more line tests and animation...

Below is a quick test showing some of the animation of the picnic scene cleaned up. The whole of the little girls animation is completed, it just decided not to render this all out for some reason...one of the many technical problems I've been having today. I think it is working quite well, and the boy is near to finishing. Unfortunately all of these frames that I did today including the end of the girls actions and all the the boy's that you see here wouldn't save properly in toon boom and so it is hit and miss whether I will actually still have them, or have to do them all again tomorrow :( So I just wanted to put this very short clip up so I felt I have actually achieved something today in case I go back to it tomorrow and the worst has happened...but for now, fingers crossed.

editing the animatic

Now TVP is up and running again...sort of...I have started to put the scenes I am doing into the animatic in place of the stills that are there. This should let us see how it is working, how the timing of the piece is going and what we have left. At the moment, it barely looks as though much has changed, but i can't wait until we've got some more scenes animated and in there and hopefully it wont be long before there is more animated scenes then stills!

picnic scene line test

Whilst I am doing some animation and getting on with things, I need to make sure that all of the scenes are ready for the 2nd years and any other animators to take and get on with. I made separate files for each scene last week, however I now realise I need to make it absolutely clear to the people I give the scenes to, what needs to be done. So Andy suggested that for each of the scenes I actually set it up completely in animate pro, layout and instructions and key frames all timed out and ready to go, so that the animation comes back looking exactly how it was planned to...hopefully! So today I have been doing a lot more organising, and going through scene by scene, putting backgrounds into scenes and adding key frames and notes. By doing this it is making it easier to also see how the scenes are going to connect and any problems we may have. It also cuts down the animation in places as where some scenes cut, there is a lot less animation needed. I feel a lot more organised having started to do this, and I feel like the actual amount of animation to do is more manageable as once I have gone through them all the key frames are basically there. After doing this, I'm hoping to put the rough animated scenes and some more completed scenes into the animatic. this will replace the drawn stills and it means it will start to look a bit more like an animation and will come together a bit more. It also means I can keep Les, who is creating the music more up to date with how all the scenes will look and the length of them etc.

Below is an example of the way I am laying out the scenes, showing on the the keyframes and some notes to the animator about what is happening or key things that need to be in shot.






I am yet to have the animatic with completed scenes, but hopefully on monday I'll be able to use the program I need to do this. I am hoping to get the first half of the animation all completely sorted out into scene files and animate pro files by monday so that I can start giving them out to 2nd years and happy helpers :) Hopefully I can get a bit more animation done as well, but this weekend my dissertation needs to come first.

Line test continued...

line test...

Below is the beginning of a line test for another scene in the animation. Again this is quite a long and complicated scene because of the characters. The woman walk really isn't looking too good and I think I need to rework this. However I am happy with how the skipping of the little girl is looking right at the beginning and if I can get it to continue like this i think it will work well. I am also quite pleased with the way the woman lays out the blanket towards the end. Obviously it still needs a lot of work, and I want to get the timing and animation perfectly correct before cleaning up, which is hopefully what I will do tomorrow!

dog walk outline developments

Below is where the dog walking scene stands at the moment. I am quite happy with it, but there are a few bits of movement I would change and I think the characters don't maintain their shape as well as they should do. However I think I am going to move on from it now and move onto another scene to get some more animation done.

Developments...

Over the past few days I have been doing lots of organising with files, folders, names, getting all the bits and bobs needed for each scenes together and put into folders, and of course, backing up! So hopefully next week I'll be meeting with some of the second years on monday and I can give out some scenes for them to get going on and I can also get animating on another scene myself. Before Christmas I was working on the dog walking scene. As this scene is still not completely finished I had a bit of a panic that it was going to take forever to get all the scenes done. However, when thinking about it, the animation of the scene took maybe just a few days, and since then I have been cleaning up and colouring each frame and this is what has taken the time. So when considering the rough animation of every scene, I think its is do-able in the time we have, as long as the other animators I am working with are as keen to get on and do it as I am! I think it will be the clean up and colouring which will take the time. However, if we have 2/3 people focusing solely on the colouring it should be much faster. So I'm a bit more hopeful that it is all going to get done now. Anyway amongst the organising I have been continuing to clean-up and colour the frames of the dog walking scene. So far I have got this...





Realising it was this part of the process that is taking the time, I am just going to continue cleaning-up the scene and then will pass it on to a colourist to colour so that next week I can get started on a completely different scene and really get going and start making a dent on animating this project!

New Term...

Over Christmas I focused my work on my dissertation as I was away from the studio. I am very glad I did this as I now feel more comfortable with the dissertation side of things and feel I have got much further into it and am now on target with it. This however did mean that work on the project stopped for a while. At the beginning of Christmas I split the animation into scenes with each one on a separate page and a tick sheet to keep organised and sorted with what parts of the animation have or need to be done.
We have decided to split the animation up a bit so that I am focusing on the animation, whilst Harriet focuses on the background designs and Leki works on the colouring. Hopefully this will work well and let each of us focus more on our interests and particular areas so that each part is as good as it can be.
We are going to try and get a pipeline going when we have more people on board. Hopefully I will have some willing second and maybe even first years to work on it so that there can be some people animating and the passing the scenes onto people to colour. Hopefully this will speed up the process a little and make sure it's all a bit more accurate as at the moment I am doing the animation and then colouring straight away, which can lead to mistakes due to swapping between things a lot.
After discussing things over today, we thought it was best to get the layouts done and drawn out first as this will mean as soon as we have other people on board, we can distribute the scenes out giving them the instructions and a clear layout for the animation. Harriet and I will go through these tomorrow and hopefully have a good amount drawn up by the end of the week, ready to get animating next week. With the animation in progress Harriet and Leki are then going to create the final versions of the background layouts.
So...all being well..this is the plan.