Time to smash some tehnology..... Hard!

So, as per my last post I got tothe halfwaystage and things were looking good. Unfortunately as I woke up the next day and settleddown to resume work and then flash pops up a lovely error message saying that all my work is basically unreadable. After some cursing and panicking I was saved by my chum Brian, whom will receive a nice big wet kiss when I next see him, pointed out I could take one of my renders and break it back down into frames with Media Encoder, so while I lost my symbols etc. I was still able to get back on track. Unfortunately the only render I had still contained some of the weird poorly rendered stuff that my computer does. I had hoped to get this out by the end of the project, alas I ran out of time.

Anywho, here are some of the stage by stage videos.







Fortunately I was able to retrieve the fire symbol from another file, and I retrieved the Caddy by putting the print-screen i uploaded onto this blog into photoshop.

So here is the finished article unfortunately due to rendering issues i was unable to subimit it for the competition, but I intend to enter the december contest as well.


for some reason i couldnt get the sound to render in anything but an swf format which youtube doesn't seem to like.

Overall I am happy with the results. I would obviously have liked to fix the poorly rendered shots at the beginning but I ran out of time. There are some parts that still look a little soupy, in particular the shot that acompanies the line "why would I put it there". I did tinker with removing some of the in-between shots but I couldn't get it to look right so I left it as is. I would like to try using animate pro instead of flash having seen some of the other animations produced for this project. I am quite happy with my lip syncing on the taller character, it was particularly interesting to see how many different sounds I could produce with three or four different mouth designs.
As for things I would do differently, aside from giving myself at least an extra week to produce my animations I think it would be to produce a dope sheet. I did consider making one initially, but decided it was pointless as i was going to be working within Flash, and would have the soundwaves visible. However when my file died, and I was trying to reconstruct my film within After Effects I realised just how useful it would have been to have the entire thing mapped out on paper. I think the biggest lesson from all of this, which seems to have popped up within all the excercises this term, is that technology is oh so very useless. At least mine is, and I think in future I will have to work in the studio more than working from home. At least until I can upgrade my home system. Otherwise I am happy with the project overall, I think that my crude style managed to compensate for the lack of technical skill involved in my character design. I think for the next project i would like to take my characters and make them even more abstracted from the human form. Though I'm not sure how successful (within the context of competition) this would be as the 11 second club winners tend to either use maya or the 'classic' disney style, but as Lao Tsu once said, competition ruins the creativity of the soul. So instead I'm going to try and go in a more artistic direction with my future films.

Got to the halfway stage last night. Am pretty happy with results so far. It's very apparent that I won't place very highly in the actual contest but I am really getting a feel for how good this contest is for general practice. I am going to make a conscious effort to compete in the following months.

progress

the next shot is up and finished. Found the lip sync a bit more tricky on this one due to the limited movements of the small character's mouth. But so far this is going well. Hooray!

...And it only took 8 hours...

Graaaaaah!

Finally got the 1st section complete. only 5 more to go, though hopefully they won't require as much work as the establishing shot. so without further stalling for time:



and here it is with the lip-sync



Might miss my deadline but damned if im not pleased with myself...

FINALLY!

Had some major computer problems lately, but they seem to have been resolved, though re-backing up everything has been very tedious.

Hre are the much belated vids from the expression changes.

Here is the facial expressions, I was shooting for surprised joy, which I think I captured well, however I think I need to try drawing at 24fps for my actual 11 second club submission.



And here is the final version (had a bit of trouble editing within flash and was in a bit of a rush to get this finished, but i think the general idea went off ok. It has some very obvious clunky moments which I will need to work on. The basic lessons I have learned here is to not rely on motion tweens as they look terrible.




Here we have a test animatic for my flower animation. I had a terrible cough while making this which made the whole process a lot more tedious and difficult than it needed to be. Also I couldn't work out how to fix the lighting (cameras not being one of my strongest points) but it gives the overall idea. I also realised that I needed to scale the images up.



