Mark Borgions is a graphic designer by education. But even in his graphic work, he always tended to use a lot of illustration and motion. Since the last couple of years, Mark has tried to refocus more towards illustration and character animation work.
I finished my education in 1989. Back then, we had all kinds of new tools. We had a Macintosh, and software that could produce vector and pixel based artwork. I think it’s a great thing to have grown together with the possibilities.
Do you create your animations using Toon Boom Animate Pro only?
I do all character work in Animate Pro only, but I do use other software in preparing and outputting the animations.
If not, what other applications are you using?
In preparing character animation assets, I use Illustrator, Photoshop and Painter. In post I use After Effects and Final Cut
Why did you choose to combine these products? I’ve grown so used to the vector treatment of Illustrator, I cannot live without it. As for Painter, I really like the natural look of the tools. Photoshop I use mostly to bring assets from the Illustrator into the Painter. I have a decent plug-in set in my After Effects, so that really helps me put the finishing touches.
Whenever I can, I start with a soundtrack. If I’ve got 30”, and I have a soundtrack that describes the mood and movement in those 30”, I feel I have completed about 50% of my work. After that, I make the roughest storyboard and animatic you will ever see. As for the assets, I sketch on paper, scan it in, and trace everything by hand in illustrator. In this process, I already keep in mind how I want to break apart the elements for later animation. Some elements I take to Painter for texturing detail. When all is ready, I go to Animate Pro, and bring all my assets in place. I render out in different layers, so I have some flexibility in post production. Final comp is done in After Effects
I do motion design work and character animation. I am a great fan of the UPA esthetic, of the Pink Panther cartoons, and the likes of that. I try to put as much heart in my character stuff as there is in those.
It is mainly cut-out. But for arms and legs and other things moving and bending, I like to do frame by frame.
1. The network, in puppeting and in comping.
2. Being able to choose between 2.5D or 3D layering.
3. The ability to use Photoshop layers completely changed my method.
4. The library, with its use for assets as well as for storing animations.
Mostly, the points described in the previous answer. But I’d like to repeat point 3, the ability to use bitmap assets. To me, this is key. But also the ease of use. I am a self trained character animator, and with Animate Pro, I finally get the result I am aiming for.
Before I used Animate Pro, I did character work in After Effects (before that even in Director, for lack of an alternative). Later, I did some animation in Flash, but never liked the workflow. Also in After Effects, the comps became extremely complex, even for the simplest animations. I really wanted a more traditional animation workflow, with a light table and a frame by frame, layer by layer methodology. Then I learned about Toon Boom Studio, and I was blown away. But I did miss features I saw in traditional animation systems beyond my budget. Later I migrated to Digital Pro, which already addressed a lot of my needs. But now, since I use Animate Pro, for the first time I can do the whole animation process in one extremely streamlined environment. That is an enormous timesaver.
Being able to stay in one program for the bulk of the work is an immense timesaver. I can put my bitmap scenery (with alphas intact!), and I can do all movement (character and camera) in one single, stable application. I have instant previewing of what I am doing, without having to go through renderings or having to go back and forth between Animate and some player system.
Maybe, but I never have. I tried a few alternatives, never with a result I liked.
I truly love the program. In the market, I can position myself against big production facilities, which tend to have a much more technical than creative answer to the clients questions. Having a program that lets me, the creator of the graphic look of the peace, go “Yeah, I can do that for you” is a fantastic something.
I went through the videos once before diving into the program. And then went back to them now and then for quick reference. But basically, working on two medium size productions was all I needed to learn the whole thing in depth.
I use a Macintosh 2 x 3G Quad-Core with 16GB of RAM. I have a Wacom tablet, and two monitors of which one is another Wacom (Cintiq)
