There is Trouble With the Trees

Another week, another post….a little more insane.

First off lets go over some of the notes from last week, shall we?

-Fan shot

—good

-On the floor shot

—floor is the wrong angle

—need more shadows

-Rack focus shot

—louder ‘grunt’ sound

—better timing on hitting piece

—…some other stuff I don’t quite remember

For the most part MW2 is done. Yeah, the fixes need to be made, Evil need to still pop out in the end - but I can move on now.

So….moving on.

Next that I decided to tackle is Evil World (EW) - which means a lot of trees……again. (Have I mentioned how much I dislike making trees and forests? I really don’t like it)

I’m budgeting myself 3-4 weeks to get this world done. Basically by half-way through spring break I want to move to Water World (WW).

This was week 1.

The idea was that I would work on the <insert word of you choice> trees. I really, really, would prefer to do this on the computer. Why? Charcoal gets all over me, it will get all over the scanner, and ever since a teacher told me to never touch it again I’ve been off the medium.

Well, anyway, I did make a bunch of trees and here are some of them.

I’m playing a bit with the texture. It will look nice alone on white, but then get a bit bland when composed, so I’ve been trying to find a way I like while playing with some new brushes. I'm also trying to decide if it's easier/nicer looking to 2.5D composite it, or to just make layers of pre-composed tree layers....

Other than that there isn’t much else to post. Theoretically I was going to work on Pepper week 2, Evil week 3, then composing it all together week 4. That plan has a 80% chance of changing. My grandma’s birthday party is on Sunday and while I budgeted not working that day everyone wants me there Saturday meaning the weekend is completely shot. Load on all the homework for other classes that have to get done and this project is not my number 1 issue. 

Annoying to toss a plan, but that’s life.

We Had Some Guts and Some Luck

A lot has happened this past week, and most of what had to get done did - somehow.

Now 2 weeks ago when we as a class looked at everyone’s blog I told my teacher that the plan was to have 90% of the animation done for MW2 done by today - that main part not to be animated would the the entrance of Evil since I’ll add him when I add him everywhere else.

Last week, if you bothered to look, I posted a test video of a fan - such a shot was needed for the beginning of MW2. If you haven’t looked at it you should, it was kind of cool.

So everything else had to be done today. I took out a shot of Pepper’s disgruntled face looking down on the piece mainly because I didn’t feel like creating it….though I also realized that it just wasn’t 100% necessary which was a bonus.

Without further ado, MW2...........pass 1.

There are a few things that need to be fixed: the shot looking down it too high on the screen at first, the animation can be smoothed a bit more, the audio - particularly the ‘grunt’ - needs to be flushed out…..and of course Evil needs to be added.

I’ll tell you though, that head turn……2 frames and the rest is luck.

I Make it Look Easy But Honey Believe Me It's Hard

Seriously? Didn’t I just post something the other day? 

Wait. What? That was a week ago already?! Geez Louise that was fast.

Well, I guess you still want a post, huh.

So this week was spent doing a couple of different things that might seem unrelated to you, but makes total ‘linear’ sense to me.

First off I did some color and design corrections on Pepper in MW2. Last week she was a bit pale and I realized later that her face didn’t really match up with the beginning of the animation. In my defense I was using the color codes that I had written down in my notebook…..but I didn’t note the new numbers after I changed some last semester due to a similar comment.

(AN: How I feel sometimes looking at what still needs to get done)

Next there was building more of the assets needed for MW2 that I couldn’t repurpose. Yeah….no, you can’t really see them. They are mostly Illustrator files that you won’t be able to make heads or tails of since it is all in white. You’ll see it next week when, in theory, ~90% of the animation in MW2 will be done.

For now you can entertain yourselves on this bit of animation - a fan going round. And, yes, it is planned to go in the animation. The boards have it being the first shot of MW2 but we shall see if it stays in. For now it is cool to look at though.

Last but not lest I started prepping for the next World I’m going to take on - Evil World (EW). Since it is entirely corrupted into charcoal I decided to do some tests on what could work as back drops. The trick is going to be that all the layers will be various shades of black…..

There you have it. Another post. Now wait patently for next week because I have lots to do, and not just for this animation.

Circus of Your Mind

Here we are again. On my site for a class you aren’t taking. Looking at what I did for homework. 

Don’t you have anything better to do?

Well anyway, let’s get to it.

This week most of the stuff that has been happening you can’t really see and even though I’ll try showing it to you, you most likely won’t appreciate it as much as I do.

Most of the time was spent making this beauty - a calendar of the rest of semester. On it I have/will have: school dates (days off, registertion days….), work hours, holidays, internship deadlines, family related stuff (people visiting, family functions…), class deadlines/homework, personal deadlines for this class, personal deadlines for seminar class.

Most is stuff to be filled out as it gets assigned, but I find it extremely helpful to see everything together with the final deadline on the same page. Not a lot for this class has been written down yet, but I do know that I want MW2 nearly done in 2 weeks and all the animation done a week before pre-finals. I also know that I want 2-3 days to work exclusively on the opening and closing titles.

What else….what else…..

Right.

I also made these nifty lists for each world on the basic assets needed for each. Some need a lot of pre-stuff. Others have a longer list of difficult stuff to do in the animation itself.

Okay, okay. I’ll show you some actual stuff.

So because I could us some of the assets from MW1 in MW2 (the floor, wall……that’s about it) I decided to start doing some work there….at least up to the point where Evil appears - I’ll do that around the time I start making Evil.

If anyone bothered to look at the sketches made last week (talking to you classmates since we didn't have a crit last week) you would have seen some designs for Pepper when laying down. I took that scene and ran with it. (I even captured some process video but wont post it….planing on making a video of it at the end)

So this is what it shot looked in the storyboard……

….and now with the proper assets - minus shadows……

….and now……with the rack focus!

You have no idea how excited I was when this worked.

Now there you go you vultures. Another post that most of you most likely don’t actually read, but oh well.

Till next week’s feeding.