And Soon You'll be Walking Out the Door

Finally Done!!

...with the first part at least.

It took forever to render the camera moves with the trees. And when you are waiting for the render on a crunch for time it seems even longer.

Anyway here is the move. It's on vimeo now, so you have to follow the link....

https://vimeo.com/148499352

Now I get a few weeks to not work....or at lest not stress over work.

And now a test. 

Did you notice the blog post titles? Each one was a line, or title, of a song. Did you get them all? If not, here they are again.

And That's What It's All About

-'Hokey Pokey' by Brooks & Dunn

What's the Story Morning Glory?

-from the movie "Bye Bye Birdie"

And Soon You'll be Walking Cross the Floor

-from the movie "Santa Claus is Comin' to Town" (1970)

World of Pure Imagination

-from the movie "Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory"

76 Trombones

-from the movie "Music Man"

Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious

-from "Mary Poppins"

10% Luck, 20% Skill

-from the song 'Remember the Name' by Fort Minor

It's Been One Week Since You Looked at Me

-from the song 'One Week' by Bare Naked Ladies

If Your Happy and You Know It

-'If Your Happy and You Know it'

Just a Matter of Time Before We Learn How to Fly

-from the song 'When Can I See You Again?' by Owl City (in Wreck-it-Ralph)

Everything is Satisfactual

-from the song 'Zip-A-Dee-Doo-Dah'

Tops are Made Out of Rubber, Bottoms are Made Out of Springs

-Tigger's song from "Winnie the Pooh"

Drip, Drip, Drop

-'April Shower' in the movie "Bambi"

It's the Final Countdown

-'The Final Countdown' by Europe

And Soon You'll be Walking Out the Door

-again from the movie "Santa Claus is Comin' to Town" (1970)

Make sure to pay attention next semester!

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

It's the Final Countdown

Hello again! Hope you had a happy Thanksgiving last week, but now it is time to move to the main stuff we’re all here for.

Finals are coming up fast, actually a week from today. Meaning by then everything for this first part has to be done. To prep for that, today we have a kind for Pre-Finals day. Showing what we have (hopefully it is nearly done) and critique things that are fixable within the next week.

So for you, my Pre-Final:

(You might have noticed that I’m back on YouTube. I didn't want to, but the video is too big for blogger. I will be coming up with something different -in time- for the finals.)

What still needs to be done:

-Title Page

-Temp credits

-add shadow to couch

-add foreshadowing pictures

-better transition between worlds

-fix camera/trees in turn-around

-create 2nd “portal”

-cutout ‘squirrel’

-cutout Pepper

-add particles?

Alright….that might seem like a lot, and it will take time, but it isn’t too bad. Not exactly where I wanted to be today, but I’ll live.

1 MORE WEEK!

Drip, Drip, Drop

So, while it mat not show it, a LOT of work was done this week.

Mainly it was getting done painting all of the frames needed for the squirrel character.

Unfortunately, the shot didn’t make it into the animatic yet. Not that it means I'm behind. I had planned to just be painting until Saturday/Sunday so anything in this is what I had last week.

They still need to be cut out so even the things that are in the new borad-o-matic have to be revised. Regardless, the passing is working out well I think.

You will get to se it next week, well, in 2 weeks since we meet during Thanksgiving.

Tops are Made Out of Rubber, Bottoms are Made Out of Springs

Today I'll let you peek at what has been going on in Fantasy World. 

Right now I'm in the middle of painting the different key frames for Pepper and the animal that she finds while there. My inspiration of this guy is a squirrel and pipe worm cartoon. He moves like a ball, kind of, so the first thing was to figure out its walk cycle. 

I drew it out, over lapping and everything, one day in a class. Since then I have digitally changed it so only one frame is shown at a time to make sure that I drew it out right. 

Now I've been working on a shot that is actually seen. This is where the animal (who needs a name) jumps from off a branch out of frame. 

Now painting the key frames....

