushes to paint on individual frames.

DONAL JOLLEY

CREATING AN ANIMATION—whether you use Painter or draw on traditional acetate cels—is labor-intensive because of the sheer number of frames required to get smooth motion. But working digitally does have advantages. You can save a lot of time by copying and pasting a single illustration onto multiple frames. Corrections to digital art are easier to make than with conventional methods and, thanks to the Frame Stacks player, you can see results immediately.

To begin Rattle Envy, Donal Jolley painted and animated a comical snake with Painter’s brushes. Once the basic animation was complete, Jolley composited some extra layers at a reduced opacity to add the feeling of movement, further enhancing the effect with painted speed blurs.

1 Planning the animation and illustrating. Create an illustration in Painter, choosing a file size no more than a few inches square at 72 ppi (Jolley’s illustration was 3 × 3 inches at 72 ppi). Use Painter’s brushes to paint just the essential image; you’ll be adding the details to each individual frame later. To keep the animation process simple, choose a subject that you won’t need to redraw in every frame, such as a character winking an eye. Jolley sketched a whimsical rattlesnake, and then copied the tail area, eyebrows and tongue elements to separate layers so that he could transform them later to create motion in the animation.

Jolley’s finished Painter illustration

Making a selection of the tail and rattle

The Layers panel showing the Tail layer selected

After sketching the snake using the Scratchboard Tool variant of Pens, Jolley added color and modeled forms using the Digital Airbrush variant of Airbrushes and the Square Chalk variant of Chalk & Crayons. Then he added more linework and shadows using the Colored Pencil variant of Pencils and blended color with the Grainy Water variant of Blenders.

He carefully selected each of the areas he planned to animate—three elements in the illustration—the tail area, the eyebrows and the tongue—and pasted copies of them on separate layers as described below. In addition, he created a layer with a copy of only the stationary parts of the snake’s body without the tail, eyebrows and tongue, so when he rocked the tail back and forth or moved the parts, the area underneath it would be white.

When you’ve finished your illustration, make a selection around an area that you want to animate (Jolley used the Lasso tool), press Alt/Option and choose Select, Float to place a copy of it on a new layer. Repeat for any other parts that you want to animate. Also prepare a layer that includes everything that will not be animated. Now, click on the non-animated layer’s name in the Layers section and choose Select, All, and copy it to the clipboard (Ctrl/-Shift-C). It’s now ready to be pasted into a movie. Leave the original illustration file open so you can copy elements from it into your movie.

2 Starting a new Frame Stack. To open a new movie file, choose Movie, New Movie. Choose a small size so Painter will play the movie quickly; then click the Number of Frames field, and enter enough frames to give you a smooth animation. Jolley created a 3 × 3-inch movie at 72 ppi (that matched the dimensions and resolution of his illustration) three layers of Onion Skin (so you can see three frames back into the stack) and full 24-bit color with an 8-bit alpha. Jolley chose 33 frames to start, though he added more frames as he needed them using Movie, Add Frames, so that his finished animation was 38 frames. Click OK; name and save your movie.

Beginning a new movie, 3 × 3 inches, 72 ppi, with 33 frames

3 Pasting the illustration into the Frame Stack. Paste the non-animated part of your illustration from the clipboard into the movie file by choosing Edit, Paste in Place. It will come in as a layer. Now use the arrow keys on your keyboard to move it into position. Copy it in its new position, then drop it to the Canvas by choosing Drop from the triangle menu on the right side of the Layers panel. Because a layer sits on top of the entire frame stack, make sure that you’ve dropped it before you begin the next step. To advance the frame stack one frame, click the Step Forward icon on the Frame Stacks panel (or press the Page Up key on your keyboard). Paste the copied base illustration into a new frame in the same position (press Ctrl/-Shift-V) and drop, repeating the paste and drop sequence for each frame of the movie.

