Progress-making

Hello out there in blog-land! I have made some progress on my final project over the weekend. I have finished the first two scenes, and I am working on the third right now. I am not 100% happy with scene 2 (the yawning cactus), since I decided to do it frame by frame, but I will come back to it at the end if I have enough time. I will try to figure out how to get some still images out of Flash and post them at a later date. Until then, I bid thee farewell.

Animatic

So, I finally picked a song that fits, and I put together an animatic to see how the timing will work. It will be exactly one minute long. It is kind of rough since I just cut out my storyboards, but it works for what it is. Here it is.

Music

Currently, I am trying to pick the music that I am going to animate my final project to. I usually animate first and find music that fits later, but I decided to have my music chosen first so that I will know how long the piece will be and get the timing down quicker. I have it narrowed down to about 4 songs that my roommate found on this thing called Sound Miner over at the film building. It is all copyright free and free for students to use. So, if you can't find any music, I suggest making friends with a film or sound person that can show you how to get it at Hamilton. Once I pick the song, I will make a quick animatic using my storyboards so I can get the timing figured out. After that, I animate!

BG #4!

I did it! Here is background #4. And before you start trying to tell me that my perspective is off, it is supposed to be wonky like that.

BG Number 3!!!

Well, this background making business is going swimmingly. I did not expect to get two done in less than 2 hours! I might even be able to get one more done by the end of class. Here's background #3.

Updates a.k.a. Background #2!

I am happy to have finished all of the tutorials on time. I am a few days early with those, actually. They were a lot of fun to do, and I learned a lot about Flash. I am excited to get started on the animation for my final, but I still have a few more backgrounds do do first. And... speaking of backgrounds... here is the second background for my final project!

Background #1

I have finished the first background for my final project. This was the first time I have really used a cintiq computer for really drawing something. It was fun. I'll be using various close-ups of this background for other scenes in the project. Here is the first background:

Certain Death.... Oooooo

Well, I have done it! I have completed the fifth and final tutorial! This is the lip sync assignment. I found a sound clip from the movie "Labyrinth." It is the two doors trying to confuse Sarah. I created very simple door characters with simple mouth shapes. The swap symbols tool in Flash is actually very simple to use. I think this is my favorite of the tutorials that we have done. The only thing that moves is the mouths. Eventually, after this class is over or if I miraculously get some spare time, I may try to go back and animate their eyes or something, but this will do for now. I am pleased with the results. I hope you enjoy it.

Production Schedule

Here is the breakdown of how much time I think that each part of my project will take. Due to life being life, it is probably going to take more time than I think it will, but I should still be able to get it all done.

Time Breakdown for Final Project

Backgrounds:

Scene 1: 2 hours
Scene 2: 1.5 hours (use for scenes 4, 6, and 8)
Scene 3: 1.5 hours (use for scenes 5, 7, 12, 14, 15, and 17)
Scene 9: 1.5 hours (use for scenes 10 and 11)
Scene 16: 0.5 hour

Total Time: 8 hours

Character Puppets:

Balloon: 1 hour
Cactus: 2 hours

Total time: 3 hours

Animation:

Scene 1: 1 hour
Scene 2: 3 hours
Scene 3: 2 hours
Scene 4: 1 hour
Scene 5: 1 hour
Scene 6: 1 hour
Scene 7: 1 hour
Scene 8: 1 hour
Scene 9: 2 hours
Scene 10: 2 hours
Scene 11: 1 hour
Scene 12: 2 hours
Scene 13: 1 hour
Scene 14: 1 hour
Scene 15: 2 hours
Scene 16: 2 hours
Scene 17: 1 hour

Total Time: 25 hours

Credits:

Credits and “The End” Drawing: 2 hours


Total Overall Time: 38 hours

I have split up the workload over the course of the rest of the quarter. It is subject to change depending on if I get ahead one week or fall behind and have to catch up. My weekly schedule for this project is as follows:

Weekly Schedule

April 19- April 25
Backgrounds
Create puppets
Choose music
Make an animatic

April 26- May 2
Animate scenes 1-5

May 3- May 9
Animate scenes 6-10

May 10- May 16
Animate scenes 11-15

May 17- May 23
Animate scenes 16-17
Make credits
Make “The End” drawing

May 24- 28
Catch up
Put it all together
Bask in the glory of done-ness

Walk Cycle

Here is the walk cycle tutorial that I did. I created the character using colored pencils. He sort of looks like Abraham Lincoln, but that was unintentional. I had a hard time figuring out how to make the loop and using different scenes, but I think I got it figured out. Here it is:

Storyboards!

At long last, here are the storyboards for my final project:

Updates

Currently, I am working on the storyboards for my cactus project. I have them finished and scanned in. Now, I just need to clean them up a little bit so I can post them. I have also created a character for the walk cycle tutorial. When I finish the walk cycle, I will post it, too. I am feeling a little overwhelmed lately by all of the work that I have to do. I feel like I am behind a little bit in this class since I have been primarily focusing on getting my senior project finished so I can graduate. I really want to do well on all of these assignments, but I am starting to feel the time pressure for getting stuff completed.

Rotoscoping

Our latest tutorial is on rotoscoping. Basically, rotoscoping is tracing over video footage for reference purposes. The first one is from a weird, not really working very well walk cycle. Here it is. I am not that happy with it, because I didn't really get time to make the character look cool. It is just a boring blue man walking very briskly across the screen. I am currently working on a second rotoscoped piece using footage of my roommate doing this weird bird walk thing. It should be interesting.



And here is the second one. It is my roommate, Theresa, pretending to be a bird. I colored her yellow and orange like Big Bird. It isn't too pretty, but I understand how to rotoscope and use frame by frame animation in Flash.

*I re-exported the video, and the little boxes have gone away!!!

Critique

So, we did little group critiques in class today. I wasn't sure if we were supposed to write about it in a post or comment on each other's blogs. I figured I would post it here, and if the people in my group read this, then I won't need to comment on their blogs. So, our group consisted of me, Sara P., and Stephanie. We all feel that our projects are going to be simple enough to complete in the time we are allotted while still being interesting. All three of our projects are fairly straightforward and none of us really had any questions about what we are going to do. Sara and I already have our character designs figured out, and Stephanie's is stream of conciousness, and she pretty much has her shots planned out already. I think all three of us should be able to get everything done on time and done fairly well.

Look at that jumping cactus!

I have successfully made a cactus jump. I did almost exactly the same thing that I did with the clown, except the cactus has a few more moving parts because of his arms. I am glad to have done this tutorial, since it will make the jumping part of my final much easier to do. Here, for your viewing pleasure, is my jumping cactus:

Cactus Model Sheet

Well, here he is! I have created my cactus character for my final project. I put in some color, but I don't know if it will be the final color. I also plan to use this character for the second part of the jumping tutorial. Here is the model sheet:

Jump, puppet, jump

I have completed the second tutorial! I have made the creepy little clown puppet jump! Here is what I did.



Next, I will create my own little character and have it jump the same way. I think I will try to make my cactus, since he has to jump in my final project.

Follow the bouncing ball...

I have officially animated in flash for the first time ever!!! This first one is the one I did based on the Professor's tutorial using the ease in/out slider option. I call this one "Bouncing Red Ball." It is very epic and profound.



This second one is the one I did using the custom ease in/ out graph box thingy. I call this one "Bouncing Green Ball." I feel this one is slightly less epic, but quite a bit more profound.




After successfully completing the first tutorial, I feel fairly relieved. Maybe this flash animating thing isn't so scary after all...