Cream of the Crop 1

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Text File | 1992-03-22 | 25KB | 538 lines

FLOAT manual FLOAT makes cartoons on a PC. To register it, send $50.00 to Peter Neuendorffer, 1399 Commonwealth Ave Apt 11, Allston, MA 02134. You get 3" disk of FLOAT with an in-program help system, and a drawing manager program. FLOAT is dedicated to the many consultants and bystanders who helped me sort through what making a movie on the PC is all about: Mom and Dad, Ed Prifogle, the system analysts down at Copley Burger King, Michael, Peter Halfkenney, Richard Nickle, and all the employees at the book store. (Actor 1 cries accepting the envelope). Float Cartoon Maker System requirements IBM (r) type xt, at, 386 Hard drive. Color card CGA, or EGA or VGA (make sure your mode is set to CO80) Color monitor Serial Mouse. In Floaters the arrow keys always correspond to "left", "right", "up", "down" of the mouse. The Enter key is the same as the Left mouse click. The menu items may be selected with the Left Mouse CLick, or Enter. Also, all menu items may be chosen by typing the Alt-first letter combination. (holding down the Alt key and pressing the letter highlighted in Yellow on your FLOAT screen. Installation Where c is your hard drive letter, and a means the floppy drive containing the Float disk, from DOS, Enter the following, c: md float cd float copy a:\*,* float Ways to use Float Cartoon maker: From DOS, run FLOAT to make a new movie, or edit an old one. The movie must be named FLOATERS.FLT. To watch the movie, run FLOAT filename, wherre filename is any valid FLOAT movie file. If you wish to edit different movies, rename the file floaters.flt from DOS. Remember, if you choose "Load" when floaters.flt is not present (you create it on exiting program), the FLOAT software will not run. Choose "New Video" when prompted the first time. Also, a parameter of /b from DOS puts a bright border around the screen. Using parameter /n (where n is a whole number from 1 to 100) will override FLOAT's automatic speed control. The higher the number, the slower the speed of FLOAT's movie projector. In summary: from DOS, run FLOAT load in movie floaters.flt for editing: choose LOAD FLOAT FILENAME runs movie "filename". parameter /b border. parameter /n n=number 1-10 slow down (automatic speed control otherwise) Exit Float at any time by pressing Alt-X combination. Brief tour of the Studio The three rooms in the FLOAT studio are the ART ROOM, SCENERY, and PRODUCTION FLOOR. On entering FLOAT studios <FLOAT><ENTER> from the FLOAT DOS directory, you choose LOAD to work with the movie FLOATERS.FLT, or choose New Video to start a new movie. Then you are in the ART room, where you draw "actors" 1 to 5, or go to SCENERY to draw background screens 1 to 5. From Scenery you need to choose To-drawings when done drawing a background screen. To make a cartoon with these five Actors, you choose Floor, where you are taken to the FLOAT PRODUCTION FLOOR. From there, you select Slate to set up each scene. To get the Actor into the movie scene, you must first select Slate, Motion and the Nove option. To film, you exit the Slate with OK and choose Film. The actual range of film frames you shoot are set with Action-at and Cut-at. To film an Actor, set the slate, the choose Film (remember Move is the first thing you do with the actor). You are in Pause. Click the mouse and move it (or arrow keys) and Click again to stop. You may view the movie from the PRODUCTION FLOOR by choosing View, then Go. Left Click (or Enter key) stops. moving right arrow from View-Go will throw the projector into fast forwards. Moving to left causes the viewer to pause. Left again for reverse, left again for fast reverse. In Summary: Film an Actor from the Floor (production floor). Set the scene with Slate (Motion-Move must be chosen to put the Actor onto the film first). The scene frame numbers are set from Action-At and Cut-At. View allows you to see the movie and mark frames for further filming. You may then return to the slate for further filming. ART ROOM (and scenery) draw actors 1 to 5, scenery 1 to 4 FLOOR film the actors and scenery (with Slate, Film, View, Action-at, Cut-at) Exit FLOAT at any time with Alt-x (and choose Y for "yes") If you are watching your movie only (FLOAT FLOATERS.FLT from DOS), you can exit this with the Escape key The ART ROOM Drawing your actors and scenery To draw an Actor from FLOAT, from the ART ROOM (the words "art room" should be in the upper right hand corner of your monitor: Position the cursor on the black part of the screen, Left- Click (or Enter key), move the