Pasting the base illustration into the movie

4 Creating movement by offsetting layers. Then, to return to the first frame in the stack, click the Rewind button. Back in your original illustration file, choose the Layer Adjuster tool and select the layer for a part that you want to animate by clicking on its layer name in the Layers panel, and choose Ctrl/-C to copy it. Now activate your frame stack file and choose Ctrl/-Shift-V to paste it into exact position.

Clicking the Rewind button to return to Frame 1

Frame 3 with Tracing Paper/Onion Skin (three layers) turned on

The red marker shows that Frame 4 is active.

The frame stack panel, showing movement in Frames 30–32

So that he would have an unmanipulated copy that he could use later, Jolley made a copy of the pasted tail area layer by Alt/Option-clicking on it in the image window with the Layer Adjuster tool. Then he hid the copy by shutting the eye icon to the left of its name in the Layers panel.

With the original tail section layer selected, he chose Edit, Free Transform and used the feature to rotate the tail. When you choose Free Transform, an eight-handled bounding box will appear. Now choose the Transform tool and select the Rotate button in the Property Bar. Rotate the layer. Select the Move button in the Property Bar to position the layer and then select the Commit Transform button in the Property Bar to complete the transformation. To bring the layer in its new position into the next frame, store a copy of the layer in the clipboard by pressing Ctrl/-C. Then choose Drop from the menu on the right side of the Layers panel to drop the layer onto the current frame, and go to the next frame by pressing Page Up on your keyboard. Paste the copied illustration again (Ctrl/-V), and use the Layer Adjuster tool to reposition the element in the frame; then drop it.

As you work, look at the Frame Stacks panel to check your progress. You can view previous frames “ghosted” in your main image—much like an animator’s light box—by choosing Canvas, Tracing Paper (Ctrl/-T). The number of previous frames displayed is determined by the number of Onion Skin layers you chose when you opened the movie. To change the number of layers, close the file, reopen it, and choose a new number of layers. Use Ctrl/-T to turn the Onion Skin view on and off as you work. Click the Play button to play the animation, and take note of the areas that need to be smoother.

5 Making the animation smoother. After playing the animation, Jolley wanted to make the transition between some of the frames smoother and slower. So he used the tail area layer copy that he had hidden in the Layers panel (in step 4) as a basis to add several more low-opacity layers to a few of the frames. Then he replayed the animation again to check its smoothness. To blur a few of the edges, he used the Just Add Water variant of Blenders on some of the frames.

Frame 29 shows a copy of the tail layer pasted in, rotated and at 58% opacity

6 Adding more motion with brushstrokes. Now that he liked the way the animation played, Jolley added to the feeling of motion by painting more noticeable brushstrokes on the tail area. Using the Gritty Charcoal variant of Charcoal & Conté, he painted darker smudges on the tail—altering it slightly in each frame. He also added speed blurs by smearing the edges of the snake’s tail and the rattle using the Grainy Water variant of Blenders. When the Frame Stack was completed, Jolley saved it as a QuickTime movie. (Turn to “Importing and Exporting” on page 350.)

Frame 32 showing the Gritty Charcoal smudges and a low-opacity layer

Frame 30 showing a speed blur painted with the Grainy Water variant

Making an Animated Comp

Overview Set up a layered illustration file; record the movement of a layer using scripts; play the script back into a movie.

DEWEY REID

TO VISUALIZE MOTION in the early stages of creating an animation, Dewey Reid often makes an animated comp (a conceptual illustration with a moving element). Adding motion is a great way to help a client visualize a concept, and it’s more exciting than viewing a series of still images. Reid’s storyboard, above, shows frames from a movie created by recording a script of a moving layer.

Using scripts and the Record Frames on Playback feature, you can record a layer’s movement. When you play the script back, Painter will generate a Frame Stack with the appropriate number of frames, saving you the tedious work of pasting in and moving the character in each frame. After you’ve made your Frame Stack, convert it into a QuickTime movie (or AVI/VFW on the PC) for easier and faster playback using a freeware utility like Movie Player.

1 Beginning with an illustration. Begin with an image at the size you want your final movie to be. Reid started with a 300 × 173-pixel street scene illustration from his archives.

