The 3D Cartoon Blog

Depending on your tool of choice (mine is Autodesk Maya), you’re going to be faced with dilemma - "where do I start".  I personally found that Video Tutorials were the most effective in learning, mainly for a number of reasons the main one was that when I travel etc, I can watch them on a device to kill boredom (when you’re the most bored, you retain the most).

DVD’s.

DigitalTutors.com - They have a great Cartoon series that are about $69 a pop. They cover a lot of specific topics at hand ranging from Modeling through to Animating & Rigging your characters. The two that I found worthwhile the most was the Security Guard and Stylized Girl tutorials.

GnomonWorkshop - These folks don’t really spend a lot of their time teaching you cartoon characters, but they do cover a lot of advanced topics. I only have a few videos in their series, but I found they do an amazing job at teaching you the most complex subjects in a matter that is easily to on-ramp to. They’re about the same price as DigitalTutors.com in manyways.

SimplyMaya.com - This site seems a bit dodge at first glance, but they do provide some quality tutorials by all appearances. I’ve only done their free tutorials so far, but I’m keen to buy some of their paid ones, specifically the Santa one etc. As I’m always curious to see how they approach modeling different to the above.

It’s expensive to skill-up on your own when it comes to learning. I’ve easily spent under $1000 USD so far on tutorials and I’m actually quite fortunate that at Microsoft we have an internal library which has some videos of the above sites we can check-out. I think the library has saved me a further $1k as well, so bare in mind learning 3D isn’t cheap.

Books.

I’ve got a few books, mostly the "Learning Maya xxxx" series (from Learning Maya 7 through to Maya 2009). The reason I bought the entire series as I was curious to see how they approach the example Models within the book each time. In that Learning Maya 7 will show you how to make the lead character in the Academy award winning short film ChubbChubbs. In Learning Maya 2009, you’re being taught how to Model the lead character at out of Delgo (a movie being released this year at the cinemas), the main body of the book doesn’t change all that much and so once you get the basics of Maya down pat, it’s now about learning the various models and how to approach them. It’s well worth the $69 USD a pop in my opinion.

I also bought some other books, namely "Stop staring", which covers a lot of the facial techniques associated to characters in general. I also bough "An Essential Introduction to Maya Character Rigging" which, also is a great resource to study when it comes to getting your head around adding bones to your characters.

There’s heaps more and it really comes down to your own bookstore, how much money you have in your pocket and so on.

The one thing I should make note of here, is the fact that Maya despite it’s evolution throughout the years, doesn’t change all that much, so a Maya 7 book is still relevant today in Maya 2009, so that’s really going to give you bang for your buck in some stores (Borders essentially don’t care, and will charge you the same price as 2009 - despite the book being so old? wtf Borders!).

Below are the Books i’ve mentioned above at Amazon:

In-Person Training.

I’ve seen a few degrees you can get throughout the world (Australia, Canada, US etc). They’re all pretty expensive in that ranging from $40k - 60k depending on the degree in total. I think these are typically aligned for folks with no careers in general and are looking to start their lives with 3D in mind. In my case, I’m 15 years into my career, working at Microsoft and simply cannot take time off work to study via these programs and in the end I’m not looking to do this as a full time job, more as a creative outlet.

That being said, places like Gnomon Workshop seem to have an interesting price model, where about $1500 USD + your hotel / air fares etc will get you into one of their workshops. This seems more appealing and I plan on taking one of these in 2009 at some point (given I’ve moved from Australia to the US, seems foolish not to use the US ecosystem for good instead of evil hehe).

I really am keen at some point to also put my name down at "Animation Mentor", as I’ve seen some video reels these guys have put together and can see really smart approach to teaching people how to animate via this company. I’m so impressed with their approach, I’m looking at ways to mirror the technique in Microsoft with our various products. I’m not sure on the pricing models, but I think whatever they charge seems well worth it.

Piracy.

I’ve done many a Google search and seen a heap of Torrent style links relating to the above and more. My main annoyance with this is firstly the search results get in the way of my hunt for more online tutorials and so that’s damn annoying.

Secondly, Is it really necessary to pirate them? I get that folks will pirate Maya etc given it’s various price structure and working for Microsoft I see a lot of mixed reasons for piracy, most of which I disagree with. Tutors whom take the time to setup a tutorial however, is something I just cannot express how important it is to support as when someone dedicates time/energy to tutorials in all software, it’s a thankless job - (money isn’t that great to start with). I don’t know, to me, I’ll support them whenever I can and sure I’m fortunate that Microsoft has an internal library which has most of the above selection available to staff, but I’d still pay for them if i wasn’t at Microsoft is more my point.

