WEBVTT Kind: captions Language: en 00:00:02.070 --> 00:00:04.130 I find this one really interesting. 00:00:04.130 --> 00:00:06.609 It’s called The Saga of Rex. 00:00:06.609 --> 00:00:09.950 Link below, pause for you. 00:00:09.950 --> 00:00:16.260 Yeah, the thumbnail looks like it’s a regular animal cartoon, but then aliens. 00:00:16.260 --> 00:00:18.040 Aliens. 00:00:18.040 --> 00:00:20.210 The Saga of Rex has its own saga. 00:00:20.210 --> 00:00:25.760 The animator, Michel Gagne, has decades of experience and worked on real nostalgia kicker 00:00:25.760 --> 00:00:29.310 movies like Land Before Time and The Iron Giant. 00:00:29.310 --> 00:00:33.490 More recently, the game Battleborn and the My Little Pony Movie. 00:00:33.490 --> 00:00:38.550 His record is full of visual effects Director roles - which means animating effects like 00:00:38.550 --> 00:00:40.899 this and these. 00:00:40.899 --> 00:00:44.780 Rex is Gagne’s thing, that’s his own cute little fox. 00:00:44.780 --> 00:00:49.829 It must be really great to have this after all that time making magic for others. 00:00:49.829 --> 00:00:55.789 Saga of Rex began a long time ago as a 32 page black and white graphic novel, reborn 00:00:55.789 --> 00:00:58.370 into a new story a few years later. 00:00:58.370 --> 00:01:03.219 Then it took shape as a massive, full color graphic novel funded via Kickstarter. 00:01:03.219 --> 00:01:08.909 Gagne animated it, presumably to turn it into a pitch for a full movie. 00:01:08.909 --> 00:01:13.580 And the great thing is it’s becoming a movie, a full hour and half with no dialogue. 00:01:13.580 --> 00:01:14.580 Yep. 00:01:14.580 --> 00:01:15.580 No dialogue. 00:01:15.580 --> 00:01:17.640 I think it’s going to be wonderful. 00:01:17.640 --> 00:01:21.979 I don’t know how much of the visual style of the animation will hold true to the movie, 00:01:21.979 --> 00:01:24.870 but I’d like to think it will be similar or higher. 00:01:24.870 --> 00:01:29.700 Gagne animated Saga of Rex mainly in Toon Boom, with some backgrounds and painted elements 00:01:29.700 --> 00:01:34.340 made in Photoshop, After Effects for special effects, and Premiere for editing. 00:01:34.340 --> 00:01:38.329 Gagne actually draws a lot of his effects by hand, so I’m thinking After Effects is 00:01:38.329 --> 00:01:42.689 for things like the lightning over the spheres and these smoke tails, but NOT for the sparkly 00:01:42.689 --> 00:01:43.689 shimmers. 00:01:43.689 --> 00:01:45.030 Those are handmade. 00:01:45.030 --> 00:01:47.880 I think I know which effect the lightning is. 00:01:47.880 --> 00:01:48.880 Let me try it. 00:01:48.880 --> 00:01:49.880 Yes, no, maybe? 00:01:49.880 --> 00:01:55.260 The Saga of Rex animation makes a lot of use of Toon Boom’s puppet tools and/or After 00:01:55.260 --> 00:01:57.200 Effects puppet pin tool. 00:01:57.200 --> 00:02:02.100 Essentially what you do is put a pin on a part of the body you want to use as a joint, 00:02:02.100 --> 00:02:03.610 and then drag the body part around. 00:02:03.610 --> 00:02:06.810 You’ll notice it a lot if you watch this again and look for it. 00:02:06.810 --> 00:02:12.190 Any time there is no new drawing, and animals are swaying or wiggling, that’s puppet pin. 00:02:12.190 --> 00:02:13.880 Watch the little legs on this bug. 00:02:13.880 --> 00:02:17.510 And the distortions of this spine-backed - um - thing. 00:02:17.510 --> 00:02:19.750 The art isn’t new, it’s just being deformed. 00:02:19.750 --> 00:02:22.080 It’s a great time-saving trick. 00:02:22.080 --> 00:02:23.900 You can even animate tails this way. 00:02:23.900 --> 00:02:27.800 It doesn’t look as natural as this hand drawn tail, but it gets the job done. 00:02:27.800 --> 00:02:31.770 The most obvious use of the distortion is the last part with Rex in it. 00:02:31.770 --> 00:02:35.720 His body is squishing and shrinking and the tail is floaty. 00:02:35.720 --> 00:02:39.220 Contrast it with the drawn frames right after that. 00:02:39.220 --> 00:02:44.310 A great feature that Toon Boom has is for coloring characters like Rex. 00:02:44.310 --> 00:02:46.840 Notice the dark brown outer line on him. 00:02:46.840 --> 00:02:51.310 This line doesn’t exist for his face pattern. 00:02:51.310 --> 00:02:55.400 Normally what you would do is draw the face pattern shape with the color of the fill, 00:02:55.400 --> 00:02:56.400 like this. 00:02:56.400 --> 00:02:57.400 But! 00:02:57.400 --> 00:02:59.440 In Toon Boom, you can draw invisible lines. 00:02:59.440 --> 00:03:03.670 That gives you all of the control of line editing with these control points, but no 00:03:03.670 --> 00:03:04.670 visible line. 00:03:04.670 --> 00:03:09.460 It’s great for animating sections of color that have no visible line between them. 00:03:09.460 --> 00:03:13.380 Watch the pencil test for the animation, and you’ll notice there are these crazy clouds 00:03:13.380 --> 00:03:15.450 of lines moving around all the time. 00:03:15.450 --> 00:03:16.450 That’s for shading. 00:03:16.450 --> 00:03:20.200 It’s sloppy outside the character because the only thing that matters is it makes a 00:03:20.200 --> 00:03:23.260 complete shape so you can fill it with a bucket tool quickly. 00:03:23.260 --> 00:03:26.570 Nothing outside the character shows in the final product. 00:03:26.570 --> 00:03:30.340 Shading is toned down and softened as part of the style. 00:03:30.340 --> 00:03:31.340 Alright. 00:03:31.340 --> 00:03:35.070 It’s been a long time coming for the movie, and it looks like we’ll still have to wait 00:03:35.070 --> 00:03:37.390 a few years, so yep. 00:03:37.390 --> 00:03:39.200 I guess we’ll keep waiting for it!