Reid’s original street scene illustration

2 Setting up a layered file. Like conventional animation where characters are drawn on layers of acetate, this animation technique works best when all elements in the image are on separate layers. You may want to create masks for the various elements in separate documents, and then copy and paste them into your main image. (For more about layers and masking, turn to Chapter 6.)

The topmost layer (with the Canvas hidden) showing the dropped-out area that will reveal the background scene underneath

The Dino character showing the painted mask (left), and with the background dropped out (right)

Reid envisioned three “layers” for this comp: a background image (the street scene) in the bottom layer, a copy of the street scene with a portion of the scene removed in the top layer, and a dinosaur positioned between the two street scenes that would move from left to right across the “opening” in the top layer. Reid made a duplicate layer from the Canvas by selecting all and Alt/Option-clicking on the image with the Layer Adjuster tool. To make it easier to see the top layer as you work, hide the Canvas layer by clicking its eye icon shut in the Layers panel. Select the top layer. To erase an area of the layer, choose a Pointed Eraser 7 variant of the Erasers for most of the editing; for removing small areas, you may want to try the 1-Pixel Eraser variant. To see the background layer again, click open the eye icon for the Canvas in the Layers panel. You’ll see a complete background image, since the lower layer shows through the hole in the top layer.

The Dino layer, selected in the Layers panel and in starting position, ready to be moved by the arrow keys

In a separate file, Reid painted a mask to isolate Dino the dinosaur from the background and turned the mask into a selection by choosing Select, Load Selection. He copied Dino to the clipboard and pasted him into the street scene RIFF file. (An easy way to add a character is to drag an item from the Image Portfolio panel into your image—like the strawberry, the pumpkin or the lollipop, for example.) In the Layers panel, Reid dragged Dino down to a position between the two street scene layers. Using the Layer Adjuster and the arrow keys, Reid positioned the dinosaur so that only the red nose was visible behind the left front building, establishing Dino’s starting position in the animation.

3 Recording the script. Click the right triangle on the Scripts panel to open the menu and choose Script Options; check Record Initial State, check Save Frames on Playback and enter a number for Every ths of a second (Reid chose 5), and click OK. Select the layer that will be moving by clicking on its name in the Layers panel (for Reid, the Dino Layer). Choose Record Script from the menu on the Scripts panel bar (or click the round red button on the front of the Scripts panel). Then hold down an arrow key to move the layer smoothly in the RIFF file. When you have completed the path of motion, choose Stop Recording Script from the Scripts panel menu (or click the Square button) and name the script. Return the character to its starting position by pressing Ctrl/-Z.

Setting up the Script Options to Save Frames on Playback

4 Playing back the script into the movie. From the pop-up menu on the Scripts panel, choose Playback Script, choose your script from the list in the Apply Script to Movie dialog box and click Playback. When prompted, name your movie a different name than the RIFF file. Click the Save button and Painter will convert your RIFF image to a movie (leaving the original RIFF intact) and will add the movie frames needed. As the movie is generated, you will see the frames accumulating in the Frame Stacks panel. When Painter finishes generating the Frame Stack, turn off visibility for the layers that are above the Canvas by clicking their eye icons in the Layers panel. (If you don’t hide the layers, you won’t be able to see your movie, which is recorded on the Canvas.) Finally, press the Play button on the Frame Stacks panel to play your movie!

Selecting the Dino script in the Scripts panel

5 Converting the Frame Stack to QuickTime or AVI. To play the movie without having Painter loaded, convert the Frame Stack to QuickTime or AVI format: Choose File, Save As, and when the dialog box appears, choose Save Movie as QT/AVI. Give your movie a new name (such as “Dino movie.qtime”), click Save and in the Compression Settings dialog box, choose from the top pop-up menu (Reid recommends Animation or None).

Choosing the QuickTime button in the Save Movie dialog box

Automating Movie Effects

Overview Open a video clip; test a series of effects on a single frame; undo the effects; repeat the effects while recording a script; apply the script to the entire clip.

