Final Improvements

Unfortunately I didn’t win the contest. But, here is the finished product: http://www.aniboom.com/animation-video/438763/Number-4-Boogie/

Tom had told me to improve different parts of the animation:
-More inbetweens for the part where the red shirt falls on the boy
-Zoom in when counting the warts on a hog
-Slow down the cars on the street (because kids are rollerskating on that street and it would be a safety hazard)
-Add more inbetweens for when the stars at the end twinkle

Here’s a clip with all the improved scenes: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E_xld-sA7JI

And thus concludes my Design for Media projects. Thank you, Tom, Charlotte and Julie, I learned a lot in this class, and I have improved in quality and speed of production. I’m especially happy I was able to produce a minute-long animation in just five weeks of production (since I had to finish three weeks early, and had changed my idea two weeks into the 10-week project).

Revisions

I revised part 2 of the project. I added more inbetweens and did a background switch every few frames. The inbetweens look good, but I liked the background better when it was stationary.

Revisions

Tom asked me to make a post with things I think need to be revised for my animation.

1. The 4 dancing kids are disproportionate. Their torsos are too long.
2. I need more inbetweens to transition from the perfume-cloud-4 to the bumps on a log.
3. about 2-3 more inbetweens for the part where the red shirt lands on the boy. His arms go down too fast and it’s hard to tell what happened. Also, more inbetweens to get him off screen. He could cartwheel out or something like that.
4. The 4 cars that zoom past could use some smoke/gas clouds trailing behind them.

The Link

http://www.aniboom.com/animation-video/438763/Number-4-Boogie/

I’m happy that even though my video’s only been up for half a day, I’m already ranked #11! I hope I continue to get good ratings. One top winner will be decided by audience rank, the others will be picked by judges.

It’s done!!!

Finally, it’s finished! I spent the last eight hours trying to compress it for the website, since it kept giving me errors. I finally was able to upload it, but it’s not showing up on my page. I think this might be because it hasn’t been approved yet, but I sent the help desk a message just in case. There’s no way I’m getting shut out of this contest for a technical error on their side.

I’ll post the link as soon as I have it.

Parts 3 and 4 finished

Part 3:

Part 4:

Part 4 is finished

Since the transparency module is being stupid (it’s adding black lines to the frames for some reason), I’ll have to use After Effects to do the background fade from light to dark. I might as well use After Effects for the whole background of all 4 parts, since it’s the same every time. Looks like I’ll have to export a quicktime movie with an alpha channel.

I exported it as a swf this time, and noticed that swf’s don’t support textures. Here it is anyway:

Flash vs. Toon Boom

There’s no doubt that Toon Boom is the better software, but flash has some features that I’d like Toon Boom to have. I’d like to be able to create symbols, objects and loops, and add more than one of these to a drawing layer. As of now, to create loops I have to copy and paste the frames, and if I have lots of loops happening at the same time, I have to put each of them on a separate drawing layer. And there’s no way to tell when a loop starts and ends unless you go through the frames and count. Also, I have to create a whole new layer even if I want to create just 5 frames that are separate from the others layers.

Besides that, it would make the network a whole lot less complicated. Mine looks like this:

It’s a mess. And that’s as clean as I can get it.

Ideally, I think each loop, object or symbol would connect to the layers, which in turn would connect to the composition. There’s gotta be a better way to visualize that. I’m wasting a lot of time figuring out where loops start and end and trying to sort out the network. I’ll just have to trust that the technology will continue to improve and the better it gets, the more time it’ll save.

Procrastination

In a classic act of procrastination, I went to see Kick-Ass today instead of working. However, the song is now recorded, part 4 linework is finished, and coloring is half finished. I WILL get this thing done by April 26th!

Schedule for the rest of the week:

Sunday: finish part 4
Monday-Wednesday: Part 3 linework and color
Thursday and on: post-production.

Post-production will include editing the song, rendering out the 4 parts of the animation and putting them together in Final Cut or After Effects with the music. I will add/remove extra drawings wherever necessary.

Part 4

Part 4 is about halfway done, line and color. I will finish it tomorrow. Also, tomorrow I am recording the song.