Rudi & Roland

Rudi & Roland
or “the art of communication…?”

http://web.mac.com/nolan.scott/Gallery/Rudi_%26_Roland.html

Tools used: Toon Boom Studio / Photoshop / Cinema 4D.

The parking and passing cars (BMW-Dixi, Bugatti, Mercedes, Jaguar, VW Beetle, Dodge)
were rendered as single image or image-sequence in Cinema 4D and imported into TBS).
A few of the background “Skyscrapers” are bitmaps, edited in Photoshop,
as well as Cuthbert of Farne by Fenwick Lawson.
Otherwise the rest is all created and drawn in Toon Boom Studio and animated.

Cheers
Nolan

Wow amaing man , love your style , very cool dubbing :smiley:

how did you design these 2 characters , infact i really want to know their painting techniques are these characters are also designed and painted in 3d tool?

Well, the main two characters “Rudi & Roland” are entirely drawn in Studio.
In fact it is actually just one character, duplicated, flipped and given another set of clothing,
(look in their faces and you’ll see the similarities).

The characters are drawn without outlines (my preferred technique at the moment),
using the “Stroke”-Tool, the shapes are then filled with gradients and modified with the
“Edit Texture”-Tool (one of the really great features of Studio).

Most of the background images are drawn in the same way,
(in the end it is all a very easy and simple design).

Cheers
Nolan

Wow i am impressed by your colouring approach for your characters , i will try someday all gradiants colours in just a single character , i must say your choices of colours are awesome (y)

Yeah Nolan really is the master of gradient use. I’m always trying to figure out how he achieves some of the colors he gets. The trees in “Concerto” (Nolan’s Christmas toon) are amazing & I still watch that over & over just to look at & study them.
Nola, did you layer low-alpha gradient fills on top of each other for the trees? Or was it done just through manipulation of fills on a single layer? I’m very curious, it’s really a unique look.

I like Rudi & Roland too, Nolan, excellent work as usual. :slight_smile:

Hi kdog,

Thank you very much for your kind words…

Regarding the trees in “Concerto”, they are very simple designs, either a gradient-
or a texture-fill, a little manipulated with the “Edit Texture” Tool, all on a single layer.

If you like, here is a very simple Video Demonstration…

http://web.mac.com/nolan.scott/Gallery/Creating_a_Tree.html

Cheers
Nolan

Wow thank u so much Nolan for sharing this very informative tutorial for we beginners :slight_smile: i assume you also do colour art for your character with this similar approach , we can also get the same results by suing line art /outline pencil or brush if someone dont feel comfortable with stroke , outline can be removed in the end for getting this kind of artwork , anyway great work!

Nolan,

first of all - great work!

Having watched your “Rudi & Roland” time after time after time, I decided to try out Cinema 4D myself (Using TBS 4.0 and PS8.0 as well). I like that special “mixture” look when 2D characters meet 3D objects - which to my opinion reveals what my characters really are: 2D. (Remember the Nintendo Paper Mario Game?)

But looking closer at your clip, I started to wonder: what if not only the cars, but the entire backgrounds were rendered in 3D, and only Rudi & Roland came out of TBS? How would you have approached such a project?
Importing the backgrounds (including camera motions) as a picture sequence into TBS or importing your animated characters into Cinema 4D? Or compositing both in a 3rd software (which, of course, would require an even more precise stroyboard)?

Hi Peter,

Thank you very much for your kind words and feedback.
Using Cinema 4D or any other 3D software for the entire background-scenery
would be indeed very interesting.

Even this might be more an individual preference, drawing direct in Toon Boom
(one of my great pleasures working with Studio),
or modeling in 3D (especially with Cinema 4D’s excellent toolset).

So far I keep 2D and 3D fairly separated, more a matter of my personal style,
I feel much more comfortable and “at home” drawing with the Wacom-board,
or on a piece of paper/canvas, than modeling/constructing in 3D.
(my 3D skills are still very basic: one of the reasons why I used all of the 3D-artwork
by other artists, making the credits fairly long for such a short story)

If I would do the entire background in Cinema and just “Rudi & Roland” in Studio,
I would have imported my animated TBS-characters as image-sequences into Cinema 4D,
and would do the compositing and the finalizing of all the scenes there.
This of course would indeed mean fairly precise planning.
(Cinema 4D’s “Sketch and Toon” Module would be very handy as well)

Using Photoshop for further post-processing might be another possibility if necessary.

Well, this could be a never ending story…
Has anybody said doing Animation is boring…?..

Cheers
Nolan