CTP / VIDEO: MEDIACOM

WITH PAINTER’S SCRIPTS FEATURE, you can automate any series of recorded effects and apply them to each frame of an entire movie.

1 Starting with a video clip. Tests will be processed faster if you begin with a small video clip like the one we used—320 × 240 pixels with 67 frames. When you open a video clip (a QuickTime or AVI movie), Painter converts it to a Frame Stack. (When you save the Stack, give it a new name so the original clip isn’t replaced.)

Frame 1 of the original video clip

2 Testing a series of effects on a frame. Before you test a sequence of effects on a single frame, open Preferences (Ctrl/-,), choose the Performance panel and set up multiple Undos so that you can return the clip to its original state. Enter a number of Undos that exceeds the number of effects you plan to use. Choose a rough paper texture (we chose Thick Paint from the Painted Effects 3 library on the Painter Wow! CD-ROM) and apply it to Frame 1 in your movie with Effects, Surface Control, Apply Surface Texture, Using Paper (we settled on Amount 22%, Picture 90% and Shine 0%). Next, we added a look of cloud-filtered sunlight by choosing Effects, Surface Control, Apply Lighting. (See Chapter 8 for more about lighting techniques.) When you’ve finished testing, undo the effects you applied to Frame 1. (Painter will remember the last settings you used in the dialog boxes.)

The Apply Surface Texture and Apply Lighting settings chosen for the movie

3 Moving paper grain in the movie. To add subtle interest to your movie, you can change paper grain position on a frame-by-frame basis by choosing Movie, Set Grain Position. We chose the Grain Moves Linearly button and a 2-pixel horizontal movement.

Using Movie, Set Grain Position to create a “live” texture on the movie

4 Recording and playing back the session on the movie. Begin recording the effects by clicking the Record button in the Scripts panel; then repeat your sequence of effects. When you’re finished, click the Stop button. Give your script a descriptive name, and undo your effects again. To apply your script to the movie, choose Movie, Apply Script to Movie. When the dialog box appears, find your new Script in the list, click the Playback button and watch as Painter applies the recorded series of effects to each frame.

The Stop button (left) and the Record button (center)

Detail of effects on Frames 35 and 50

Gallery

Dewey Reid of Reid Creative, illustrated the 30-second animation Yuri the Yak for Sesame Street, a production of Children’s Television Workshop. In the story segment, Yuri travels the countryside eating yellow yams and yogurt, and teaching the letter “Y.” Reid stresses the importance of preproduction planning in animation. He created the Yuri the Yak animation with a total of only 35 drawings (it could have taken hundreds). His background in conventional animation helped him determine which drawings to make, and which to generate by tweening in an animation program, saving time and a lot of work. Reid used Painter to create individual parts of the Yak, such as the head, body and arms. He opened the illustrations in Photoshop and created a mask for each image, and then saved the illustrations as PICT files in a numbered sequence. (He prefers using PICT files rather than QuickTime movies, since PICT files allow higher quality. Also, a sequence of PICT files allows for more flexibility—it’s easier to remove a frame or two, if necessary.) He imported the masked files into Adobe After Effects, created animation cycles for each of the Yak parts, and then joined animation cycles together. A virtuoso with effects, Reid completed his artistic vision by adding subtle lighting and texture. He opened the animation in Painter as a Frame Stack. After recording a script of Effects, Surface Control, Apply Lighting and Apply Surface Texture, he chose Movie, Apply Script to Movie to add the effects to the frames.

Snuffy 1 and 2 are two compositional layout illustrations by Cindy Reid of Reid Creative for a proposed Sesame Street production of Children’s Television Workshop. The animation was conceived to accompany the children’s song “I Wish I Were Small.” In Frame 1, Snuffy (who is normally mammoth-size) becomes small enough to fit into a bird’s nest; in Frame 2, small enough to fit in a buttercup. To create both frames Reid shot photos of a bird’s nest, a bee, the sky and clouds, foliage and buttercup flowers for “scrap.” She scanned the photos into Photoshop and pasted the images onto layers to build two composite files. When the elements were in place, she opened the layered composite file in Painter, where she added painterly brush work to each layer using the Grainy Water variant of Blenders. She added details using a small Sharp Chalk (Chalk & Crayons). When the brush work was complete, she flattened the image by choosing Drop All from the Layers panel bar menu.

