In the SVG Track at rdcHQ … the focus is working with patterns and blends in order to maintain visual consistency across a collection of graphics –

The blend tool in Inkscape was used to dramatically improve the original art – the results are obvious, and beyond what is visible to the eye, each SVG file is editable to facilitate future revisions to the illustration:

New and improved #rdcHQ Version …

Original CCR Version …

We are preparing tutorials to illustrate these techniques and will be adding them to our site for our next round of SVG mentees – but for now, our focus is on the program and improving the art … Stay tuned!

This week at #rdcHQ the Cobwebs Crew got together for our first Skype meetup -

The goal of this exercise was to brainstorm the scenes of Cobwebs with our animators. We broke down the script into scenes and locations so we could delegate the work amongst the team. The crew will be taking reference photographs of some of the scenes in time for our next meetup which we will be using as source art for the scenes along with hand drawn sketches. A list of our scenes can be downloaded here.

We also experimented with filters to show how some photographs can be made to look like a digital illustration. The effect doesn’t always work, and you need a well-composed photograph to begin with. We used our forest scene as an example –

More news next meetup!

We interrupt our regular #rdcHQ updates for this Public Service Announcement -

Stay Tuned! …

This week, the Cobwebs Crew began working with a new application called Pencil, the software we will be using to create many of the animated sequences. Pencil is an open source application that best reproduces the technique of 2-D animation (think of a traditional flipbook). We worked with a few of the basic techniques in the program (which are explained in the Pencil User Manual – 620KB PDF), such as creating layers and working with the onion skin function, which creates a transparent overlay over the previous key frame so that the next step can be easily created. Pencil can export files in Quicktime format which can then be imported into iMovie for titling, transitions and more advanced video and audio editing (although Pencil does have a rudimentary audio layer). A couple of very basic examples are below -

Birds in flight ... (no preview available).

Fireflies ... (no preview available).

The animators also had the opportunity to work with a Wacom drawing tablet which is quite well-suited to the Pencil application and preferable to learning to draw with a computer mouse. The Pencil application will help bridge the gap between iMovie, which is primarily used for video production, and the traditional drawing skills of the Cobwebs Crew.

It looks like we are on schedule for releasing our trailer next week – we are still remixing music and dubbing voiceovers – and the first episode will be well underway in time for our art show over Labor Day Weekend, beaux libre.

Stay tuned!