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