Scene 1 (Finished! March 1)

I'm calling Scene 1 finished. Or rather, it's my Scene 1 - V1.0. It's all there, it's animated. I'm moving on. I'll render out Scene 2 after I fix up what needs to be fixed, and when I've got time to kill. Scene 3 and scene 5 are my next priorities for the next 3 weeks.

Scene 2 (I'll say it's complete. Feb. 25, 2011)

This is probably the closest I've gotten to completing Scene 2's animation. Guy's lip-sync is there, and the animation is getting closer to being final... however, now I'm stumped with a random glitch that my Guy V2 rig has. When he animates his arms in IK, they work just fine. However, when animating in FK, it seems to work, at least until you go to capture the animation, or quickly scrub through the animation. The left arm will either explode, or implode. I figured one of the problems had to do with the stretchy arms, but well, this is the best I could get it. Only the left arm is animated partially in FK.

Download Video

Before I move on to finishing Scene 1, I'm going to draw up an exposure sheet. For some reason, my thoughts are better organized on an exposure sheet than they are when I look at the Keys or FCurves on the time-line. So that'll be my approach to finish the rest of my demo reel.

EDIT (Feb 25, 2011): I found the problem with the GuyV2. It turns out that any amount of stretchiness caused by IK will affect FK somehow. I made the decision to animate all of Guy's left arm in FK, and that seemed to fix the problem for when I capture it. However, if I do jump frames, there's still some glitchiness happening, and that is something I cannot fix now. For now, I will call Scene 2 done, but there are still a few things I can improve with it, and that will have to wait for later. Right now, I'm in the process of re-animating Scene 1 (more or less from the ground up). All of the jaw movement is in, the head and body movement is finally done. Now I need to fix the eye movement, completely re-animate the arm/hand movement, and get the lip-sync done. After that, I'll say Scene 1 is done, and I'll move on to doing Scene 3. No progress video until I say it's complete.

New stuff... updated voices mainly.

Most recent update (Feb 14, 2011):

 Scene 2 (Moom falling WIP)

In my opinion, the timing is still a bit off. The pauses need to be a bit longer. The falling part needs something more too. I can't exactly put my finger on what it needs though. I plan on making the ninja kid bounce a bit when he makes impact with the ground.

Full reel so far: (No music or sound effects. No titles either. Does not include the proper Moom falling animation)



Scene 1

Scene 2

I'm way behind schedule, but I have my reasons. I'm working on perfecting the animation as much as possible before continuing on to the next part. I'm also working on something else that's important. I'm making sprites for a client of mine. I swear, he wants me to pull out 10,000 sprites, but he wont need them right away... he still would want me to make at least 1 per day. I love making sprites, so it's best that I put my efforts into this as well. I'll show off what I'm doing once I produce enough sprites. Who knows, it could also be part of my demo reel.

Scene 4 (Shuriken Scene) is getting cut. Also: Finalized voices! (Feb 3, 2011)

It has come to my attention that the shuriken scene really isn't needed, and kinda degrades my animated short. I've thought about it for about a week, and finally, I've decided to cut it entirely. The reason it isn't needed is because it doesn't really add anything new, but rather, it kinda just contributes mediocrity. On my first storyboard, I had 6 different scenes. The fire walk scene was a water run scene, the shuriken scene had 2 different ninja kids and an awkward camera angle, and I mixed the fifth scene with the final scene. I guess the only reason I had that one shuriken scene in there was to fill the time slot because I thought it was supposed to be a minute long. Obviously that isn't the case, rather. The shorter the animation, the better. Also, with this scene cut, I'll be able to focus on perfecting the animation for each scene, rather than rushing to get everything done in time. Quality > quantity. So, I'll need to adjust my schedule.

Another thing: I have finalized voices now. I'm still the voice of Yamato Sensei, and I got Ian to voice the disclaimer. Right now, I'm getting the timing and mouth positions down for the lipsync. I'll post new videos of my demo reel once I get all the new voices planted into each scene. Also need to do some fixing up with my blocking for Scene 1 and 2.