Let's face it.

Due to my perfectionist nature, i've been going back and forth just trying to perfect and tweek every detail before moving on-- which at this point is probably what i shouldn't be concentrating on and should be getting a move on, since my deadline is on Tuesday 4:20pm :l.

Compared to my storyline, i'm only on frame 12 out of 57. Great. I've started to face the fact that i probably won't get all my animation finished.

Looking back, i should have probably tried to charge on ahead without getting scared of the unknown complications of Flash; however, i didn't do this and instead tried to prepare myself against oncoming problems and stuff i haven't yet learnt (i.e. walk cycles)... i watched many YouTube tutorials in which they all do things differently. Many of them suggest or recommend using the bone tool exclusive to Flash CS5. But these stupid bone armatures seem to disappear every time i come back to them, making me have to wiggle them around until they appear EVERYTIME i want to work on it again :l. When i told this to my tutor, he said he doesn't trust this bone tool new crap and instead relies on old school classic tweening and frame by frame animation-- and if saved in a graphic, i can play the same walk cycle over n over without redoing it again like i do with effing bone tool.

Here's some of the tutorials i watched for Flash walk cycles: (some of which didn't help me at all or had an annoying man sucking his teeth every 5 seconds)





How To Do a Walking Animation

VTC- Animating with the Bone Tool


Anyway- here's my animation so far. I decided to change the horrific font to something more personal- like a handwritten font. I found this off of Dafont.com- recommended by an advertising student i'm working with in another project. I've decided that i LOVE this font site (so easy to use!!!) and will definitely be using this in the future.

Total Meltdown

Yesterday i had a massive panic attack because for some reason Flash deleted half of my layers and my animation was completely ruined. I have still now, no idea what happened.
I went into uni and a life saver uni tutor showed me a way to keep things neat and tidy and copied all my work into another flash file and i learnt how to "nest" all my work so it's safer to work with and basically makes more sense.

This is what happened:

And this is what it looks like now: (in progress- still ALOT to do "boooooo!" :( )

Walk Cycle Test on Flash

I'm a beginner on Flash so excuse the crapness but today i tried to create a walk cycle BY MY SELF.
Have a look see- my man kinda looks a little ghetto :l

ps: Flash doesnt like to go onto my blog so im sorry for the weird ghost print that happens in the video. I swear that's not actually there...

I think this worked out quite well, considering my man has no toes :( and he bobs around a bit as he walks, his knees probably bend too much and he stays too long nearer the ground...

This is the same walk cycle- now with a background. This is to give me an idea of what my chosen style will look like. I think i may play around a bit more with stage colour so that it won't look so plain.

Stuff to show

Pigeon Impossible

French Roast

Haha...Shape Tween

I decided to try out a different method- shape tweening and this created a really interesting trippy effect haha...

Epiphany

Since my tester on After Effects was an epic fail, i thought i might use a programme a slightly more comfortable with... Flash! i had a brilliant idea of drawings my finished picture, and then painting over it in flash, and erasing the path bit by bit whilst keyframing, to reveal the picture underneath-- this gave the illusion that the image was drawing itself :)

This gave a much more convincing animation than the previous one i did. Although, it did take a while to do... and only really worked easily with a simple shape.

I'm going to carry on looking for more time effective methods of doing this..

Note:- i noticed there's a lovely bald patch in my animation in the bottom right corner, this wasn't there in the file so i assume Flash wants to joke around with me today :(

Trying to Teach Myself...

Today i've been trying to teach myself how to get something to draw itself on After Effects (this is for my Time Project).. and it's proving quite difficult, especially as i'm getting zero guidance on how to do this, besides watching "masking" tutorials on youtube, and even these aren't telling me EXACTLY what i want...

I've decided to try and work out how to do it myself.. and below is a video of a the tester i did today.

Yes, i know it sucks and doesn't work at all, but im quite proud of it considering i'm having to teach myself at the moment until i find some proper advice.

Oh, and by the way, it's a chair :)

Embarrassing by Christina Yip (age 20)

Walk Cycles on Flash

Some background research for my Time Project:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4qOuvtgAkyQ&feature=related

I can't embed it so you'll have to be okay with the link!!

