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!