and one last thing

This is awesome:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dDpbB1lHaQs&feature=player_embedded

Presentations

What a relief! I must admit that I am happy it is over. It is quite pleasing not having to worry about one of my subjects. Not that it wasn't fun, it was probably the most enjoyable 6 units I've done at uni so far but it is time to move on to a new projects, or get on with existing project...

As for the presentations, it was great actually seeing the other animations. Though I had caught glimpses of other students' work during the last month I didn't have a very good idea what many of them were about/had turned into/direction they were taking etc...

Over all I feel there were a number of stand out films. My favourite was iPilot. Even with a complete lack of speech, the animation was able to carry the story through the entire 2-3minutes and it got a great laugh at the end where they definitely out did me on the gore levels.

Fishing love was an example of great storyboarding and shot composition. I really enjoyed the final shot with the fishing line making a love heart, as well as the little joke with the line tying a knot.

It was also good that the presentations didn't drag on. I believe this would be the first time, possibly ever that our current group of students didn't go over their allotted presentation times. It is always nice to get out on time or even early.

I do plan on entering my animation in a number of competitions in the coming year so I will see how that goes. Over all the experience learning how to animate in Flash and use Premiere was very useful. Getting a number of contact within the industry - Hugh and Dave, will no doubt be very helpful in the future and I look forward to receiving feedback from both of them.

During the holidays Tom and I are going to look at making a short music video clip, attempting to collaborate together on something. I think this could be difficult for us because we have both just spent the semester either doing what we want creatively, or telling someone else what we want done.

Still I think if Tom and I could get on the same wavelength and have a unified vision on a project we could make something pretty sweet. If we don't get anywhere working together in the holidays, well we will at least know we should avoid working together during next semesters' Digital Media Studio subject when it counts for something.

Catchyas

Gerald

codecs...

Well today I had some time and figured I would try to do my animation justice by getting the best possible codec combination.

In the end, I have included an almost 2GB file as the HD copy of the film on the disk. It was encoded using microsoft AVI with no compression. It is great quality... but obviously unusable except as a data file on the DVD disk.

To upload onto Vimeo, I want to take advantage of their HD option which means I need to upload a video at a minimum of 1280x720. I chose to encode this in mpeg-2 and "main concept MPEG video" and scaled the output size up. This file came out at under 200mb which is quite acceptable for uploading to vimeo.

The final version which I have in my flash portfolio is a quick time video using h.264. I had some troubles exporting using h.264 earlier where it would clip scenes by 1 or 2 frames which made some scenes look a little strange especially where vidoes had been cut. There were quite a number of scenes where the interlacing looked really poor so I went through my entire video and under field option changed it to "remove flicker" which removed the worst of the interlacing.

Final submission.

I finally got around to looking at the final submission requirements yesterday after finishing my animation. I was a little surprised because... well I had forgotten what we actually had to submit. That is ok because I had left myself enough time between doing the animation and handing the assignment in.

After a quick email, I settled on what would be included in each of the 4 sections.

CD - Flash Folio, HD version of film, Promo Posters, Booklet and Insert as PDFs.

Flash folio - Company info and bios, synopsis, character info, competitions, and the film of course.

Insert - Company logo, company bio, synopsis, characters, credits.

Booklet - cover, company info, bios, synopsis, storyboard, characters, productions stills, credits.

Now all I've got to do is hop to it.

Final version of short animation will be uploaded when I can encode it in quicktime at uni, currently it is an uncompressed 2gig .avi :-S

Done?

1. blood splatter ✔
2. fix zoom into zoo scene ✔

3. "Humph" before ZK tells off ponto ✔

4. Delay the arm ✔

5. Eyes move to top right + back again ✔

6. DVD cover move paws + main image ✔

7. ZK looking over jim scene, change expression - shocked? angry?✔
8. eating noises ✔
9. Shorten length of eating shot ✔

10. Fix sneak + run ✔ - Well I decided to leave the run, but I added a few extra frames to the sneak

11. Fix writing on book page ✔

+

11. Fix the disappearing food specks when Jim eats ✔

12. Add more blood! Heaps more blood, there is stacks of blood now ! ✔

13. Added a swallowing sound for when Ponto swallows a nice chunk of Jim's leg ✔

14. Fix the weird thing with Jim's arms when he is eating.

Last thing to do is finish off the "gag scene" with the Nurse.

Rather excited to have it all finished.

An Intro!

http://vimeo.com/12312168

An Intro?

