'Onwards' sketchbook

A lot of people are claiming 'Onwards' was rotoscoped. It is very
flattering, since that is not how it was done. I'll post some of the
work-in-progress stuff I have over the next week or so, explaining
the process.


This is my working out how James drew the cross-hatching on his
drawings so I could match it in 3D. I had a fixed light source
acting as the sun. The hatching texture had to rotate to the correct
angle, depending on the relative angle of camera>man>sun.
Quite tricky, especially since the distance between hatches also had
to change depending how close the camera was to him. There was
also a second pass of hatching to match the way James' drawing
style.

I had a similar problem with the thickness of the main outline: it
had to remain the same thickness now matter how big he was in
frame.

Hopefully you don't even notice any of this shit happening when
you watch it.


I got James to quickly sketch the character and colour him in. The
numbers and arrows are my annotations of the order and direction
of all the strokes he made. I used this to recreate James' drawing
for the start of the animation.

We wanted the animation to be as close to James' ink drawing as
possible, so this attention to detail was imperative. Anal? Moi?

When I draw, I always seem to draw the nose first. I am sure Freud
would have something to say about that.


My thumbnail storyboard of the crow sequence. One of the most
satisfying parts of animating for me is putting a cross through a
completed shot. But I can never resist crossing out the shot I am
working on before it is finished, negating all pleasure.

I have the same lack of control with advent calendars.