Art director and animator John Ryan employs an expressive approach when creating his animations. Ryan is co-owner of the Dagnabit! animation studio with Joyce Ryan and Robert Pope.

Black & Decker commissioned Dagnabit! to create Mo Skeeter, a thirty-second animation spot for their Mosquito Halo product.

Ryan produced all of the original drawings for the Mo Skeeter character using a conventional 4B Derwent sketching pencil on animation bond paper. Then, he scanned the drawings in sequence into Softimage Toonz ink and paint software. Working in Toonz, he cleaned up the images and built mattes (alpha channels), which would help later with compositing the critter into the background scene. Then, Ryan saved the files as a series of sequentially numbered Targa files, and he opened the numbered files in Painter as a Frame Stack.

Using the Soft Camel variant of Watercolor, he added color to the mosquito. As he worked, Ryan paid careful attention to the Grain setting in the Property Bar and the Paper Scale slider in the Papers panel because these settings influence the texture of the brush work. “I’ll change the grain size or type of paper every few frames to mimic what would happen if I was actually painting on different sheets of paper and photographing them under a camera,” says Ryan. While building the animation, he switched between French Watercolor Paper, Italian Watercolor Paper and Hot Press papers.

Ryan usually keeps a small version of the finished character design to use for reference, to keep the transparency densities in check. He also usually works through the Frame Stack, painting one color at a time whenever possible. Because he created mattes earlier to constrain the paint, he was free to make expressive brushstrokes without worrying about staying within the lines.

“I always pepper each painting with several different brushes to keep things alive,” says John Ryan, who created the illustrations for this 120-second spot for Equifax.

Ryan began the work by drawing with conventional pencil-and-paper on bond paper. Next, he scanned the drawings in sequence into Softimage Toonz ink and paint software, and exported them as a series of numbered Targa files so he could work on them in sequence in Painter.

Working in Painter, he worked on the individual frames, using several Watercolor brushes, including the Wash Camel and Soft Camel variants of Watercolor on Watercolor layers. He chose to paint on the individual frames, instead of using framestacks for this piece, because Watercolor layers can be challenging to combine with framestacks. He painted quickly, and after applying a series of washes, he dropped the layer by choosing Drop from the pop-up menu on the Layers panel. For the next stage of washes, he added a new Watercolor layer and continued to refine his painting.

When the washes were as he liked them, he applied a variety of textures to the images, using the Apply Surface Texture, Using Paper feature and subtle settings.

While building the animation frames, he switched between using Italian Watercolor, French Watercolor and Artists Rough Paper. “If I change texture and size of grain periodically throughout the painting process, it keeps the texture from fighting with the lively quality of the washes of color,” says Ryan.

Jean-Luc Touillon’s passion for drawing shows in E Bleu-Serenissime, an animated drawing that was created using Painter brushes, recorded scripts and frame stack features. The animation shows the process of the drawing and then the addition of layers of color being added to the completed black-and-white drawing. Touillon prefers to draw with his pressure-sensitive tablet and stylus, watching the drawing develop on-screen, without the use of photographs. After opening a new file with a white background, he used Liquid Ink brushes and layers to draw a black and white drawing of the woman. After the black-and-white drawing was complete, he used a variety of brushes including the Watercolor brushes to color the portrait using separate Watercolor layers for each color. For information about using Painter’s scripts to create an animated drawing see “Working with Scripts” on page 344.

Jean-Luc Touillon created Bateau-Trois-Femmes, a series of sensitive sketches, which he animated using Painter’s scripts and frame stack features. He recorded his work as a script, played it back on a new file, and then saved it as a QuickTime movie.

