Richard Williams talked to us during the making of "Who Framed Roger Rabbit ?" about his theory of how the classic Disney and Warner Bros. characters were akin to circus Clowns in terms of the design of their costumes and "make up" (the big noses, eyes, eyebrows, etc.) That was his theory in designing Roger Rabbit . I don't know if that's true or not, but I keep drawing these big nose characters and for me they're fun ...
(rough and clean up in TVPaint, drawn on Cintiq tablet. Click on any image to see it larger. )
Hey, really fun character! That's the stuff I'd like to see again in the theatres!
Hope to hear from ya!
Posted by: richardjgaines | Tuesday, June 12, 2007 at 10:32 AM
Just found your blog by incident! Wonderful work!!!
Guess I'll have to try TV Paint to; normally I don't like Wacom animation programs like Toonboom Harmony, making everything look like vectors, almost like flash animation. I like animations, where you can still see the pencil, a little bit ruffer things. But it seems to me, that TV paint would be able to do such things.
BTW, your clean ups are awesome! For me, it's like the hardest process in animation. My clean ups often kill the characters rough drive...
Wish you an nice sunday!
Posted by: Viola | Sunday, June 17, 2007 at 07:44 AM
I think you'll find that TVPaint will be to your liking if you desire to "see the pencil" in the drawings. The drawings can be as rough or as clean as you prefer. The bitmap drawing tools in TVPaint are very responsive and "feel" natural in a way that vector drawing tools do not .
Posted by: David N | Sunday, June 17, 2007 at 06:17 PM
OMG i love this character...i think he and Redd the Clown should hang yo!
Posted by: Angie Jones | Tuesday, July 03, 2007 at 03:19 AM
Big Nose characters with bow ties rule !
(that's my theory and I'm sticking to it )
Posted by: David N | Tuesday, July 03, 2007 at 12:58 PM
Hi david,
Wonderful drawing! Looks like graphite on paper!!!
Q: I'm a die hard traditionalist when it comes to lots of things including animation. Would you say that this TVP program is as visceral to animating with pencil and paper?
Thanks!
Posted by: R.Dress | Friday, July 06, 2007 at 09:07 AM
R. Dress -
It's the closest thing I've found to drawing with a real pencil . (especially using the "toothier" Wacom felt-tip nibs... they grab the surface of the tablet , not so slick as the normal Wacom pen point) .
"Close" , not exactly the same , but close enough for me. Your mileage may vary . If you own a Wacom Intous tablet or have access to try out or borrow a Cintiq tablet then try it with the 30-day free trial of TVPaint .
Posted by: David N | Friday, July 06, 2007 at 02:42 PM
What an awesome blog!!!!! I'll definitely be back for more:)
Posted by: martin wittig | Thursday, September 06, 2007 at 06:05 PM
Hello, i hope you do mind but could you tell me whatever hapenned to the Mirage program? The last i heard is that them and TVpaint had some kind of lawsuit but didnt confirm that info.
Posted by: Mokuu | Saturday, September 15, 2007 at 12:11 AM
Mokuu,
Yes, there is a legal dispute between TVPaint Development Co. and their former partner Bauhaus Software. (If anyone wonders who actually owns the source code for the program , ponder this: Bauhaus has not released an update of Mirage for over two years, while TVPaint Development continues to release updates for TVPaint with new features. What does that tell you ?) Here's the TVPaint Development Co. statement of their side of the situation:
TVPaint statement regarding Mirage/Bauhaus
Posted by: David N | Saturday, September 15, 2007 at 11:02 AM
Thank you for your response David,
In your opinion, Animation Drawing wise, which one is the better program? Mirage or TVPaint.
Posted by: Mokuu | Sunday, September 16, 2007 at 02:12 PM
For me it was a very practical choice between which one works on my Intel Mac computer . TVPaint works on Intel Mac, Mirage does not. Simple choice for me.
In some ways your question "which one is better? Mirage or TVPaint?" is like asking :
Which is better: Photoshop 6 or Photoshop CS ? Same program, but the newer Photoshop CS has many new features and improvements over the older PS 6 version. PS 6 is still very functional and nothing wrong with it. But I'd rather have the updated version if I had a choice , right ?
Mirage is simply an earlier version of the software now being sold as TVPaint. The older Mirage program has many of the same features as TVPaint , but not all. If one got used to having certain features in Photoshop CS then it would be awkward going backwards to Photoshop 6, but not impossible to use Photoshop 6 for most tasks.
