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.

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.