Touillon began by creating a colored, textured background and then sketching figures on location with his tablet and Painter. First he laid down earth-tone colored paint using Chalk and Pastels variants. Then he added 3D texture with Effects, Surface Control, Apply Surface Texture Using Image Luminance. When the background was complete, he saved the file. He drew each black-and-white study with Liquid Ink brushes and layers (using live models for reference). For the color, Touillon added a new layer to his drawing. Then he painting with various brushes including the Airbrushes. For textured washes, he used Watercolor brushes and layers. When the illustration was complete, he stopped recording the script and played it back, creating a frame stack. Touillon added finishing touches to the individual frames using a Pens variant, and when he was satisfied with the frame stack, he saved it as a Quicktime movie. For information about exporting to a Quicktime movie see “Saving a script as a movie” on page 347

An innovative storyboard artist, Peter Mitchell Rubin used a variety of Painter’s brushes and compositing controls to create the storyboards for the MGM movie Stargate. The Giza, Egypt, sequence is shown here. Rubin outputs his illustrations from Painter as numbered PICT files, and then animates them in Adobe Premiere. Rubin’s love of drawing shows in his storyboards. He works very quickly, in gray, at 72 ppi. His document size depends on the amount of detail needed, but is usually under 600 pixels wide. The aspect ratio depends upon how the film will be shot. Rubin organizes the thousands of drawings that he creates for a film in folders according to scene. He sets up QuicKeys macros to automate actions wherever possible, automating the processing of all the files in a folder. When Rubin adds other elements to an image, he pastes the element, drops it, and then paints into it to merge it seamlessly into the composition. He also uses Painter’s Cloners brushes. For example, he created the texture in Frame 15 (left column, third frame down from top) by photographing the actual set sculpture used in the movie, scanning it and cloning the scan into his drawing.

Award-winning concept artist Ryan Church creates cinematic environments. He is the Concept Supervisor for Star Wars III and a senior art director at Industrial Light and Magic.

Before designing a two-dimensional concept for a scene, Church meets with the director to review the script, and then he does research for the elements he needs. When creating the scenes, he takes advantage of his background in conventional design and painting, and the flexibility of working on the computer with Painter and a Wacom tablet.

Church created Pirate Catamaran for his portfolio. He began by making rough sketches in Painter using Pens variants that included the Croquil Pen and Scratchboard Tool. When the elements were as he liked them, he added a new transparent layer and then created a tighter line drawing.

European master artists such as Da Vinci, Michelangelo and Velasquez often worked over a mid-tone background because it made developing the highlights and shadows easier, and it helped them to create drama. With a similar goal in mind, Church selected the image Canvas and then applied a mid-tone brown by choosing Effects, Surface Control, Color Overlay, Using Uniform Color and Dye Concentration.

Then, Church developed the ship, water and clouds using translucent brushes that included the Detail Airbrush variant of Airbrushes. When the basic values were laid in, he painted opaque color on areas (including the gold sky) using a modified Square Chalk (Chalk & Crayons). He increased the Grain setting in the Property Bar so that the brush would cover more grain and thus paint smoother strokes. Then, he smoothed areas of the water and sky using Blenders variants. His expressive blending is most noticeable on the clouds and in water splashing the front of the boat. For more drama in the sky, Church added richer gold and rust colors with the Square Chalk and then smudged areas using the Diffuse Blur (Blenders).

At this point, he copied the Canvas onto itself by choosing Edit, Copy and then Edit, Paste in Place. Working on the layer, he used the Glow variant of F-X to add light to the windows and to the brightest sunlit areas on the clouds. To refine forms, Church painted translucent strokes on the sails and a few other areas with the Wash variant of Digital Watercolor. Then, he dropped the layer to the Canvas.

For the details, Church added a new, empty layer and then used the Detail Airbrush to refine areas and to paint a few orange accents on the boat. Finally, he deepened the shadows in areas that needed more contrast.