mouse or arrow keys, and press Enter to "lift the brush". You may select different colors to draw by positioning the cursor on the color key on the left, and selecting a color (from now on the manual uses the word select to mean Left-click or Enter). You may also select a character to draw by selecting Brush and selecting the character from the list. This character screen does not respond to Alt-first letter by the way. When back in the ART room, note if you do not have a mouse, you may quickly move the cursor to the color bar by typing Alt-minus (minus key). To switch between actors 1 to 5, select the numbers 1 through 5. To draw a background screen, select Scenery, and draw in the same way, then return to the ART ROOM with To-drawings. Other things you can do from the ART ROOM are Copy and Paste. Copy copies the entire drawing in view. It may be Pasted back on the same drawings, or any of the actors 1-5 or scenery screens 1-4. You delete an actor (forever if you have not first copied it), You may select the mouse sensitivity from Mse-Sens. It is factory set on load-up to 4, meaning more sensitive. Setting it to 1,2,or 3 will make the mouse less responsive when moving it left,up,right or down. This is useful for insuring straight lines when drawing actors or scenery. Selecting the letter F on the color key enables a Fill option. Move the cursor over the letter F on the left (the color key). Then press Enter, or left-mouse-click. Then move the cursor within the shape to fill, and press Enter. This fill option may have to be repeated as it does not handle certain shapes. Clicking or Enter when cursor is over the "E" letter on the color key will activate a drawing Eraser. You may then move the cursor to the drawing, click, and Erase a line or section of your drawing. Then Enter (or left click) turns off the eraser. If you re-draw an actor after filming in the PRODUCTION FLOOR, the drawing rescans for your entire movie. This is useful if you want to refine the drawings later. To animate your drawings, from the ART ROOM, choose Production. You may return to the art room as many times as you wish. Note that you can exit FLOAT at any time, even when viewing or filming, by pressing the Alt-x combination. The Production Floor Filming your actors The Production "Floor" is where you move and process your drawings to make a cartoon. It may be explained in 4 sections: MARK SLATE VIEW FILM. Remember if you don't like something you film, you can go back and change it. The "Action-at", "Cut-at", and "Mark-from" are used to set the frames (1 to 5000) to use for your filming. Setting the Slate allows you to set the kinds of tasks you film. Also in athe Slate are Track Edit functions for processing portions of the film (the background screens for example).3 The View option is to view portions of the film you are working with. It is in View that you may set three film markers to use in the action and view marks. The filming is done from FILM (after you set your scene with Slate. To be a bit less complicated, you set the frame ranges of the scene by using View with Action-at, Cut-at. You set the scene with Slate, and film it with Film. ----MARK __________________________________ In the Production "Floor" there are three menu items at the top: Action-at, Cut-at, Mark-from. By selecting Action-at, you may set the frame number to begin filming including 1mark, 2mark, 3mark as set in the View option. By choosing Set Number, you may click to enter in a number manually. Also, at Action-at you may choose Play-Through. This way, each time you cut (end) a scene in Film, the action-at number is automatically set to the next frame after your cut. Remember to set Play-Through to off if you want to reshoot a scene (thus Action-at will not change). In general, Action-at stays the same if you do not change it, or exit FLOAT session. Cut-At acts in the same way as action-at, excepting that your scene may be cut during filming by left-clicking the mouse, or typing ENTER. Mark-from (including the current 1mark, 2mark, 3mark markers) is to set what frame the viewer starts viewing at (this is not neccessary for short films). -SLATE _____________________________________________ Slate allows you to set the next scene. It includes ways to set the type of motion task you are filming, a way to put the background "Scenery" drawings onto the film, and a way to mask your Actors to size. This last is especially useful, because an Actor (screens 1-5 from the Art Room) may share drawing space with other Actors on the same screen. You could have several characters in Actor 1, for example. By setting the