Thursday 19 April 2007

...and we have lip-syncage

Today I totally made a dude look like he's saying things. It felt awesome : )

That was Dargor by the way (the guy in the armour from the last video).
This was my first try with lip synching in Anime Studio and thanks to being able to use switch layers, he took all of five minutes to set up. Just wish it had been this easy in After Effects : <

EDIT:
Here's Tharish as well :D

Sunday 15 April 2007

What is this "outside" you speak of?!

Been feeling a bit out-of-sorts for the last few days. I haven't really had anyone to talk to and I'm seriously missing my friends, most of whom aren't even in Birmingham at the moment. I've never liked long holidays for that reason. It's been quite a struggle to get on with work too, since boredom has almost completely destroyed any enthusiasm I had for it. I just hope things pick up in the next week.
: (

Last test for now, since I'm starting the groundwork for the next part tomorrow. A bit rough around the edges, but I want to get the bulk of the animation work done before I start the fine-tuning (otherwise it'll get to the end of the holiday and I'll be nowhere near close to finishing it). Pacing's a little off and I still want to tweak the movements in the first and last shots, but I'm quite pleased with how it's progressing, which makes a change. I'll be adding the rain later on.

Wednesday 11 April 2007

Computers are awesome!

No wait, what's the opposite? Oh yeah, complete bastards.
Seriously, what is it with computers that makes them think "Hey this project's going entirely too well for my liking. What can I do to fuck it up for you?"? For every thing that goes right, there will be at least three that go wrong. In the last week, as well as my laptop dying, I've lost my phone (suddenly decided not to switch on anymore), half a printer and my external HD takes forever to be recognised when I plug it in. Just this evening I wasted about 2 hours trying to get After Effects to reinstall properly after it decided that it wasn't going to open anymore (something to do with duplicated plug-ins even though it was fine yesterday).
And I swear to God, if anyone says it's because I'm using a PC, I will brain them.

Anyway, I finally got it to work (amid numerous four-letter expletives) and spent the rest of the day making this:


A few kinks to smooth out with this one, mainly down to the way the character's hair, cloak and shadow move (gave them a bone structure in Anime Studio rather than doing it frame by frame). All of them require a few more keyframes and could also do with slowing down.
I also want to make the ripples in the lake smaller and if I have some time to spare, get some birds flying overhead.
I quite like the perspective in this one though, which I actually thought would be the most difficult part to get right.

In other news, my Joshua Radin CD came today, which made me happy. Go and check out his site if you like really mellow acoustic stuff. You can stream some clips from the "We Were Here" album in the music section (he's had quite a few songs featured in Scrubs if anyone's a fan).

I'm hoping the next three scenes will be easier to tackle, especially since I'll be dealing with silhouettes. Right now though, it's late, I'm tired and I'd rather not end up falling asleep at 4.00 am again : P

TTFN

Tuesday 10 April 2007

Here be dragons!

Okay so I lied, there's only one :P
Had a few setbacks before the holiday (including losing my laptop... again), so this past week I've been up until the small hours of the morning doing as much as I possibly can.
Two more videos, the first is one third of the finalised animatic complete with Mr Lee's marvellous voice and the second is a rough animation of the first scene.



The sound ends rather abruptly, which I'll be fixing when I have the animation finished. Also I want to beef it up to give the final blow more of an impact.
Eventually it'll lead into the scene which was illustrated in the animatic that I posted before (which has also been given an upgrade since then).



For the animation, I want to make the wings curve upwards when they're raised and this is proving rather difficult to achieve in 3D space. So far the only solutions I've found are expensive plug-ins for After Effects, or have an insanely detailed knowledge of how the bone rigging system works in Anime Studio, of which I currently have neither. If anyone has any suggestions, I'd be glad to hear them!
Also, as my good friend Richard pointed out, it might be an idea to have the dragon fly upwards slightly before the dive to give it a more fluid look.

As a parting gift, two "in progress" images of the next part of the animation, which should hopefully be finished by tomorrow evening. I know I said I'd post character designs, but I'm just mean like that ; ) :



And one really silly one that took all of ten minutes. The fluffy cat's mine, the black one sitting outside is her arch nemesis (10 points to the first one to point out the reference) :D


Time for precious sleep ;_ ;