Artist and multimedia designer Ted Larson created the images on these pages for The Book of Daniel, an educational CD-ROM about the Holy Bible.

“Daniel in the Lion’s Den was inspired by the Daniel 6:22 passage in the Bible,” says Larson. “Daniel is pulled from the den and mentions God sending an angel to shut the mouths of the lions, thus preserving his life.”

Larson began the image by shooting reference photos. To establish a mood for the piece, he photographed a dramatic cliff wall for the background. For the figure of Daniel in quiet prayer, he photographed a friend in costume and he photographed lions at the zoo. Later, back at this studio, he sketched with pen-and-ink on paper to establish a composition.

After the photos and supporting elements were ready, Larson began the compositing process. He opened the individual gray-toned elements in Photoshop and copied and pasted them into a working Photoshop file. Then, he used Photoshop to layer the lions, angel and Daniel. The absence of color is a classic art technique called grisaille. In terms of digital picture making, working in monochrome makes it easier to blend all the elements of a composition that are layered in Photoshop.

Larson wanted a warm, earthy palette for his image, so he gave it a warm sepia base color using Painter’s Express in Image command to apply a Sepia gradient to his image. (See “Creating a Sepia-Tone Photo” on page 252 for information about this process. To learn about gradients, see Chapter 2.)

After the image was sepia-toned, Larson clicked the New Layer button on the Layers panel to make a new empty layer for the coloring. To make the layer like a transparent color overlay on top of the sepia image, he set the Composite Method of the layer to Color. Larson wanted to convey a warm Rembrandt-like look, so he chose deep monochromatic earth tones that included cool green-browns for the background, warm reddish-browns for the foreground and golden-browns for the lions. He painted using low-opacity Airbrushes, including the Digital Airbrush. To enhance the focal point and make the angel the main source of light, Larson used yellow-gold colors. Larson also used the Glow brush to enhance the lighting around the figure of the angel. To complete his composition, he brushed colored transparent washes over his image using Digital Watercolor brushes.

Ted Larson created The Demise of Pharoah’s Army for an educational CD-ROM about the Holy Bible. “In the Book of Exodus, the Lord told Moses to part the waters of the Red Sea so the people of Israel could pass through in safety, which they did. The Egyptians pursued the Israelites and all of Pharoah’s army followed them into the sea. The water flowed back and covered the chariots and horsemen. The entire army had followed the Israelites into the sea, and not one of them survived,” says Larson.

First, Larson sketched with pen-and-ink on paper to establish a composition. With his concept in mind, he created all of the individual elements as source files that would be arranged into his composition. For example, he shot digital photos of the water on location and of horses, chariots and riders. He hiked to a waterfall and captured photos to represent the cascading flood of water from the Red Sea, shot pictures of Andalusian horses at a local show and photographed friends in robed costumes. The chariots were modeled in Rhino, a 3D program. When the photos and other elements were ready, he used Photoshop to mask important items so that he could easily copy them into a layered composite file in Painter.

Working in Painter, Larson assembled all of the elements into a gray-toned composite image. He opened each source image and copied and pasted it into his composite image as a layer, and repositioned elements to create a balanced composition. Larson saved the layered image, and then he duplicated the file and flattened the copy of the image by choosing Drop All from the Layers panel menu. Larson preferred to begin coloring the image with a warm sepia color, so he used Painter’s Express in Image command to apply a Sepia gradient to the image.

Next, he clicked the New Layer button on the Layers panel to make a new empty layer for the coloring. To make the layer like a transparent color overlay on top of the sepia image, he set the Composite Method of the layer to Gel. Larson brushed subtle colored tints over the image using Digital Watercolor brushes including the Simple Water and Spatter Water variants of Digital Watercolor, using low opacity settings. Then, to intensify the color on the layer, he used Effects, Tonal Control, Adjust Colors. He also used Chalk, Charcoal and Pastels brushes for modeling of the figures and details. To add depth to the color in his image, Larson added a new layer and painted with a small Digital Airbrush variant of Airbrushes.