So that is starting to come together. 

I also did a few frames for the opening shot of the world. It might need a few more looks. 

There you have it. A real reason why doing all those bounce cycles freshman year was helpful, and a taste of the hardships to come. 

Everything is Satisfactual

A lot of what has happened this week can’t be seen yet.

What you can see though is the progress of the “Reach” animation - the first shot people will see in the entire thing.

So what is different?

The hand on the ground finally moves more like I wanted. Turns out that I had pivot points on the wrong ends, they shouldn’t have had a parent, and they had to rotate in z-space.

All the fingers on the other hand is there. They have some motion, but most of their action will be in the next shot - a close up of them touching the puzzle piece.

The face is a slightly different shape. Every time I step back to it I find it annoying me, but I’m hopeful that this one is the final face shape (for Main World).

About 85% of the shadows have been added in. It allows for depth, more of a 3D illusion, and more detail in shape without adding too much.

A floor plane was created and angled properly. It sits in z-space to help give the accurate look.

Finally, Pepper’s hair and skin tone where warmed up. This past week in a different class (Graduate Seminar) we started talking about the importance of color in a shot and how color help to dictate the character. Basically cool colors= bad guy. Warm colors= good guy. Pepper’s shirt and pants are still a bit cool, but I still like it the best over the other choices. 

So what else is going on?

Mainly asset building, thus nothing to show you. I think that my plan for the animation in Fantasy World will be to paint a TON of different angles and moments. Then fade between each one to give a painted/flip book feel. The plan is to have most of the assets build by next week so I can start composing the shots.

We shall see, for now I'm on schedule and that is satisfactual.

Just a Matter of Time Before We Learn How to Fly

There isn’t a long post for this week, because there was only one thing that happened.

Over the last few days I’ve been working on a final design for Pepper in the Main World at the beginning since the first part is what I’ll be working on for the rest of semester. 

After that I started blocking out the animation for the only shot her whole body is in.

You can see what I have here:

As I said, this is just blocked out. Not everything is in yet. Changes that will be happening/added-

>Cleaner motion

>More secondary motion

>Shadows

>Hand on ground has odd movement

>More exaderatgion?

There are also some files parts that need tweaking-

>Fingers on second hand needs to be added

> Second leg pose is odd

>Hair layers need to be remade to had proper motion

It's only the first shot, only blocked out, but I've learned more for just this little bit then I could have without it. Layer files that I thought where fine need to be fixed, animation styles that I thought would be the way to go turns out to be wrong... But after all, blocking it out is the first step in any good animation. It's only a matter of time.

If Your Happy and You Know It

This last week was kind of light in regards to what I created. We are now moving more toward production of the animation part that will be made first. 

Because I was having some issues with Cinema 4D on my laptop is the question became if I should do part 3 or 1 first. It really is leaning more toward 1 since I don’t like the designs I’ve made so far in C4D. (I was able to get it to work finally by can’t save since it’s a demo version. I also really don't like the way it came out so I’m going to try zBrush then lower the polygons after I model it.)

One of the major notes from the midterm crit was to explore more emotion. (Even the blob figures I had before weren't expressive enough.)

In response I made a facial sheet. The idea is that this is what she “really” looks like but her features change a bit when in each word.

I did a quick mock-up for when in Main World…. 

I might play with this for a little bit more
to round out the face more.

…and also Evil World (Pencil World).

This design is both different from the facial sheet and the previous color pencil designs. Note that I had said I was going to be changing that design a bit to have more of a cartoon/animated look. The previous design was very realistic.

So, um, yeah. There isn’t much else this week.

It's Been One Week Since You Looked at Me

This past week has been busy. As it is mid-term in this fall semester everyone was told to have a board-o-matic ready. If you remember, I already had one done.

So, what to do?

Well slowly I have been creating reference for the designs of each world (except Cliff). So for this week the goal was to create a shot for each world that will be close to the actual look.