I got some feedback from Lisa this morning regarding the latest cut and she pointed out that it was lacking an intro. Uh Oh! She made the point that it having the film just start is a bit strange, and it needs at least a title. So I started making a quick intro, it is very basic, just a few seconds. I wanted an intro that would continue the style of the animation I currently have. I opted for a, somewhat cliche' ye olde style theatre curtains opening intro.

Video to come :-P

Thick and fast

Updates!

1. blood splatter ✔
2. fix zoom into zoo scene ✔

3. "Humph" before ZK tells off ponto ✔

4. Delay the arm ✔

5. Eyes move to top right + back again ✔

6. DVD cover move paws + main image

7. ZK looking over jim scene, change expression - shocked? angry? ✔
8. eating noises ✔
9. Shorten length of eating shot ✔

10. Fix sneak + run

11. Fix writing on book page

Just the two walk cycles left and it is all done...Though I am still contemplating adding a "gag" scene right at the very end, post credits. Something short and snappy, just a shot of the Nurse looking happy.

On another note I seem to spend more time in Premiere nudging clips around by 1/4 of a second here and 1/3 of a second there getting the timing just right. I re-did the ZK looking over Jim scene with different expressions 4 times this evening before I got one which I am both happy with and is a compromise between the strange looks he was having before and the more frustrated anger he has when he is telling Ponto off.

Things left to do

Well I "finished" my animation last night. All the scenes are completed and it runs through and eve has credits. Bon!

BUT I have in front of me a check list which I compiled of things which still need doing... it reads:

(Ticks are next to the ones I have done so far)

1. blood splatter ✔
2. fix zoom into zoo scene ✔

3. "Humph" before ZK tells off ponto

4. Delay the arm

5. Eyes move to top right + back again

6. DVD cover move paws + main iamge

7. ZK looking over jim scene, change expression - shocked? angry?
8. eating noises ✔
9. Shorten length of eating shot ✔

10. Fix sneak + run

11. Fix writing on book page

So I still have a few bits and pieces to do before Tuesday... BUT with my entire flash presentation already completed and just waiting for the final cut of the video to be rendered... well I am fairly confident I will be getting enough sleep this week to at least appear human.

Eating scene

I am glad I showed Hugh what I had completed so far on my animation on Tuesday because he gave me 3 pieces of advice.

1. The eating scene was too long
2. Jim's sneak doesn't look right
3. Jim's run doesn't look right


Today I solved the first of these issues by adding a big burp at the end of the eating scene. With the sounds of Jim eating and a burp at the end, it helps to show how much of a little brat this kid is.

Ponto eating Jim

Well after many hours of tweening and moving and fine tuning and exporting and Premiereing I have a short video to show of Jim being eaten.

http://vimeo.com/12228904

I might change the position + size of the splats. might also tinker with the speed of Jim's arms before he gets eaten.

Slow mo?

Well I wasn't planning on having a slow-mo scene in my animation... but it seems due to the timing of the poem, Jim is now going to be eaten in super slow motion...

SPLAT!

This evening I decided to test the blood splat idea Josh suggested to me, using a combination of photoshop, flash and premiere I have quite a nice looking versatile splat.

First I found a nice image of a splat and traced over in photoshop.

I saved this as a PNG image. Then using a combination of the tools colour select, select inverse and feather, I slowly ate away at the original splat, making it small and smaller over the space of 10 frames.

I imported this series of PNG images into flash where I arranged them, and exported a PNG sequence to use in Premiere.

I tested it over a scene in my animatic here. The beauty of doing it this way is it provides me the freedom of placement and size of the splats when I am in Premiere editing.

Shape tween + Shape tween hints

I am animating a blood puddle spilling from Jim's head and decided to go with the shape tween method to make the small puddle of blood get bigger. The first time I played it through it was totally useless... went all out of shape and generally didn't look like a puddle of blood except in the first and last frames... then I remembered shape tween hints! After adding a bunch of them in it plays through exactly how I wanted it. You Beauty!

Here is the end result out of Flash before motion and a background are added in Premiere

http://vimeo.com/12150645

Lip Syncing

I was working on my Zoo Keeper Running Straight scene doing the lip syncing to the words "Ponto, let go sir, down sir, put it down" and was pretty disappointed at how it looked. It was around the 20th time I had watched the 120 frame sequence on repeat trying to pin point what didn't look right when I remembered Lisa's tip about how you can have the lips move before the audio and it will look alright, but you can't have the lips begin moving AFTER the audio.