Cool shizz

I found some quite inspiring images from which i got some ideas for various ways of animating things or interesting concepts... however, i'm not sure if i can actually use any of these for the given briefs but at least i can put them down for possible future use...

"Friends Forever" by S-S-J

I thought this image was sooo cute!! so simple yet effective. It carries the idea of finger puppets and the fact that if you think about your fingers as individuals, they are always together, just like best friends. This then gave me the idea of a kind of finger-puppet animation, mixed with pixilation, digital animation and some very cute costume designs :)

"The Junction" by jonnygoodboy

This image has used the fish-eye lens so cleverly, paths we wouldn't usually see with our normal vision, can be seen when the image is curved (duh!).. anyway, this kind of made me think that if i was a clock, this might be what i'd see (in reference to the clockmakers brief)... so like clock-eye view, right?? :P... so i thought this maybe an interesting theme to flow throughout a clock related animation.

"I want you with me" by Alephunky

I've kept this image for a while, just because it's very sweet and innocent... although it's just an image, it did give me the idea for animating in a live space using paper... i know it's not the most original idea but i do admire when people go back to organic simple methods :) it just made me smile.

I'm sure everyone's familiar with hearing about the IT Crowd on TV... well i saw the DVD in HMV the other day, and although i've never watched an episode, i fell in love with the cover of it and the little people on the front ^_^... they reminded me a lot of the people on Habbo Hotel which i admit, i played copious amounts of when i was younger.. shame on me.

Mr. Internet's been kind today :)

I found a bunch of new stuff that i liked recently!! I can't wait to blog about all of them but it might take me years so i think i'll just have to be selective... Booo :(

Also, we've started our new module at uni "Business of Animation" in which we're focusing on participating in live briefs for clients and companies which is rather exciting- so rather than blogging about all the crazy shizz that i have been, i think i'll try to picky about the ones i write about, as some have actually brought me some inspiration that i could use in the briefs i might choose...

There isn't a limit to the amount of briefs we can look at... although we were suggested 5.. i can't choose between 3 of them!

These are my understandings of the suggested briefs:

• BBC- creating a sort of interactive environment in which you can cleverly display their wide range of info in an ever-expanding archive.
• Fairtrade- creating a short contemporary film which inspires the public to take action and be a part of creating a better world in terms of giving underpaid farmers etc the deserved money to survive etc.. So basically encouraging the idea of Fairtrade and to give an incentive to the viewers to care more. (that sounded horrible but that's not what i meant)
• SEGA- Sonic will be celebrating his 20th anniversary this year. Create a piece of communication to celebrate this or something that is inspired by this.
• Worshipful Company of Clockmakers- Submit a piece of work which explores the concept of time. (a very open and err.. well the brief was lacking in any sort of explanation but this is pretty much what i gathered).
• Disney- I didn't actually get to see this brief but i understand that you're required to design a character and bring it to life with emotion in an animation.

I still haven't fully decided as i can't pick between Sega, Clockmakers and Disney.. Sega and Disney pretty much illustrates my entire childhood (and probably everyone elses- but shh... i was pretty much the only kid that had a crush on Sonic the Hedgehog) So, it's very hard to not want to give back to the companies that contributed so much to my past laziness on the sofa, irrational hunger for gold hoops, or an unrealistic insight into how falling in love will be... Still waiting for Rhys to trot along on a pearly stallion... PAhahahaha... See what i mean??

However, i think i'll probably lean more towards the Clockmakers brief. The reason being that it is a VERY open brief and i like to experiment a lot, i've never really liked to use one medium to create a piece of work. To me, it seems quite flat, there's no body or (dare i insult for my own opinion?) love put into the work. The more media there is in a piece of work, to me, that has already shown me how much the artist cared or dived into the idea. So! i think this brief allows me this kind of freedom... the only thing im worried about is the deadline... i'd have been much happier if i had like a year to do it.. but the industry never waits does it?

I've actually babbled on so much about the new briefs that i haven't actually put up any of the original stuff i was going to talk about... let me have a shower first and i'll think about it :P