El Senate

Since I had some extra time left with my film, I decided to go back and add a little of extra animation to a couple of shots that bothered me. At some point in my film, all 3 characters run off screen, and to represent their speed, I put some dashes, but the effect didn't work as well as I though it would, and even when I showed it to others they though it looked like the character just magically vanished. So I decided to add an effect where when the characters run off, they leave a puff of smoke. It is a such a simple little bit of animation, but it really add the effect that the character ran off so quickly that they left dust trail (or something along those lines)

I decided to go back to one of the earliest shot in the film, where there is a panning shot, and I edited it a little bit so that the monuments in the background have a bit more of parallaxing effect so that they slightly move when the camera moves, so it creates a bit more depths. Its a slight change, but I think the little movement does create an effect of distance, it makes the world feel that little bit bigger. I had to push the sky quite far back to the monuments could be moved, but I didn’t want to move them to much, or not the sky doesn’t move enough. It shouldn’t move really that much, but it being completely still made it feel flat.

I decided to go back to my first short of my film, and play around with the original file on Photoshop to clean up a bit the back Monuments. Since I though that adding paralaxing would add more depth to the shot, I needed to clean up the images a bit, because or not to could probably see a bit through the gaps of the image which could ruin the illusion. I am wanting to add a little bit more then that though, I am considering adding a tumbleweed blowing by to make the shot feel more lively.

Here’s is a shot I though could really do with a blur. Since the main focus of the shot is suppose to be the trap door, I thought the the stuff in the foreground (the desk and Sherriff Ian McClint) were to distracting. I really wanted to create a shot for my film where I could zoom in and parallax past some item in the foreground, but the problem can sometimes be that there is to much focus on the items in the foreground. So the best solution is to add some blur, which I think compared to the original version of the shot looks much much better. I believe it almost gives of a camera effect where you can put more focus into the background by blurring everything around it, so I guess it has closer realistic feel to it.

I though now that I looking back through my film after being done with animating, I could add some extra effects pretty up a little my film. I though one of the best ones to use would be the blur effect/ By the looks of this video its a lot more simpler then I though it would be to do something like this. But by adding some blur to some shots could hopefully help emphasize where I want the audience to look without having whatever is in the foreground or background be to distracting.

This is another animation piece I did where I decided to add more shading to it to give it more depth. I originally just added some coloure and left it to move on to other pieces to coloure in, but I was never really satisfied with it, so with some extra time I looked back on it an added some shadows to the bottom of the gun. Even though i thought the shadows made it look much better, it still felt a bit “weak”, it felt like there was no weight to the gun, that it didn’t feel solid enough. So I made the lines of each frame much thicker, which I think fixes the issue for the most part. As well, the thicker lines give a more cartoony feel to it, and give off more the sensation that we are closer to the item.  Sadly I was going to make a video comparing the two versions I made, the video I had of the original animation sadly got corrupted some how, so all I have are screen shots.

This is a small example of one of the small changes I wouldn’t have been able to make unless I revisited my animations myself, because I would have forgotten about it. Its a very small change, but I believe adding a little extra shade to the door makes it blend in more with background. I don’t want it to blend to much because it is a key focus of the shot, but I wanted it to blend in format so that it felt natural to the scene, it didn’t feel like it was added on later on as part of the animation

I finished animating all of my shots for my film ahead of schedule, so I decided to tell mark that I no longer needed the volunteers from the other years to help me out because I have plenty of time to do all the colouring in myself. I could still the assistance because I never like colouring in, but I though this would be a great learning curve for me, as well if I had other people to do it for me I would have to directed them how I want it, so its much easier for me just to do myself at this point. Also this gives me the opportunity look back at my film and see if I can fix any issues. Mark has already shown me the best way to coloure in, so I should be fine, and I hope but the end of July or the beginning of August to be done.

This is a shot a wanted to mainly focus on using Smears to help emphasize the speed at which the Convict is running. Like I was saying with the previse post about wanting to using smears can emphasize the speed and humor, this was great example moment I wanted to put that idea into practise, because at this point the the short The Convict is so terrified that he saw a Ghost he ran back to prison. And to emphasize the speed he is running, I decided to smears because if I did a proper running animation I believe it wouldn’t have been as funny, The smear simply exaggerates the characters panic. It also help save time on animation, so I can work more on another shot whist also making this one look l=nice. In a way, its working smart and not as hard.

This a short clip from a fan project to reanimate the short classic; ‘ The Dover Boys’. What Ilike about this clip is that it has a breakdown at the on how the made it, and seeing something like this is helpfull to some one like because in the shot multible bit of animation are happening at once (that of the hands swinging, the antagonist;  Dan Backslide, being spun and the “damsel” in distress calling for help)  and they show that to make thing esier for them they have multiple layers and only focus on one bit of animation at a time. This is a very obviouse way to do things, but being so fresh to animation, you sometimes don’t think of things like that, but it also helps just to see how other do it specifically

I also may need to make the hand smaller, because they maybe to big, but it does create this nice feeling of distance because the hands are closer to camera, but they may be that little bit to big.

I spoke to Mark, and he told me he found 3 volunteers from animation to help me out with colouring in my animation. This is brilliant, because it is more then i would expect to help. Mark wanted to know when would be a good time for them to start colouring in, I told him probably some time in June, so that they have submitted their work for their final deadline and so I have quite a bit more for them to do when I get there.

I though this was an interesting sheet of walk/run/sneak/etc cycles created by Preston Blair. I’ve done a few walk cycles and run cycles in the past, but looking at these sort of things are always helpful. But seeing these cycles frame by frame (well, at least the keyframes) makes it a bit easier to see what mistakes to avoid. Like I that the furthers limbs should always be parallels from each other because people don’t walk or run with the two left or right limbs walking in sync. Very small and obvious thing, but you don’t sometimes thing of these things until they are put in front of you.

Mark liked the idea of asking other students to help and said he would see what he can do about that, so hopefully I can relax a little bit more now, I just need to sort out a system where I can share my work with others. Mark mentioned I can do this with Cloud (Or something like that) but i will need to look more into that.

But so far I feel the animation I have created works well, but could be a little smoother, I think the problem is I haven’t been animating in a while, so trying to get back into the groove is going to take me some time.

I found this interesting video which talks about  how to coloure in digitally on animation softwares. At first I needed to see if I was working in Bitmat or Vectors, I know I was using vectors because that is what Toonboom’s default was (but it can be changed to Bitmat, but I don’t that is really necessary).  In the video,  Pantoja say that he colours in on toonboom by basically duplicating his clean line layer, and putting it under the original and then colouring it in. This sound like a very unnecessarily complicated then it needs, but it takes sense, since you don’t want to mess up you original layer encase you do something wrong. I don’t think Pantoja is to accustomed to Toonboom, but it is an interesting technique. I will have to speak to mark, since he knows how to use toonboom greatly.