This next shot I'm working on is the one where the soldier says goodbye to his pregnant wife. It's a really nice scene, and is a really important one to the story as it is when the soldier draws the heart on the tree, which is recurring through the next few scenes along with the necklace he holds. It is therefore key to the story coming together and being able to link in the two characters in this scene, in particular the girl as the child we saw before, and the mother and old lady we then see after this scene. Because of its importance I want to spend a little more time on it making sure that the animation is really nice and works well, and is as clear as possible. I think it will be done this week and is a big step to getting the end of the piece animated.

At last....after the software crashing non stop and moving the animation around a bit, many times...we have some animation with a finished background. I'm keen to get this scene coloured now to really see what it will look like, but I'm glad we got this one sorted in the end...



Watching it back, the timing needs to be sorted out a little with the camera movements, and where I have altered the animation I think the characters at the top need to zoom out more as they are too big and the squirrel needs to be bigger in the foreground as it isn't obvious or very clear at the moment. There also needs to be more of a hold on the squirrel before the pan down the tree. Once the characters are coloured they should all become a lot more clear, however it is starting to come together a little more now.


This is better...

updated animatic...

I don't know why I am having so much trouble with this bomber plane..but its causing all sorts of unnecessary trouble. I still have lots of scenes to do and the idea is to try and get through them all so that the majority of the animation is done, and then go back a make tweeks and changes in the animation where things can be improved. However this one was really annoying me, and after chatting to Derek and changing from lazy tweening to drawing the plane out changing angles, it looks much better. I'm sure it can still be improved, but I'm happier to leave it as it is now compared to how it looked before. I did play around a little with the timing, but the last clip is looking the best at the moment.

This is the last shot of the scene with the hippies. I'm am quite pleased with the way this scene is looking now. This is quite an important section as they are saving the tree and also starts to link the family together with the mother and daughter relationship and the necklace starting to be passed on. When doing this scene I did notice that I hadn't put the necklace in the other shots with the blond hippie character, and had to go back through them to add the necklace on. In some it barely even visible and probably wouldn't have been noticeable as you aren't really looking for it in the scenes before this one, however it would have bugged me if I hadn't have changed it!

roughing out some animation for the next lot of scenes...

I have been updating this blog with new scenes pretty much as and when they are being done as line tests and then after they have been cleaned up. It is nice to be working on the next sections of the animation now and at the moment I'm feeling sort of on target with the scenes, although there's still a pretty big gap at the beginning and end of the animation. I have also updated the animatic as shown below.

adding in some props...

todays clean-up

Developments...

So..this week I have got a few of the bigger scenes finished, and a couple of the smaller scenes done. Leki has been colouring in one of the longer scenes, Chloe has just finished colouring one of the shorter ones which is looking really good now :) and Alberto has been animating the Celt character to start off the animation.
Below is a cleaned up scene that I have been working on the past day or so..all that's missing from this one now is the bomber plane to fly over the little boys head, and the very rough line test below it is the nest scene...also missing the bomber plane in the background...but the character animation is getting there.






I will hopefully complete this scene on Monday and move onto some others. I'm keen to get some of the smaller linking scenes done so that the animatic starts flowing a little more, and some of the beginning scenes as none of them are done yet. However I feel its more important for me to go on to do some of the longer end scenes as this is what really brings the animation together, and I recon some of the shorter ones could be done by the 2nd years or anyone who fancies chipping in nearer the end of production if needs be.

Anyway, I quickly updated the animatic again today...there seems to be a long gap of black screen at one point..but nothing is missed out and there is now quite a long stretch of cleaned up animation.

the scene with the railway men...

Really wanted to get this scene completely cleaned up today as it would be quite a nice longish one out of the way and ready to colour. However, I am nearly there, and am quite pleased with the result...it was looking a little slow in playback in toon boom but I'm not sure if it was just a bit overloaded...hopefully it looks a little smoother here...if not...i'll be adding in a few inbetweens!




Definitely looks faster here...timing needs to be changed slightly when the tall guy hugs the small one as it doesn't quite match..but some keyframe tweeking should sort that!

updated animatic...

The scene where the pilot lands in the tree...

This scene is now cleaned up...




However there is a lot of things going on. I know what I am meant to be watching as I made it - although it's kind of both characters really, however I wasn't sure how clear it was and whether is works, or whether both the characters are moving too much and are too far apart. Anyway I have been playing around with the camera movement to see if it helps and makes a nicer shot...