Digital Tubiglay

Tubiglay is Filipino for watercolour...and I love the medium despite being considered hardest one of all. In this digital age where art connoisseurs look at a James W. Turner work as if the age of watercolour painting is dead, there are "watery" elements whereby one can click on an image to give it a watercolour effect in Photoshop, using vectors for waves and ripples. My favourite is PS7's liquify tool which sweetly "melts" images like a digital Dali and without messing up pixels like what smudge tool does.

Anyway I just found out that I could recycle old editorial cartoons which I did in colour. I dig 'em up from old and sticky back-up cd's and mess 'em up in liquify tool in Photoshop, save each image as I move on, then drop them into storyboard of Windows MovieMaker (I now use upgraded Vista version, nevertheless old version is still sharp!) and presto, you get a fun video.

Do you find drawing with a mouse inaccurate and frustrating?


True, and not only that, if you're not a young person like me you'd suffer from RSI and tendons snag because of imposed unnatural movements, ironically suffered for sake of natural-like animated movements.


Thankfully I was gifted by partner a new Wacom pen and tablet. At first it felt funny but got used to it while playing in goldfields of Photoshop.


Tedious it is, animation is not for the fainthearted. Yes-sir-ree, we need 24 drawings per second to give it life-like movement. Did it once working with Nonoy Marcelo animating movies for Kabataang Barangay under Imee Marcos back in '78. Our studio at Scout Limbaga in Quezon City was often busy with animists (including Santi Bose:) and animators, in-betweeners and go-betweeners (to ease conflict between sound engineers and storyboard characters).

The fun is in the process of animation, much so, the fun is to be with people with a common goal..to create an animation film for big screen and television. Daunting! The logistics alone is unperceivable. To think that same project would have taken less time and money to produce with use of computers. Nonoy would have been in his rightful elements. Quick and efficient the computer came in too late for him.

Also did a dance feature for Annie Batumbakal which starred Nora Aunor. All one needed for this kind of analog animation was patience and lots of caffeine and to be vague..since si Mila ang utol ko ( since one of my sisters is named Mila, a great fan, I get a buzz doing animated short films! Comics alive!)

Ah so..digital age. I think it's only the Japanese vehement in preserving analog or hand-drawn anime. Good for them. It's a vanishing trade. Of course a few serious Japanese directors know that it's easier to do animation with computers and that's probably what they're trying to avoid. As animation tools are easily accessible they are likewise conveniently "abused", too. The romance of hand-drawn animation is lost. Don't we prefer old Disney animations to
3-D and flashy ones today? Somehow some things have been lost at the advent of compact discs as wax records were dumped. Oh I miss those lovely scratches and hiss and pops;-)

Most of special effects in WMM are "clip-artish" but although simple as they are, they can generate an impressive mixture of serendipitous effects.


Try saving all movie clips in your computer to lower the file size and then drop them back in WMM as one file where you can add more effects that could traverse the whole clip. Now do this over and over again and you'll get hooked with animated eyes;-)


Here are a few drawings (all over this entry) that I gave life to and also energized by reggae king uncle Bob Marley. Not as hot as his Kinky Reggae tho:) All for good, experimental fun!;-)

Check it out:



And another version I did for anniversary of Banggaan Art Group of which I'm proud member. 'ere ye are dudes: