Final Animation!
Story!
"I Wanna Be A Pretty Guardian!!!" is a 2D animated short film about the origin of the superhero Rainbow. Defeating villains, rescuing his crush, typical superhero things. Seems like something out of a comic book, right?
IWBAPG!!! started off as an idea for a webcomic. Deciding to work on this idea helped build the world and this animatic could be used a trailer. This film is drawn entirely frame by frame and it took a little over 14 weeks to produce.
The tools I used for this project are Adobe Photoshop, Autodesk Sketchbook, Procreate, and After Effects.
Original Animatic!
The original storyboard for the IWBAPG!!! animatic! I learned a lot about story board and pre-production since then. A lot stayed the same, but there were also major changes made thanks to weekly feedback.
Character Turnarounds!
The characters and their comic-world alter egos!
Before (2018) After (2021)
Rainbow's first public appearance was in Heitzman's DIG3713 in 2018!
Pre-Production Materials!
I used a 3D rig of a city to capture the possible camera perspectives I could use for my film and I also used it a reference on how to draw buildings.
How I Animate!
I started off with very loose sketches of how the character looks and the action they're doing. Then, I added value shading to determine color and lighting. After that step, I cleaned up the line art and finished the background. Finally, I colored the character and added a halftone effect to give it a comic-book feel to the animatic.
I draw everything frame by frame in Procreate (previously used AutoDesk Sketchbook) then import the PSD file into Photoshop for coloring and dot effects. Then I would export each frame individually as a PNG and import them into After Effects for compositing.
BONUS: Old Concept Art!
The concept design for the title. Josiah's classmates and their respective colors with Josiah combining all of them to form a Rainbow!
Rainbow's real life counterpart, Josiah, was first thought up as practice for a new cartoon-ier style back in 2017.
The side characters first designs! In order from left to right: Benji, Selena, Emanuel, and the twins Donna and Taylor.
Rough draft for a pilot episode of IWBAPG!!! in WebToon format! The first episode introduces the classmates, their comic world counterpart and the relationship between how they act and who they're portrayed as.
