Animation Style Guide

Animation Style Guide

Overview

Sketch Artist is a heavily character driven game with ample amounts of character dialogue and acting, which gives the project a unique opportunity to delve far deeper into traditional character animation than a typical game would need to do. Because of the zany and outrageous nature of the characters being developed for the game, our animations will be heavily influenced by the style of animation developed by Tex Avery. “In cartoons you can do anything” is a line often quoted of Avery, and his animation style is evidence of this belief. Known for creating characters such as Daffy Duck, Egghead, Porky Pig and Screwball Squirrel, Tex Avery’s style ignores the laws of physics in favor of giving his characters the ability to move in whatever over-the-top manner suits them. Most prominently, Avery’s animation style consists of gags in quick succession, usually building upon each other and becoming more and more outrageous as the animation continues. NorthWest Hounded Police an excellent example of how Avery used gags on top of gags throughout his short films as well as outrageously exaggerated character movements and lighting fast timing. Stylistically, he’s known for using techniques like dry brush, smears and multiples in his animation. Drybrush is used to simulate speed and in this technique, paint is literally smeared on the cell to give the illusion of extreme motion blur. Smears are a rapid motion in which the character is distorted in the middle of the motion to create an extremely cartoony and exaggerated motion. Multiples are used to show frantic action and are similar to a smear, except multiple copies of the same body part are used in place of distortion. Finally, Tex Avery often gave his character’s limbs a “rubber hose” feeling as opposed to grounding them in reality with the appearance that they had bones in their bodies. These over the top techniques will heavily influence the animation style of Sketch Artist.

Northwest Hounded Police

Tex Avery Northwest Hounded Police 1946 by werewolf1912

Defying Physics

Dry Brush

Smear

Multiples

Hook Lady

The “Hook Lady” character is one of the characters who will be interviewed by the sketch artist, and her animations will be inspired by the old lady in “Red Hot Riding Hood.” The Hook Lady is quirky and outrageous, and her motions will suggest that she’s somewhat of an inappropriate “cougar” type. Her motions will be more subdued than other characters due to her age and inability to perform back-breaking contortions that would be plausible by younger characters.

Red Hot Riding Hood

Captain Walters

Character Description:

Before joining the PPD, he was a decorated war hero who always showed great loyalty to his country. Once he joined the police force, he quickly uncovered a conspiracy tying the mayor and the police department to Don Carlo Escargo, which forced him to make some tough decisions. In the end he remained loyal to the town he swore to protect and revealed the conspiracy to the world. This resulted in the jailing of many of the higher ups in the station and Walters jumped the ranks all the way to captain.

Because Captain Walters is a wise character who was capable of investigating and uncovering a complicated conspiracy, and brave enough to expose it, his movements will be inspired by Bugs Bunny. Bugs is as wacky as any other Tex Avery character, but his motions always seem deliberate and he remains in control of himself. Captain Walters is a leader, and for this reason he must remain in control of himself while at the same time fitting into the outrageous world around him, and for this reason bugs will be a heavy influence on Captain Walters’ movements.

Bugs as Maestro – over the top but in control

Don Carlo Escargo

Carlo Escargo is the boss of the Plattsville mafia, but is actually a snaelien in disguise. The snaelians are a secret alien race that disguise themselves as humans to conduct business and create havoc on the town of Plattsville. Because of Don Carlo Escargo’s secret status as a snaelien, Droopy Dog was chosen as the inspiration behind his movements. Droopy is somewhat of an anomaly in the Tex Avery world in the sense that he is very controlled in his movements and its subdued by comparison to the lunatics around him. For this reason, he fits will as the inspiration for Don Carlo because as a member of a secret alien race masquerading as human, it would be logical that he would move in a manner that is different from the other characters around him. His more controlled body movements would also be logical for a character posing as a mob boss because the controlled manner of motion becomes a symbolic extension of the control he exerts on the underlings is his mafia operation.

Droopy Dog

Buck

Buck is a member of the mafia serving under Don Carlo Escargo, and is a crass redneck bumpkin with no sense of refinement. Because of this he and his comrades, the country crew, are looked down upon by the other member of the mafia and have a difficult time being taken seriously. Buck’s character movements will be inspired by the Big Bad Wolf character that appears in “Red Hot Riding hood” and “Northwest Hounded Police.” Wolf is the epitome of Tex Avery’s style, and is as crass and unrefined as Buck, making him a logical choice.

Magician

The Magician is a slippery villain hired by Don Carlo Escargo for his amazing ability to change disguises and perform daring escapes with his feats of magic. He is impeccably dressed, complete with handlebar mustache, and is never caught. Daffy Duck, arguably one of the most over the top and outrageous characters in the Tex Avery world, was chosen as the inspiration for the magician. Daffy’s body defies the laws of nature by behaving in ways that can only be achieved through a body devoid of bones and filled with magic, making him a worthy inspiration for our slick magician.

Daffy

Madame Sharpe

Madame Sharpe is a tall French woman with an abnormal love of cheese, and a deadly ability to wield knives. As a femme fatale her motions will be inspired by Jessica Rabbit, a character who was inspired by Tex Avery’s “Red.” Jessica Rabbit has Red’s sex appeal but moves in a slower, more deliberate way which suits her status as a villain in control of her criminal enterprise.

Jessica Rabbit

Technical Considerations
The Tex Avery style of animation will create unique challenges due to the nature of the rigging that the Sketch Artist team is exploring. Our current approach is to create a 3D rig using a 2D character image mapped to a flat plane. Because Avery’s style is so flamboyant with a heavy use of drybrush, smears, and multiples, we will need to explore ways to build the ability to accomplish these stylistic characteristics into our rigs. Because our animations will be static and not player controlled, we will have the ability to render them and this gives us the opportunity to manually create some effects, like drybrush, in post.
We are currently looking at South Park’s rigging style as a possibility to solve our specific aniation challenges. South Park uses 3D rigs for 2D characters, similar to what our team will need, and has set up their rigs to use replacement animation. With replacements, multiple versions of the same body part are created such as an open hand, a closed fist, and a finger point. At the appropriate keyframe, the hand is replaced with the drawing in the appropriate position. This technique of using replacement animation is also used in stop-motion films to give rigid puppets the ability to make facial expressions that would otherwise be impossible. We are currently exploring the possibility of using this technique to overcome some of the challenges that our rigs will present when trying to capture Tex Avery’s style in our animations. We will also have characters that will need to deform to achieve the “rubber hose” look that is characteristic of Avery’s style, so we will need to determine an appropriate resolution for our image files in order to accommodate the stretching without having pixilation occurring due to low resolution on the textures.
South Park Replacement animation Rig

Paranormal Smeared Faces replacement animation