So I moved all the frames down 1 in the timeline, which wasn't as easy as it would seem because the Zoo Keeper's head bops all over the place. Playing it through with the frames moved down, it just looks correct... or as correct as one can get it looking when animating a fat man running and shouting.

13 days

Well we are onto the home stretch, less than two weeks to go and I am feeling fairly confident.

On the weekend I got 8 seconds of animating done which I was very pleased with.

During the week I overcame some of the issues that had been plaguing me in Premiere... well they aren't completely overcome but they are getting there. I might just assemble the entire animation at Uni where I know premiere works and will render when I tell it to.

It has been a bit of a slog getting the audio done. My friend who has a very busy personal life was diagnosed with these spots on her vocal chords from too much singing. She has had to postpone uni exams as well as cancel a lot of gigs with her band. Luckily she was still able to do a few takes and I have now sent the best of those off to a friend of mine in Melbourne who is going to do some digital mastering (I am sure that is a term) to really bring out the best in the audio track. Hopefully some re-recording of certain parts and mixing it. I am looking forward to getting it back before the weekend.

From there I will start doing the lip syncing in the Zoo Keeper's scene and Ponto's big scene where he devours Jim.

I am hoping to have all the animating done with a few days to spare so I can add in some sounds effects and redo anything that requires it.

According to my original schedule I am right on track so which is a real bonus and one I am somewhat surprised I have managed.

I have drummed up a bit of support among my friends some of whom are keen to come and watch the animations so it should be a fun day when we present.

- Gerald

Animation so far

Well I compiled all my compelted animation into Premiere on the weekend and was pleased to see I had completed 25 seconds worth. I am really enjoying the added options I get using Premiere. Being able to add motion and scale to the clips I have created helps to take the "flash" look off of the animation.

Also got my mark back for the promo package and was pleased to see all my hard work was appreciated.

I've slowly been drumming up more members to my facebook group so hopefully some of my friends will turn up for my presentation.

Freaking out

Well yesterday evening I had a bit of a freak out. All my files just vanished from my hard drive. AAAHG! Well after a massive break down I decided to restart the computer. It took about 25 minutes just to shut down. It was seriously... kaputt :( Well when it finally did its thing and had restarted... my files were back again, not only on my portable hard drive but also where I had backed them up the day prior! Well that isn't gonna happen again, my files related to this animation are now on 3 different hard drives and I will update them everyday!

Anyway because my files aren't all gone, it means I can show you all what I've been up to the last few days.

Here are some pages turning:

http://vimeo.com/11778849

Here is Jim pulling a cat's tail:

http://vimeo.com/11778890

promotional package

Just finished having all my promotional package printed and laminated. Pretty pleased with how it all turned out, especially the DVD package.

Here is a sneak peak of some earlier versions.

Don't forget to join the Facebook group:

http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=114400901914189&v=photos&ref=ts#!/group.php?gid=114400901914189

Some really great movie posters

http://www.listal.com/list/melhores-posteres-de-2009

These are my picks from the list

2. Order of Chaos (2010)

7. Antichrist (2009)

17. Objectified (2009)

18. A Christmas Carol (2009)

35. New York, I Love You (2009)

Jim having a bit of a snack, scene 2 in Jim

http://vimeo.com/11418502

An awesome advertisement for salsa

Great colour board

Awesome use of stage

http://vimeo.com/9194146

more NSFW cartoons

This one is the "Pope Song" by Tim Minchin. Pretty basic animation but the use of the silhouette and the lack of legs on the characters is interesting.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fHRDfut2Vx0&feature=youtube_gdata

Walk Cycles

http://vimeo.com/11230060

how to draw random body parts

If my characters had slightly more realistic proportions this could be useful

http://fc07.deviantart.net/fs38/f/2008/327/0/0/How_to_draw_all_sorts_of_crap_by_Coelasquid.jpg

Walk cycles...

So here I am, Saturday night... working on Ponto the humanized paedophile lion and his sneaking walk cycle... I have 3 frames, the contact, the passing and the contact again... It took me an hour and I have 3 frames. I believe the acronym is FML.

Holidays

So I've done a bit of work putting together my 3rd assignment. Today I changed the lion character, Ponto, from a normal 4 legged running and jumping lion into a bipedal, upright walking humanoid lion.

