#blogpost

Hello! In this blogpost, I'll once again discuss my progress on my cleanup animation for OGRELORD. As of now I feel i'm close to finishing my initial cleanup, hopefully by the end of this week, which will then leave me around the next two weeks, or so, to do any further editing needed on the shot, including the final animation for a few shots I 'skipped over' for the purpose of doing further rough editing.

1: Animation

Since last time, i've been adding the final polish to a lot of shots, including the coloring and backgrounds, with me having about 8 scenes or so, which weren't intentionally left out for further editing, I need to finish, including a few (XX-YY) which need me to do some further animation, either of OGRE herself, or her hair specifically, though, my hope is that since these shots are mostly those where she is in silhouette, this animation process should go a lot faster, giving me more time to focus on editing.

I don't have much to say on the animation process itself, since again it's been rather simple, going over my roughs with a 5-pixel turnip pen, and then using the fill-bucket tool to fill in the coloring.

During the cleanup process, I also noticed, with the help of my tutor, various shots in need of improvements, which I added markers to as potential shots to edit with spare time, the most pressing to me being shot X (YY:YY), wherein the characters head-shape shifts notably, in a way which I don't think happens, or isn't as noticeable, in other shots, and which i'll try to edit if given the chance. Some other areas of improvement, again noted by my tutor, included some shots feeling as if they need general improvements to their backgrounds, animation or compositions, like shot y (zz:zz).

I also did some minor editing to previous shots, to help better tell the story, such as in shots X (XX:XX) AND Y (YY:YY), wherein I changed the characters face to start of smiling, before returning to a frown/surprised expression following a new issue/scare, to help make the story flow better and make the intentions of the character feel more clear, that their running from the rain and thunder storm in the forest, and are happy when they notice it.

My plan, going forward, is to finish the rest of the shots in my project, around 8 or so in total, by the end of this week, and then use the next week/two weeks, given how much editing needs to be done, to refine my work, it's timing and flow. Some shots in need of drastic editing I have already skipped over, including the two shots of the poachers getting thrown by the legs, as one needs to be edited for the sake of adding diversity to the work, or the shot of the poachers sitting together, as I was told to try and edit that shot to make the poachers feel more intimidating.

Another area of improvement I've been noted of, if I'm able to do in the time available, is how it feels like my characters are disconnected from the backgrounds, due to the different in their color pallets and artstyle (the backgrounds lacking texture or lineart, as an example. Another major way to improve my project, time permitting, would be to try and add some greater connection to the animation and backgrounds, such as with shading and color grading, which i'll try to get to if time is permitable. My hope is to still be fully done with the animation process by the end of july, so I can use the last few weeks of the project to do elements like final comping, sound design, uni blogposts/research and the editing for my promotional video and 15-minuet evaluation presentation.

It also reminded me of how important it is to clean and organize this blog. Since this is slowly turning less away from being an art blog and becoming more of a life blog. I even thought about starting a new blog to focus more on art and my interests.