That is how I would feel about Mirage: it's a very good program , it works fine for what it is , but the TVPaint program is even better.
(this is all apart from the legal dispute between the two companies over whether BHS continues to have the right to distribute TVPaint's earlier version of the software under the "Mirage" brand name.)
Posted by: David N | Sunday, September 16, 2007 at 04:09 PM
sweet drawing! Mirage blows in my humble opinion. Super buggy and support is fairly weak. but it looks like the software has matured and is helping you turn out some great results. quality posts. i'll be back for more. keep it up.
Posted by: Mike Nassar | Sunday, October 21, 2007 at 12:33 AM
Thanks, Mike.
Do check back and I hope to start posting more stuff again soon. My blog posting has slowed down due to work commitments . Hope to start it up again in the near future.
Interesting thing about Mirage is that after 2 years of stringing people along who were eagerly anticipating the supposed release of "Mirage 2.0" , Bauhaus Software abruptly announced this week (Oct. 17) that they are "retiring" Mirage. Overnight it was pulled from their online store and is no longer available for sale. BS says stuff like : "more exciting things to come... people will be very suprised and thrilled at the scope of what we're doing ..." that sort of thing, but if I was one of the Mirage faithful I'd be feeling a little bit burned about now . Oddly enough, it seems that very few of the true believers have been jilted by this news. After waiting 2 years for the exciting new development of Mirage 2.0 or whatever , I guess they're used to the waiting and are happy to go on waiting . I hope it turns out to be worth the wait. Not for me. I have work to do NOW. As I mentioned above, I originally moved over to using TVPaint because of one simple reason: it works on my Intel Mac and Mirage did not.
But since then I've never regretted the switch and certainly in light of the "retiring" of Mirage I'm glad I didn't pin my hopes on Mirage 2.0. BS has tried to ease the pain by "upgrading" all the current owners of Mirage by giving away a few plug-ins that had previously been things that cost extra , so everyone with a license of Mirage gets the plug-ins as freebies now. A very nice gesture ,a nice upgrade for everyone whose software was downgraded to "legacy" software overnight.
I have emails from BS a year ago saying:
"As we recently discussed on the phone, our team is currently working as hard as we can to solve the Intel Mac problem – as well as on the next-generation of our software. As soon as we have something on either of these angles, I’ll let you know. We have some fantastic things in the pipeline. The timeline on these is a few months out – well short of 6 months."
Well, obviously no new version of Mirage was released in that time period and now it's been withdrawn from the market entirely. Too bad. Somehow the Mirage faithful are undaunted and believe that something new will still be coming their way .
Maybe . I hope so. Good luck to 'em.
Posted by: D | Sunday, October 21, 2007 at 02:45 PM
your work its amaizing! really cool lines!! benja:)
Posted by: benjamin trobat | Saturday, October 27, 2007 at 05:14 PM
I heard that Sylvester the cat was designed with similar clown thinking. That's why his legs are so short, like he is wearing baggy pants.
Thanks for cheering on the inbetweeners!
Posted by: Midodok | Wednesday, November 14, 2007 at 11:47 PM
THIS IS IT MAN!
I am determined to use a 2d digital method on our next film , the work you are doing here is great and inspiring...thats the way to go for 2d in the future!!!
Posted by: tomm | Friday, November 23, 2007 at 02:22 PM
THIS IS IT MAN!
I am determined to use a 2d digital method on our next film , the work you are doing here is great and inspiring...thats the way to go for 2d in the future!!!
Posted by: tomm | Friday, November 23, 2007 at 02:23 PM
I jus tbought Sketchbook pro and am trying to use it to ink, would you know anything about it? I love the crisp lines you create with TVpaint, though.
Posted by: Harold George | Saturday, April 11, 2009 at 01:15 PM
Hi, Harold,
I've used a demo of Sketchbook Pro and it's pretty good. The drawing tools in TVP Animation are similar to Sketchbook Pro, but of course TVP is for drawing out full animation , not just still drawings .
I think to get crisp lines with any application the key is to work at high resolutions and tweak the brush tools until you find the settings that work best for you (also make sure your tablet is calibrated properly) .
Posted by: David Nethery | Saturday, April 11, 2009 at 02:37 PM