Unfortunately this idea didn't pan out too well as I couldn't resolve the lighting and focus issues and the deadline began looming all to close for my comfort. So I decided to go back to one of my first loves of animation- Jan Svankmajer. In particular the film "table manners". I decided that I wanted to do my own strange animation. And so it was done!



This second cut was done in order to tweak the timing slightly as the brief mentioned heavily that the images on screen needed to sync up with the music. Aside from a couple of blurred shots that snuck by I was overall happy with the result, even trying to use the blurred image to my advantage by trying to time them with the music as well. Almost as a sign that reality has shifted within the film- though I could just be trying to be a bit arty with that one....




Now I have turned my attentions back to my 11 second club entry. If you want to find the rules and soundclips or enter then you can find it at www.11secondclub.com.

For the fire SFX and the subject of What could have been stolen I decdided on a nice shiney Cadillac. Can't say I know for why, but it just seemed right. Plus I've been wanting to draw one for ages...



And here is the shinier version



And here we have the background to my first scenelet. I'm thinking of taking the pixel ratio up to 1080 if only to show off more of my shiny caddy...

I am also going to have to find out how to stop random bits not being rendered properly...



Not much time left now so am going to have to hit the grindstone hard and hopefully this should all be in soon.
Have split the audio into it's individual sections for each shot. Will get dopesheets and storyboards up later.

experiemental project 1st animatic

Here is the first animatic of my experimental project to convey a sense of what I wish to do. I will be using stop motion and plant matter for the actual cut. I also have key frames for the large flower going from bud to full bloom. Unfortunately I haven't been able to get the soundtrack off of moodle yet but here's what we have so far.

nothing spectacular

Here's just a few ods and ends I forgot to upload

This is half a walk. I left It at half because it was less an experiment in creating 'rigs' using the bone tool in flash. I think it worked well in essence but is a very time consuming way of animating. I think it would be useful for more advanced motions and gestures than walking.



This is the final shot of my emotion animation, that is currently waiting on me to finish one last section and a bit of editing before it's finished.

sketchbooky stuff

Finally got around to scanning my sketchbook, a couple of images were lost so i'll have to re-scan those later but here's what we have so far. I still can't work out how to re-size my blog layout in order to have the pictures in full view, in order to see the image in all it's glory simply click on it and you will be taken to the photobucket album.

Here are a couple of storyboards for the heavy lifting excercise.

http://i9.photobucket.com/albums/a78/almundis/work/heavyobjectSB009.jpg















Here is the storyboard for the emotion to emotion excercise.







Here are some of my character designs for the 11 second club project. I was hoping to create some characters that were crude but that still possessed a charm. I'm hoping to do some more detailed and coloured version in Illustrator (once I've gotten to grips with it) but in the meantime here's the concept art.











medusa









And here are some storyboards for a series of shorts that I'm planning. I realise the humor, like the characters, is crude and probably only funny to me, but it's my own brain child so I can do whatever the hell I like...

sad sad day...

Well here's the version of a sad walk, it was a bit rushed as I was aiming to have this in before midnight.



It's ok, I'm not particularly amazed at my ability here, but I think I managed to create some sense of a sombre stroll. For some reason I couldn't seem to get rid of the slight hover during the crossover of the legs. I think for the next project I will try using the bone tool but much more meticulously. Using more bones and animating frame by frame rather than relying on flash to interpret the movements I want.

Walk before you can run

Well, we're back to walking. Not a lot to report on this one. Been experimenting with the bone tool in flash for this project. The tool itself does appear to be useful on the surface but I've found that it comes with a lot of limitations. My first video I did using this tool I am almost thankful to say became corrupted. But I did another one here



Nothing particularly amazing here. Am currently working on a 'sad' walk using the same character. Mainly because this character is so featureless that it will give me a good challenge in trying to convey emotion. More on this to come....

