Demo Reel - Progress (Jan 26)

I admit, I'm falling behind now. However, I plan to make it up in the next week. I was hoping to have the blocking out done, but I only got half of the blocking out done for Scene 1. I realize that giving myself a day to do the entire blocking out for 2 scenes (~20 seconds of animation) wasn't enough time.

Anyways, I have reference of myself to show off, and part of my Scene 1. For the reference in Scene 2, I don't think I even know how to swing a sword. I keep spinning around... maybe it's because the prop I was using was too long (almost damaging the apartment! =D ). Either way, I slowed myself down for the last few takes... I guess no matter what, he'd take a step forward, and face his back to the camera when he slashes the sword.

I was going to film myself sacking myself for reference of Moom falling and getting sacked, but I have 2 problems with that. 1. Even though the reference would be of someone (me) actually getting sacked, I would have to exaggerate it a lot to make it look animated for animation purposes. 2. It would hurt like hell, so there's no way I'm going to do that to myself. If the reference I get for it isn't good enough, then my efforts would be wasted, and I would have sacked myself for nothing. Sooooooooo no. I'll just look up reference on the good 'ol internet/youtube.

For all the times I do weird things in my references, it's just what I did to keep myself sane while gathering reference, and it'll keep me sane while animating. The other reason why I'm leaving in this much footage for my reference is also because some gestures read better in other takes. It's best to use all of what I've got, no?



All of the animation I have so far is still rough. I don't plan to have it fully animated until, at the very least, a week. So far, I've only got Scene 1 blocked. I'll be doing the blocking for Scene 2 soon enough.

Update on a few things

I'm a bit ahead of schedule, or rather, on schedule. I finished making a tighter shot and the camera animation for the balancing scene (Scene 2). I almost decided to add cuts to this scene to break it up more, but it wouldn't give me the feeling I wanted. It's supposed to be made as a home video. So likewise, I looked up home video reference on the internet, and there are plenty of resources. I used a couple Mindthink Springs, and constrained the camera root to it. To make it so that the camera didn't go everywhere when it moves, I stiffened the springs to around 1.00 for the bottom one, and .90 for the top spring. The springs are just to add to the shakiness, but I don't want it to be too distracting. Also, I put Guy V2 into my scene, and of course, nothing is animated yet. Everything in this scene is still rough.

If you can't tell what he's doing in this scene, well, I gave Guy a sword prop. he'll be using that to slice the bamboo, and then walk off screen.

EDIT: New update! I finished the camera animation for the Fire Walk scene (Scene 3). Same method used. Basically I'm adding a tighter shot on Moom to show his animation better. On the down side, it shows less of Guy, but on the plus side, I don't have to do his gesture animation for that portion the camera is looking at just Moom. I should be done with the next scene's camera animation very soon too... but I'll rest for now.

Another update: I met my milestone for Jan. 19. Scene 4 (Shuriken scene) camera animation is done. If it doesn't read well yet, it may yet once there are key animations implemented. For now, there will be a lack of animation. Feedback would always be nice.

Sorry, forgot to upload Scene 5's camera animation. I also attempted making the cabin collapse ahead of schedule. The cabin animation very rough right now, but it gets the idea across better than it did in my storyboards, or previous renders.

Demo Reel Animation Schedule

Alright! I've got a schedule going, and I really hope to keep on it as much as possible. If I miss a deadline, I still want to get it all done before each Milestone. I'm really hoping to get all my stuff done by the end. In my last week, I have a few things that are kinda optional to do for this quarter, and doesn't really have anything to do with the actual animation itself.

I just got finished making the new Guy V2 Sensei. I think it would be better/easier working with him rather than Guy V1, so that's why I made such decision.

As for the tighter shot on Balancing Scene, I feel that it didn't have a good shot originally. I should be showing the ninja kid a bit more basically. Also, to account for the tighter shot, I need to re-animate the camera movements. I only just started trying to get the tighter camera to work, and now I'll need to have the animation working too. The way I have it to be set up is that it will show the ninja kid first, then have the camera move over to show Guy Sensei talking. Also, to take into account with Guy being a lot closer to the ninja kid, he isn't going to throw a shuriken. Rather, I added something to Guy's costume: A sword. I'll have him horizontally slice the bamboo, then walk off screen. I remember back when I made my first storyboard, I had a lot better shots for this scene. I don't know why my teacher didn't want that. -_-

Also, the camera didn't really move at all on the Fire walk scene, and now that I think about it, it needs some sort of animation. Perhaps zooming in on the ninja kid more, since that's where the animation is. That's about it.

Then lip-sync is something I find VERY easy to do. It'd probably be a lot easier to do lip-sync before animating the guy. May take me 5 hours to do all that lip-sync, or maybe slightly longer. I don't have an estimate. It's just the lip-sync, and not all the gestures itself. So just facial animation for now.

EDIT: Update on the schedule, I moved the lip-sync for after finishing the gesture animation. My teacher said it'd make more sense this way... and he wouldn't accept it otherwise. Also added in a Blocking column. That's the date I plan to finish blocking in the animation, then if I need to make some fix-ups, I'll do it asap, then finish the animation.