Carpe Noctem: May 2010

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