He is a bit creepier now and I like the turn he has taken.

how to draw hands

http://wordsandtoons.com/2010/02/11/handy-cartooning-tricks/

Awesome comic book style art work of awesome thing...

http://www.buzzfeed.com/ashleytalong/a-to-z-of-awesomeness-hpz

a super mario bro inspired video + some early work from the guy who created Rocko's Modern Life

http://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/527393

http://joemurraystudio.com/blog/?p=1749

very very NSFW flash video...

Yeah, not safe for work....

http://www.welcometointernet.org/flash/frankie-and-bloo.swf

Pretty nicely put together though. The lip syncing is great.

And another animation related pic, how different people draw the male figure.

http://i.imgur.com/MrPYK.jpg

Project Plan

Been working away on my project plan over the weekend. I have to admit, it seems a little strange doing all of this when I am in a group of one.

Just thought I would post up my company logo:

Exercises

I've decided to make this first post about the different exercises we do in the tutorials. I will edit it with updates on new exercises we do.

week 1. Onion skin/walk cycle/frame by frame animation





week 5. Bones



Bones looks like a really powerful tool to use in the animation.

Project Pitch

I felt I pitched a pretty solid concept even though it wasn't picked for the the initial selection. I don't regret doing things in an unconventional manner because I think reciting the poem was a far more attention grabbing pitch that just discussing characters and plot. Looking back, perhaps I should have used some more concept art/better images in the flash presentation... I really need to work on my drawing ability between now and when I start production of Jim.

Here is the original poem be Belloc, and the cut down version I used in the pitch and will use in the short film.

Original:

There was a Boy whose name was Jim;
His Friends were very good to him.
They gave him Tea, and Cakes, and Jam,
And slices of delicious Ham,
And Chocolate with pink inside
And little Tricycles to ride,
And read him Stories through and through,
And even took him to the Zoo--
But there it was the dreadful Fate
Befell him, which I now relate.

You know--or at least you ought to know,
For I have often told you so--
That Children never are allowed
To leave their Nurses in a Crowd;
Now this was Jim's especial Foible,
He ran away when he was able,
And on this inauspicious day
He slipped his hand and ran away!

He hadn't gone a yard when--Bang!
With open Jaws, a lion sprang,
And hungrily began to eat
The Boy: beginning at his feet.
Now, just imagine how it feels
When first your toes and then your heels,
And then by gradual degrees,
Your shins and ankles, calves and knees,
Are slowly eaten, bit by bit.
No wonder Jim detested it!
No wonder that he shouted ``Hi!''

The Honest Keeper heard his cry,
Though very fat he almost ran
To help the little gentleman.
``Ponto!'' he ordered as he came
(For Ponto was the Lion's name),
``Ponto!'' he cried, with angry Frown,
``Let go, Sir! Down, Sir! Put it down!''
The Lion made a sudden stop,
He let the Dainty Morsel drop,
And slunk reluctant to his Cage,
Snarling with Disappointed Rage.
But when he bent him over Jim,
The Honest Keeper's Eyes were dim.
The Lion having reached his Head,
The Miserable Boy was dead!

When Nurse informed his Parents, they
Were more Concerned than I can say:--
His Mother, as She dried her eyes,
Said, ``Well--it gives me no surprise,
He would not do as he was told!''
His Father, who was self-controlled,
Bade all the children round attend
To James's miserable end,
And always keep a-hold of Nurse
For fear of finding something worse.

----------------------------

There was a Boy whose name was Jim;
His Friends were very good to him.
They gave him Tea, and Cakes, and Jam,
And slices of delicious Ham,
And read him Stories through and through,
And even took him to the Zoo--
But there it was the dreadful Fate
Befell him, which I now relate.

Children never are allowed
To leave their Nurses in a Crowd;
Now this was Jim's especial Foible,
He ran away when he was able,
And on this inauspicious day
He slipped his hand and ran away!

He hadn't gone a yard when--Bang!
With open Jaws, a lion sprang,
And hungrily began to eat
The Boy: beginning at his feet.
Now, just imagine how it feels
When first your toes and then your heels,
And then by gradual degrees,
Your shins and ankles, calves and knees,
Are slowly eaten, bit by bit.
No wonder Jim detested it!
No wonder that he shouted ``Hi!''

The Honest Keeper heard his cry,
``Ponto!'' he cried, with angry Frown,
``Let go, Sir! Down, Sir! Put it down!''
The Lion made a sudden stop,
He let the Dainty Morsel drop,
But when he bent him over Jim,
The Honest Keeper's Eyes were dim.
The Lion having reached his Head,
The Miserable Boy was dead!