25-second animation completed

Andd....it is completed , the finished line work for my animation , all thats left now is actually colouring it and putting in the background. Current consideration are the black and white tone that is similar to the animatic, with a little bit more detail, I hope that would not be to ambitious. As for the animation itself, I am extremely please with how it all turn out. I cleaned up all the lines, therefore it looks more consistent throughout the entire animation , although in some area there are still variations, but that can be fixed with colour later. More importantly , I extended some scenes's durations to match more of what was intended in the animatic and also added in more frames for scenes like the foot stomp to create more force for the movement. The newest thing was the whole bit after the swing and I'm very happy with how it turn out, although a minor criticism that the lines is a bit too light and hard to be seen, although it is compensate by the fact that it is extremely clean-looking. The thing I'm most proud of is the fact that thanks to my durations chart that I planned ahead of animating , the entire movie as one piece fits in perfectly with the sound placement for the animatic with little adjustment needed. Although it is roughly 27 seconds right now , I'm thinking of keeping it that way as I feel that even if half a second is removed , it would cause the animation to lose its pacing and be out of balance

25-sec animation production : More scenes

The focus for this week again was continuing working on each scenes of the animation . At the beginning of the week , I formed out a chart listing the durations of each scenes using Premier , then translate that into number of the frames each scene would take. This has been incredibly useful as it help me to plan out the animation much better and quicker. Thanks to this , I've managed to produce a substantial amount of scenes since the last 3 , now reach up 18s of animation . Out of all of them , my favourite scene to work with , was the Obari's punch sequence of the girl moving toward the screen as she swung her swatter. It was pretty challenging , as I had to really think about the timing and how to move the body so that it can portray the strength and speed of the swing. Adding on top of that , tweening was a challenge as there are such vast difference in positions between the key frames, that you might as well consider the tween frame to be a key frame itself. However , I endured and the end result is the best scene by far in this animation . I also took advantage of CSP's motion blurring functions to help create dashing lines and fast movements. For the style , I think I might just keep with these rough line for the final animation , just some cleaning up needed as redoing in fine line will be too long and labor-intensive, and thats not to mention that I still have colouring to be done !. Overall , pretty good week

25-sec Animation production : first animation sketch

So I decided to sketch out the entire animation in rough first before going in with clean lines. Here are the first 3 scenes. I think I did a pretty good job at it, especially the movement of the hand in the 2nd scene ( feels very natural and true to what I wanted it , which is like a gun duel finger twitch ). However , there's lots of points I wanted to fix later like the shrinking of the head and body parts in the 1st scenes- (although the overall action and shape of the figure is very nice ) . The thing that was the most exciting  was that the 1st scene was animated completely separate from the audio , yet when I tested with audio, it matched up PERFECTLY (even the pause of breath )on the first attempt, which I must say its a real happy accident. Overall , really happy with the progress.

acting and reference

Rules of acting :

1 . Thinking leads to movement and emotion
2. Acting is reacting, acting is doing
3 A character need to have an objective - motivation          

think => emotion =>action => emotion => think

4 A character should play an action until somethings makes them play a different action
5. All action begins with a movement
6. Audiences empathises with emotions
7. A scene is a negotiation §

Interim crits 1: Animatic

Today crits was focusing on the animatic , but also touches on the entire progress I've made working toward it . For the most part , everyone, including the tutor had very positive opinions on my work, commending my animatic on the timing , style and the clear portrayal of the story. My concept works also get praised particularly on the fact that I sketched out the layout of the entire room, which helped alot with making composition of each scenes. Audio consideration is also a plus, as it really fits in and create a contrast to the comedy factor. Matt did suggest experimenting with more Western style audio, such as the whistle duel music to fit with my original vision of a "duel" between the characters. As for the colour, it was like a happy accident , how the greyscale that I did for the story just for colour sake plays well with the serious tone at the beginning , adding more to the lunacy of it. However , it did not work as well as the end , as the punch line of the joke starts there. Other suggestions would be adding more subtle movement of camera , like panning just to add to that dramatic effect. Overall, Im very happy with this animatic , and judging from the crit , so is Matt and everyone else. Now to get on to actually animating it !

After effects test

A couple of tests done after our latest After effects inductions which focused on camera movement. This could be EXTREMELY useful , as it deals alot with animation for the back ground , especially the last clip where I can do a spin of the scenery. With this , I would only have to animate a turn around for the character  and put it on top , and we can have a whole spinning scenes. Not to mention animating moving backgrounds can be more precise and smoother than just animating it by hand. In generally , really hand knowledge to know. Although my current story doesn't involve much moving backgrounds ( as it was done prior to this) , I can try incorperrating some part into it

OUAN405: Finished story board

 

The finalized storyboard is completed and I have to say went much better than I expected. The fear was taking too long thereby go over the limit of 25 seconds, but after some tests in Premier , It fits the time frame perfectly , with extra room for adjustment if needed. The story is conveyed well , exactly like how I imagined the story and the style is nice too. Improvements on this would be too add more movement indication , especially now when I'm thinking of having the background move independently. Of course , that can dealt with in writing on the storyboard paper or in the animatic itself. Overall , really please with this one. Plus, I've managed to gather some sound SFXs that its fitting, the only thing left now is to actually finish the animatic, which should be simple