Hey, this is a show.
Here’s what it’s called.
It’s about animation.
Today’s topic of choice is animating with vectors versus animating with rasters.
Now, if you don’t know what that means listen up!
Raster based images are made out of pixels.
MS Paint, Photoshop, and pretty much the majority of drawing programs are raster based.
The important thing for animation about this is that with images made with raster programs
get more and more pixelly as you zoom in.
That’s bad news for animation.
It means if you didn’t make your drawing big enough, when you go to zoom in, the quality
is going to be ptbbhphph.
Bad.
Which brings us to vector images.
Vectors are made out of math.
The computer calculates what goes where, so you can zoom in or out and the picture stays
the same.
This is great for animation, because you can move your camera around and do whatever you
want without worrying.
You can distort the heck out of something, and it's not going to get pixelly.
See.
Here's the difference.
So then the question is why doesn’t every animator use vectors?
Ah, my answer to you is this episode’s featured animation, The Bear King.
Have a look.
The Bear King is made purely out of raster images.
And this is where rasters dominate vectors: detail.
Painted backgrounds, hand drawn characters, things with edge, detail, painted effects,
complex lighting and shading - to accomplish that in a vector program is… difficult.
It’s like comparing a painting to paper craft.
If you wanted to make the painting out of cut up pieces of paper, it would take a very
long time and in the end it still wouldn’t have the same feel as the painting itself.
And The Bear King’s backgrounds are all painted in Photoshop.
Ah, but that’s not all!
Notice how these pieces are independent from the main background?
How the camera is zooming in here, but the trees don’t turn into pixels?
That’s because animator Kristin Rakochy planned these shots.
She knew the biggest the tree needed to be was this much, so she drew it that big.
Then she was able to zoom out to here.
And that's where the zooming starts.
See, zooming out with a raster is fine.
No pixelation for zooming out.
The problem is when you zoom in to larger than 100% of the original drawing, and then
it... it.. like look at what I’m doing right now.
See.
I’m doing it.
But I’m a vector, so you can get as close as you want - OH GEEZE come on!
Not that close.
I know it’s the internet and everything, but personal space.
Sheesh.
The characters in The Bear King are also rasters.
In fact, they are all hand drawn on paper, scanned into the computer, and then colored
in ToonBoom Harmony.
Again, this is fine, as long as the drawings on the paper are big enough for your animation.
If they’re bigger than needed after scanning it’s easy to scale them down on the computer.
So bigger is better.
With rasters, yeah.
Better to draw too big than to draw too small.
I really wish we could get a 1080 or even 720 resolution of The Bear King.
I want to see this spectacular scene transition sharp and clear, without the blurriness! (sigh)
By the way, the style of Kristin’s hand drawn animation is what gives the characters
that raw edgy look to them.
Even when they’re standing still the lines are moving.
It’s a technique that is time consuming because when the character isn’t moving
you still have to draw it again anyway so the lines around it are different every time
and they keep changing to give you that effect.
In terms of the story of the video, what I want to know is - which animal is this guy?
Or does he not have an animal side?
That’s all for now.
See you next week.