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!