We have also been told to start thinking about what we want to do for our Experimental project, in which we have been given several sound clips which we have to animate to. The animation should have some sense of the feelings and emotions that are created by the sound. I have decided on the piece that I will be working to which I will upload (probably alongside my first cuts as I can't work out how to upload just the soundfile onto this blog yet). Inspired by the autumn and the great wealth of coloured and deformed plant matter in the local area I have decided to do a stop frame animation using these bits of leaves and such to create an image in time with the music. My missus returned home with some liquid gold leaf t'other day, so I'm hoping to pilfer that and see if I cant get it involved somehow. Should have some image sketches drawn up in the next couple of days

a little follow up to the heavy lifting project, I didnt really feel like I conveyed the weight of the object in my last video so here is something i knocked up in flash. it feels a bit mechanical but this is only my second film using flash. for some reason the movie that was produced is a little buggy but i tried three times and they all came out a bit dodgey. sé la ve.

back to the slog

Well it's been a week since I started again at university after a summer of not doing too much.

I have some storyboards an such to be uplater, but for now here is an animatic of a man lifting a heavy object. Personally I think it needs a bit more work done, the first shot in particular needs to go on a tad longer, and it all feels a bit too fast. perhaps some added drawings or different framerate. I am currently working on some alternates in flash.



To come: a storyboard done over summer, some storyboards I had for this little project and a couple for a series of short films I am planning.

Animal Firm

EDIT: For reasons unknown to me blogspot keeps cutting my images . To see the full size image in all it's fantastical glory then click the image in it should take you to the photobucket page.
Ta da! This is the Animal Firm brief. We had to make a show/film/series that incorporated both elements of british gangster films and cartoon animals. It took me a while to come up with my premise, in the end it was the characters that ended up giving me the plot (as well as watching through a few british gangster films and some inspector morse).


Animal Firm – Premise
This is intended as a series. The story follows the plot of an aging gangster looking to make a last big heist. A large exchange is taking place at the main national Bank. Aside from the vault’s usual contents of safety deposit boxes, there will also be one hundred-million Euros- a kind donation to the French government. Moriarity, our aging mobster, is willing to throw all his resources at getting inside that vault. However, the police are not oblivious to his plots. Detectives Maurice and Snow are investigating the long list of misdeeds that are attached to Moriarity. To unravel his plans for retirement our heroes will have to crawl (and more often flee) through the underbelly of a 1920’s London. Deranged killers, drug addicts and a sexually deviant Gander being just some of the friendly characters they have to encounter. Unbeknownst to both the factions of law and crime is the oh so more cut-throat world of politics.
Because what is actually concealed in the vault, alongside the various jewels and cash, is a case containing images that could- at best- be described as low grade pornography. What makes this particularly interesting is the people acting out the various sexual fantasies are members of the highest level of the French government. Monsiour Mon Pierre, a corrupt devious toad of a toad. And he has no qualms about calling in some of France’s most highly skilled murderers and assassins to stop these images reaching the public.
The stage is set and the race is on. Cut up with a wide range of cheap puns and sight gags. And more references than you can shake a stick at.

Here's some of my character work. Some aren't named, but that just means they were only intended as an ancilary character, I hope you can read my chicken-scratch handwriting.



















This guy was intended to be the police chief but I'm not so sure...





Here are some shiny painted ones







Here is some work i did on interiors, plus the stock images I used for reference.



























This is an animatic I di as a 'Splash Image'.


This is a story Board I made to convey the kind of humor delivery.













Visual gag


Overall I found this an interesting project to work on. I've found that I am much more comfortable designing characters and organising shots in my head than I am in creating the actual environments that my characters live in. I unfortunately ran out of time just as I was starting to design the actual world that this series would take place in. Next chance we get to do something like this I'm going to make sure I design the world first as I was starting to enjoy drawing interiors and furniture.

Coming up next: Nothing spectacular it's the many brief sketchbook!