5 out of 6 shots that I wanted where able to be made.

The 1 I didn’t get to.......

...

.......

..........Cliff World. Annoying Cliff World. 

Why has there been nothing for this world? My computer is a butt, it doesn’t like to run large programs. And Cinema 4D is a bit big. I do have a lot of things that need to be shifted over to an external, but it didn’t happen yet. Ideally I wanted to work on it using one of the large computers in the labs. Unfortunately you need administrator password to run it.

Pain. In. The. Butt.

....Let’s move on.

Here is the newest board-o-matics. The are broken up into each part as asked.

                                

And a closer look at some of the frames made for this week.

Main World - Opening (Want to put something on the walls and the angle of the floor boards is off a bit.)

Fantasy World (Composed in photoshop from the trees scanned in after painting them. Will experiment with the idea of hand painting actual designed shots, not just individual elements.)

Evil World (This is using photoshop charcoal brushes. Okay, but I want more grit.)

Water World (The girl is going to change her position around, I just had this pose done and figured it would work for what I needed.)

Main World - Ending (She looks grumpy - should be shocked. Couch needs work.)

‘Till next time!

10% Luck, 20% Skill

Hello again.

So this past week I focused on the main world as it will be my bookend location. I’ve nearly finished Pepper’s design, though I might change the features on her face a tad.

It was decided that the first part that I will work to create will be the third part - Cliff World and Main World (pt2). That animation will therefore be due at the end of semester.

Why start with part 3?

Part 1 has Fantasy World in it. While I’m 85% sure on how the pipeline should work for the water color, I’m not 100%.

Part 2 has Evil World (and Water World) and that has a LOT of charcoal. I have only a small idea how the part will be animated, be it photoshop brushes, scanned in textures, or a bit of both. Either way I wan’t Christmas Break to figure it out.

That leaves me with part 3 to start with.

It also means that I have Cliff World which will be in computer 3D. Since I need to create a rigged character, and have only ever rigged a fish, I’m going to be finding a cheap version of Cinema4D instead of Maya. Though I want to learn the program, I have only a few weeks so I don’t really have time for learning how to model and animate from scratch. Thankfully my classmates from Ringling came through and gave me some suggestions where to find a cheap version -THANKS GUYS!!

Moving on.

One last thing I did, as prep for the up coming work, is a small - simple motion test.

The idea was to get an idea of how I’m actually going to animate Pepper. What angles will I need assets for? How much range can this arm give me? Should it be drawn differently? What would be easier to build in After Effects instead of Illustrator? 

The test helped answer a few things. Some more tests will be needed.

Until then!

Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious

Lets star off with notes from last week, shall we? There where 2 notes that are the most important.

1 - The audio track is good.

I had been worried that maybe the audio track, that evolves and runs through most of the animation, would have been too much. But people really responded to it and they all felt it helped to emphasize the different points in the animation.

2 - Less cuts in the beginning.

This was brought up and it really does make sense. By having more fluid motion and longer scenes before meeting evil it with let the cuts later be that much more impactful. 

With that I decided not to change anything in animatic just yet. Yes, the beginning needs to have less cuts, but I want it it be camera moves and until I can figure out the most efficient way to do that it will have to stay.

With all that there has been other progress this week.

My girl has a design, and a new name!

So her new name is Pepper. (Anna didn’t fit anymore and I need a good name to call out when the animating of her gets complex)

I’ve also worked out some of the designs in the different worlds. I know I said I wanted to get them all up together but I’m still thinking about one...)

My first step is always to do a ruff color draft. This lets me figure out the color without spending too much time on drawing the character out in detail.

Now Main World is going to be 2D, Illustrator-Vector-Like and Evil World, before getting overcome by charcoal, was colored pencils - not blended together (I want you to be able to see the different lines and strokes.) So I have these two. I'm not 100% on which one is for Evil World but I have two different takes on it. The left one can also be a base for the AI file.