Fight the urge to pirate as if you support them, they’ll likely deliver more tutorials in the end.

Hope this helps all!

I’m obviously still in the newbie mode of learning Autodesk Maya, and my preferred genre of modeling is simply cartoons. I’m not really into making realistic or next generation characters just yet, as I feel they are beyond my grasp. Cartoons however feel more accessible and with this, I’m on the look out for various techniques with regards to their composition.

Eyes for me are the most obvious thing I notice about a Cartoon Character, and I’ve spent a great deal of time this week simply exploring / looking around at various techniques to creating eyes within 3D Cartoon models.

Here is my notes so far:

The Classic.

I’m sure there is a more descriptive name for this style of approach to cartoon eyes, but I’ve simply called it the "classic". The reason being is that for me, being the newbie, they are somewhat the easiest approach to eyelid creation. As all you need to do is wrap the eyeball (sphere) around 2x half spheres and animate by rotating the bottom  / left where needed.

The Dots.

This style for me seems to be the cheapest of all, but yet can be extremely effective in some of the 3D render’s I’ve seen. It’s simply a case of inserting 1x black sphere on top of the head, and there you have it, eyes. The upside is you’re not having to worry about to much in terms of blinking and socket movement and yet the downside is I think you have to spend more time thinking about how your character will convey emotion when animating (ie eyebrows will play a more strategic role than ever etc).

The Classic with attitude.

Although at first glance this style looks exactly like the "The Classic", the difference here is that there appears to be more detail than just 2x Spheres cut in half. In that the lower tear ducts appear to have had more work done to them. This for me looks like the secondary evolution to the Classic when learning and likely to be my next technique to practice.

The Disney Way.

I’ve dubbed this the "Disney Way" as I’ve really only seen Disney use this technique the most, in that I noticed it this morning when watching Mickey’s Playhouse how Mickey always seemed to blink using the top eyelid only. The bottom was rarely ever seen or used.

This technique is something that I’m aiming to do the most, as well it seems more natural for cartoon characters. The hard part for me at the time of writing, is that I’m not even sure on how to begin to create such a thing as it appears more complex than I thought.

Below is an example of the Eye opening and closing. Notice how the top goes down and that’s it.

Brilliant!

The Goldfish.

I think this is the cheapest and easiest way for newbies like myself to start out, as well all you need to do is inject an eyeball into a models head, ensure the outer edges fit nicely and call it a day. Pretty much like a goldfish in many ways only without the eyelids.

The Alien Look.

I usually see this look on either alien characters or robots, but its essentially the same technique as "The Goldfish" but has less human appeal to it (ie all one color etc).

The Painted On

This style is typically found within toy like characters. In that the eyes themselves don’t really have 3D composition and instead are typically textured onto the surface. I first saw this style being used in the PIXAR movie cars, where apparently the eyes where simply part of the texture (can’t confirm for 100% sure obviously). I see this as being only really effective for stills, as I’m thinking to animate them it would be surely be a pain in the butt to rig?

Conclusion.

There are obviously many ways to approach eyes in 3D Cartoon models, I’m a big fan of all of the above. The thing that I honestly have a hard time understanding is the various ways in which you can animate the above in a way that conveys emotion.

The ones with eyelids and eyebrows seem to more obvious when it comes to animation, whilst the ones that don’t have these seem to rely more on everything around the face to convey emotion.

An example comes to mind with the "The Dots" style, at first look my immediate thought was "oh they have to rely on eyebrows to convey the emotion" but I do recall seeing a cartoon where the block dots would squash down or grow / shrink in size to represent movement. Subtle but I found effective!

My thoughts going forward is I need to practice using the all of the above, see what fits with what character and figure out a rhythm or style to use. My preference is to use "The Disney" approach as that to me seems to be the mainstream norm and yet part of me wants to play around for a while using "The Dots". The reason being is I think I need to spend time animating some models first in order to get to know limitations and strengths around the above techniques and then apply the right fit where the context suites later on.

It’s been a fun study though and the above models are brilliant designs made by others I’ve randomly come across in my study (I had a list of URL’s names of the above, but lost them so I do apologize for not crediting them)