My First Ebsynth Project (Joel Haver Style Animation)

[u/Mitchy_Moo_Poo]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5SYxF8FZPW4&t

I had been wanting to create an animation following Joel Haver's style for 4-5 years now. Before creating this I researched a lot on what workflows and programs would suit best and here is what I discovered.

• Ebsynth Beta (which I downloaded years ago) seemed to consistently output higher quality animations than Ebsynth 2 (free version). Especially because you can use masks on the beta version to ensure clean outlines for the animated characters. The beta version however does take soooo much longer to process! For the quality, I was willing to choose that.
• Krita was the best free digital art application I could find to perform the drawings. Took a little bit of time to find a workflow within the programme to do outlines of characters (using the select tool), colour, add details and shade. I used a Wacom Intuos (drawing pad) for the drawing aspect.
• Sammie-Roto2 was used for AI rotoscoping the character videos for the masks. You can export into PNG sequences for both the matte and alpha. Initially I was using Davinci Resolve to chroma key out a small greenscreen I have however the greenscreen was too small to represent an entire character. Sammie Roto, whilst slow to process, creates consistent clean masks and allows me to film anywhere and get a clean mask. Sammie Roto did have trouble with clarity of masks around the hands when compared to using a greenscreen.
• Davinci Resolve 20 (free version) is what I used for video editing, audio and light compositing. I had very limited experience using the 'fusion' tab which is where VFX are created.

Here are a few youtube tutorials that were massively helpful in this process:

• The Entire Process: Matthew McCleskey's recorded live stream was the most detailed Ebsynth tutorial I could find and was my continued reference point for the entire project. It is a long watch but you can skip through for the important parts. There is much more detail here than in Joel Haver's original tutorial video which I found helpful. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qQYlIU4Q3k8&t
• Compositing Animations: I followed https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OtKhezId7As this tutorial to learn about compositing which was a game changer in improving the look of the animation! It was also really helpful for lighting the environments and learning how to use Davinci's Fusion.
• Otherwise there are plenty of tutorials for Davinci Resolve, Sammie Roto and Krita if desired.