Then I've go Fantasy World. She got a bit younger here, but it's okay. It's a different world and since each one changes the composition, who is to say it can't make you look younger or older?

This is the first design for Water World. Yes, her hair is too dark. When I bought the paper I thought her hair would be brown but it evolved to more dirty blonde. I also say design 1 because she might be too complex so I might play with making this world more simple.

As for Cliff World, I’m not sure yet if it will be more like Disney 3D or low ploy 3D. Since I will be doing that part in Maya (and using the program for the first time) I want to say poly, but I have to see.

Till next time!

76 Trombones

Last week I came with a lot of information, including 8 different worlds. That, as I noted at the end, was a bit much. The first thing to happen was that 3 of those worlds where cut from the animation leaving only Main World, Fantasy World, Evil World, Water World, and Cliff World.

Work in progress is still underway with [Anna’s] new character design. I have a idea I really like for the cloths but am still working on the face. I also want to wait on posting anything for her before I can get designs for all her looks done.

What do I mean by that?

If you recall the idea is that she changes what she is made of each time she jumps worlds. Hence, the need for multiple designs.

Moving on.

76 Trombones....kind of.

The main focus this week was timing. I put together a ruff board-o-matic* with a scratch audio track. I am still not 100% sure if there will be background music or just sound effects, and not all the effects I want to start with are in this things...but you can get the basic idea of what I’m going for in tone.

• We where technically asked to create an animatic but I did a board-o-matic. Let me explain the difference as it was explained to me. A board-o-matic is where you take the storyboard frame you have and aline them to audio, moving the frame around on screen is about the extent of the animation. An animatic is when you have primitive models posing out the major actions. All cameras are in place, everything needing to be modeled in there in basic form, and the audio is secured - if not locked in place. That is how I was taught and unless someone tells me that is completely wrong it is the way it will stay.

On that note, here’s my board-o-matic.

World of Pure Imagination

This past week I decided that I would focus on creating storyboards for the animation. First, though, that meant I had to have a firm idea on the different worlds.

So they go as followed:

Main World Clay/fabrication

Fantasy World Water color

Evil World Pencil/Charcoal

City World Construction paper

Water World Tissue paper

Roots World Photo-real

Book World Typography

Cliff World Computer 3D

     (Return to Main World)

The storyboards shown here are broken into three parts to represent the 3 sections. No word explanation or number accompanies them (though I know there should be) for the simple reason that I thought it would detract from the look.

Some things I realized.

1) Anna is WAY too young. 

After drawing everything out I found that my original sketch of Anna gave the look of a 5 year old and the story really calls for someone around 11-13 I think.

2) I have a favorite shot already.

It is something that isn’t really a great thing to have, especially so early on, since that means I will be more likely to be unwilling to change it. But it just looks awesome!

3) I might have shot myself in the foot. Again.

It is only week 3 and already this seems like a huge task. 8 worlds all with their own technique? I must be crazy. But, hey, if it wasn’t hard then everyone would do it.

And now, a treat.

I did do some other work and thinking over the past week in addition to the storyboards.

First off, the City World. I want it to be in a 3D paper style. I feel like these two projects. The building was made by the French company Zim & Zou. The city was made by a lady named Hattie Newman. These both are large influences for the final look of this world.

Second, Book World. To give you a better idea of what I hope to achieve you just have to look at Winnie the Pooh. Disney has, in nearly every Pooh video, had the characters interact with the text or book. That is my plan. What the words say.... not too sure yet. For the sake of time I used the lines from Picture Puzzle Piece by Shel Silverstein which was the diving board of this whole operation to begin with.

Finally, Fantasy World - again. When I said to my class last week that I would be changing this world’s style and not do water color anymore everyone started yelling. Apparently even though I'm brand new to the medium everyone likes it so it is staying. Because of that I did some more exploration on the actual colors and designs of the foliage. And I have to say that I love the golden trees.

So there you have it. Another week, another update, and a whole lot more to come.