Slow billowing smoke..

[CartoonMonkey]

I'm doing a new animated film in black and white. My opening scene has a nice multiplane zoom in it, and I've been having trouble animating some slow, billowing smoke from a smokestack on the horizon.

Anyone had any experience doing this? I'd like to keep a hand drawn look if at all possible, but my animator's brain tells me that I'm in for just a lot of hard work animating slowly billowing black smoke. This example is a single line, distorted using the fx stack / Optical Flow effect.

I'd rather not get into using computer / particle effects if at all possible.

http://www.cartoonmonkey.com/mcafee
(quicktime)

C

[Paul Fierlinger]

If you look at some of my billowing smoke in this reel:
http://www.oldanimator.com/video/tvp/
You'll see how I dealt with this very same issue; I wanted to avoid particle effects at all costs ( )and wanted to give it the handmade look. The way I went about it was to scribble the smoke almost the way a child would, using one of Asaf's water color brushes and then smudged it around with the special brush. I made a series of these which animated well enough (but much too fast) and made several copies of this layer. . I then stretched out one of the timelines by a lot using interpolation and made the layer transparent. I did the same with the other layers but stretched each one by a different length, giving each layer transparency.

The reel is about 17 minutes long so be patient.

[CartoonMonkey]

Beautiful work, and great inspiration. I wish I could take a class from you at some point. However, I live in the Pacific Northwest.
Here's my attempt, after many. Think I have it the way I like it.

I was going for slowing flowing dark black smoke. The drawings are inks, scanned in and the multiplane of course done in TVP.
C

http://cartoonmonkey.com/mcafee/citydemo.html

[Paul Fierlinger]

LOL! Well, the music does it! That red hot jazz places this piece into a completely different realm and I can now see where you're going with it. But you know what? I'd say it would be a shame if you didn't go further with the smoke that follows the lead of the music and you should swish it about more dynamically. You're almost there, but really, how much extra work would it take to animate those frolicking curves the way the music wants them to go?

Thanks for what you said about my Slocum sample reel -- I just wish I could work on it every day, but I find it impossible to turn down commercial work, so there I am. I'd say cherish every moment you have to work on your own stuff, so don't be skimpy with the drawings.

[CartoonMonkey]

I actually threw the jazz in there just for fun. I'm not sure what the final music will be. This film will actually be a sort of pseudo-advertisement for an antibacterial product. Ha!
So in the first few scenes, after this one, we zoom into the city a bit more, and there's one of my little cartoon guys getting chased by some sort of mutated zombie. How this relates to the antibacterial product is very loose. It's a sort of exaggerated fiction about how this bacteria is taking over the world, and there's only one known cure.

The client paid up front, and said "don't be too commercial with it" - and "be as creative as you want". He's given me absolutely no guidance and just says have fun! I have a sort of loose script, but I'm kind of making it up as I go along.
I would actually like to find some public domain jazz old 20's jazz to use for bits of it.. but this is such an odd little project, I'm still tinkering with ideas..

C

[Paul Fierlinger]

Don't you just hate absolute freedom on commercial projects? I do, because it's never true; all it usually means is that the client doesn't know what he wants until he sees something -- then watch out!

[Byron]

That's so true... No one ever seems to know what they want till you show them a few ideas, then they seem to suddenly develop a long list of things they don't want!

[CartoonMonkey]

Ho boy...so true! I believe my client to be a reasonable man though.. If I want to stick to my guns, I can merely do the script I made to the letter..
Now I hope you all didn't jinx me..
C

[malcooning]

Don't you just hate absolute freedom on commercial projects? I do, because it's never true; all it usually means is that the client doesn't know what he wants until he sees something -- then watch out!

well pointed Paul. Never thought of it in this exact manner.