mask when you film, you may film them one at a time. It is important to note that only one of these characters may be filmed for any given frame or ranges of frame. (Slate continued) The Slate is accessed by selecting Slate from the Production "floor". On the right half you see the current settings listed. On the bottom are "RECORDING" , "TRACK EDIT" and "OK." Remember that your may use the keyboard to select any menu item with the Alt-(yellow letter) combination, or select the item with the mouse by clicking the item. Recording toggles between Rehearsal and Action mode. When in Action (it says so during filming), the motion of your actors is being recorded to the current movie. In rehearsal mode, however, everthing is active in Film, however the camera is not "running". This is useful for complicated scenes. It defaults to Action each time you run FLOAT. When you run Slate each time, the current actor is always used. You may select that from the Production Floor by choosing a number 1 to 5 which correspond to the actor drawings 1 to 5 in the Art Room. =====Track Edit (from main Slate menu)========= Track Edit allows processing of the film directly with no need to watch it. Here are the Track Edit functions from Slate-Track Edit: Extend Actor allows you to put a given drawing from the Art-Room (1 to 5) on the range of film from current Action-At to current Cut-at. Extend Matte extends the current Matte (cropping of an actor-see below under Staging) on the range of film from current Action-At to current Cut-At. All tracks Dump erases from the film all actors 1-5, using the range of film from current Action-At to current Cut-at. You should be careful, as this is not un-Do-able! Dump Actor erases only the current actor from the range of film from current Action-At to current Cut-at. Back Color specifies a backdrop of color to be in the range of film. Scenery is where you choose to put the scenery drawings made in Scenery (1-4) off of the Art Room. =========Motion (from the main Slate menu)========= [CYCLE is explained at the end of manual. That is for drawing gestures for your The motion options are: CYCLE animations: see last section of this manual MOVE and SPEED MOVE (speed move is for fast motion) settings allow you to get your Actors (drawings 1 to 5 in the Art Room) onto film. When you run Film with these options set, you may position the current actor (number highlighed from Production Floor) on the frame. Then when ready Select Enter and film the actor while the frames breeze by. The frame counter is on the lower part of the screen. The current location of the center (underline CENTER) of the actor is shown at the top left. A location of (4,10) means the center of the actor is on column 4, row 10. Negative numbers indicate the actor is offscreen. You may move the actor off screen a SHORT bit at will. To stop filming, Select Enter (left mouse click is always Enter). TURN allows you to turn the actor on the horizontal. =====Staging (from main Slate menu) -Make Matte This allows you to mask your actors if such a way that only the selected portion of a drawing from the Art Room will be used during filming. You select the motion of the mask and the drawing is cropped. Only the portion visible will be filmed. This is useful if you have made several characters and/or objects on one drawing-actor screen. The main rule is that only ONE of these may be filmed for any given frame. Thus an actor-drawing might have four seperate versions of the actor. By using the matte, you may select a given Actor version. -Lock in will lock the Current Actor to another actor's motion. Both current Actor and the other actor must be present at Action-at frame. The relative distance of the two is as it is in that frame. -Place Match when set on will make the location of the Current Actor (when filming in Move or Speed move motion) start out at the location of the previous frame. This is useful if you are patching in scenes. Normally a good place to re-do a scene is after a "clean exit" of the actor. A clean exit means the actor is totally offstage. -Tight Grip -Guided Grip Tight Grip and Guided grip refers to how FLOAT interprets mouse motion or arrow keys during filming. In Tight Grip: Motion is only when mouse is moved. For keyboard, the arrow key moves the actor one column or row at time. For turn, each movement turns the actor slightly. For Cycle animation (see below), the cycle is accomplished one only In Guided Grip: motion continues until an oppisite motion is given. In filming the mouse is moved left and the actor goes sailing left. Move it right to stop, and then right