Have You Forgotten What You Have and What is Yours?

Hello again everyone!

So it has been a month since school paused for Christmas - and it was glorious! 4 weeks of no animating, no painting dozens of squirrels, no touching a computer at all!

But, alas, it had to end….and so we are here together once more.

You’ll notice that this is being posted on Monday night and not Wednesday. The class period is now on Tuesday mornings now so in keeping with the tradition of posting the night before….here.

First a recap. 

This was/is the plan for all 3 vignettes:

This is what was created last semester…..part 1. Unfortunately you are only able to look at it if you have the password since I might want to submit it places later:

https://vimeo.com/148499352

Now some new stuff:

Notes from last term……

• title should look more handmade
• back wall in Main World is odd (pictures are cut off)
• touching the piece should me more magical
• flash needs work
• need more time in setting up of Fantasy World
• They all love the shadows!

So what has been happening in the past week, because really this is the second class now.

Well a lot of what needs to happen first is getting more detailed designs of the locations for each scene and angles of Pepper. Therefore all you can see today is a few sketches of what Pepper’s face and body will be like during the final World (back to Main) since the sketches next have to be created in Illustrator before being re-attached in After Effects and finally colored and animated. Thankfully that scene isn’t starting from scratch since several of the assets created for Main World pt1 can be re-utilized here.

Laying on the floor looking over....not 100% on which angle

For when she is looking down on the piece

And that is where we’re at people. Just a reminder: all of the titles for the posts are either song titles or parts of lyrics. Try and name them all this time. I won’t remind you again until the end.

Till next week!

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.

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.

And Soon You'll be Walking Cross the Floor

Over the past week I have been working on refining some of the sketches for the story line I wrote about last week....need to come up with a name for that soon.

Before you scroll down to look at them, since we both know that’s what its all about, let me say that while several of these are close to more of a style frame sort of look they are NOT finalized. Though each ‘world’ is to have their own style, I am still tying to find the best matches.

Now on to the meat and potatoes!

First off, the ‘in progress’ list of world types. Some will stay, some will go. I’m not too sure yet....

-Main World - 

-High Fantasy World - 2D textural?

-Evil’s World - charcoal

-Water World - 2D stop motion?

-Cave World - 

-City World - 3D stop motion?

-Giant Tree World - photo real mashup?

-Lego World - legos

The main character is, for now, a little girl named Anna.

How she is made will change with each world.

The bad guy, inspired by the Beast from Over the Garden Wall, has no name yet. As he moves he transforms everything to be created as he is - charcoal.

Close to my ideal final look for him.

Next I have some concept art for High Fantasy World.....

Idea sketch of some trees, a bush, bird and squirrel.

An attempt at water color. It isn't going to be this style...

...Water World....

Made with tissue paper. Kind of worked.

....and a quick sketch for Giant Tree World.

Not in any type of final look. Wouldn't spend long in this world.

So there you have it. Progress with some hits and some misses.

What's the Story Morning Glory?

Coming up with a story idea was not the easiest thing. I wanted an interesting plot that could be conveyed with little to no talking as well as a chance to explore different techniques and styles.

Inspiration hit with Shel Silverstein.

This poem was always a favorite of mine as a kid and it led to an interesting idea:

Jumping through different words by way of a puzzle piece.

The basic idea is that a character is cleaning when they find an abandoned puzzle piece. Upon touching it they are transported to a ‘new world’ that they explore happily. When they find another piece (of different color and design) they are transported again.

———

This time it isn’t as much fun. The world is darker and something evil resides there. The Evil starts to chase them. When the character tuns to a third world Evil follows. This happens several time. Finally the character is cornered, jumps, and falls into another piece.

———

The character falls awake in the original world. Touches the first piece again but nothing happens making them believe it was all a dream. They leave the room, such off the lights, and Evil begins to crawl out into ‘reality.’

So there you have it, the basics of a story.

Not many sketches have been done yet. The main point of my line was that each world has a different technique- one could be stop motion, or 2D, or hand drawn….