again to move it right. For turn, the actor will turn until opposite motion is specified For cycle animation, the chosen gesture continues until the opposite motion is selected. ===== FILM ------- After selecting your scene in the slate, you may film the Current Actor (the number 1 to 5 that is highlighted). Remember if you go back to the Art Room and re-draw an Actor, it will be changed in the current movie to your re-drawn Actor. You will be filming from Action-at to Cut-at, or whenever you press enter while filming. To film, select Film from the Production "floor". If there are error boxes, it may be that the Cut-at frame number is less than the Film-at frame number. Since you never film backwards, you would need to reset these. After selecting film option, you go into a pause. If place match is on, the Actor will be in the same place as the action-at frame minus one. At any rate, if MOTION or SPEED MOTION, you may move the actor with motion keys. When ready, Press Enter. if your slate is set to MOTION, you move the actor with arrrow keys or mouse motion. Note the other actors appear as already filmed at any time. Thus you may move one actor and then exit with Enter;then select another actor by clicking on the number; select move-motion; then film the second actor relating to the already-filmed first actor. If in turn, you may turn the actor while filming. It will repeat if Guided Grip is selected from Slate-Staging. ======= VIEW The viewer doubles as a way to view your footage, and set three MARKS for a recording session. Select View, and note the picture is at the 1st frame. Selecting Go views the footage from the Mark-From frame number (which defaults to 1). If there is no footage filmed, using Go does nothing- footage must be shot to be viewed. While viewing, you may select right motion to go into fast forward, or move left to stop, or move left again to reverse, or left again for fast-reverse. You may find the arrow keyboard keys easier to use than the mouse for this. Press Enter to stop viewing (as you pressed Enter to stop filming). Note 1mark 2mark and 3mark. You may set these to the last frame viewed. Then when in Production "floor" you can use these markers to set action-at, cut-at. What you see is what you get when running Float floaters.flt movie viewer from DOS, minus the menus. =========PROCESS Float uses 14 internal display screens to save drawings.These are set to act in certain ways by processing the USER choices. The Scenery and up to 5 screens are laid down on a backplane, checking for motion outside of the screen area. (Hey, this is my IMPROVED manual style!). The projector responds to a saved script. Even when filming, the projector reads motion off this script, thus what you see is what you get. Although tremendous work went into testing all options, the author regrets if there are problems. If I had to do it again, I would never test from screen output. My eyes are somewhat crt-burnt from this process of interactive writing. A raw list of changes by Actor and frame is maintained for touching up screens during filming. A one-to-one correspondence between mouse click and enter, and between mouse motion and arrow keys is maintained down at the level of checking the mouse. As promised the section on Cycles follows. CYCLE ANIMATION: What is it? and how does one use it in float? Cycle animation is the process of making minor changes in an animation drawing to effect motion on the drawing. For example, a drawing of Mr. Big could be altered for "smoking" by making several drawings with a cigarrette and smoke drifting upwards. In float, you get to draw these animations by choosing from the Production Floor Slate, then Motion, then choose Cycle, then Make cycle. You are thrown into a drawing screen where you may re-draw the current actor (the number selected at the bottom of the slate screen). After a minor change, select PhotoFrame, and do another one, then Photoframe to "photograph" each change in the drawing. You may choose Reset to reset the drawing to the last frame, or choose Template to have the frame be the Actor (drawing) unaltered. When done, choose Finished and exit. Note you may choose this cycle at any time for filming. After choosing Motion-Cycle Choose_cycle from Slate, you go into Film. You will be asked if you want to save previous cycles. This is so if Actor-1 had a section already filmed of the "walk" cycle, you could keep that while you interrupt it with "tipping hat". To Film a Cycle, press right arrow key during Filming. If the actor is present, it will perform the cycle you have chosen. Press Enter to stop filming.