Episode Four- Final Week

Wow, this has been a very tiring project. I don't think I've worked this hard on an animation at all this year, and I know everyone else has been working their hardest as well to get everything done for the deadline (I hate deadlines...)



This week I've been continuing to get the animation drawn, which backfired on me this week because I spent last week drawing the easiest ones. I spent most of my time drawing the ending scene, which I then coloured and hated every minute of it for doing it frame by frame.

The animation wasn't finished when I'd hoped it would be. I'm a terrible producer.

But enough provaricating, here is the final thing-

Episode Three- Hardest week

This marks the week that the group have to begin animating the project, ideally completing the animation process before the start of next week (which will be used for post production). I'd much prefer not to be doing these projects on the day of the deadline, so really tonight is the last night I can feel relatively at ease considering the amount of work that needs doing.

The animation is being completed on Flash for the sake of speed and time, as we can correct the timing issues by reordering the key frames around whenever and can exchange the files between one another depending on the roles we have in the process. Everyone is on animating duty, along with colouring, but Alberto and I are working on key frames. With some pieces though, we'll line and do the inbetweens for ourselves.

The style of animation is meant to be very wobbly lines around the characters, rather like Rhubarb and Custard in that the characters never seem to be still. Although the wobbly lines mean that tracing it frame-by-frame will be slightly easier as we wont have to keep rigidly to the guidelines, we'll have to keep an eye on changes to the characters mass.

While we have at least two scenes done, I can only post this one as my laptop doesn't have quicktime, so I can't make another file type that blogger supports (and youtube really dislikes me uploading for some reason) but here's one completed sequence minus the 3d background and colour.

Episode Two- Start the ball rolling

This week was to make up for the previous week, when most of the other groups had begun their pre production work so the group put a lot of effort in to getting the work done in a shorter time frame.

It took a while, and it turned out to have more pages than the Knightrider script, but the storyboard is now completed.

As the other work isn't mine, I'll leave it to the others to post up their work, but this is the WIP Animatic (minus sound) that Nigel made.

Episode One- Start of the Group Project

Better start blogging about the group project, hadn't I?

After the first week, we now have out assigned roles in the projecct. I'm acting as-
Producer
Storyboard Artist
Animator
Sound Track Lay(er?)

I need to make sure everyone is keeping on track with the project throughout. I did create a timetable of a rather strange design, but it was too rigid to compensate for any delays or changes that would have to be made, so I've thought of a much easier one to follow. I won't post it or else I'll feel it necessary to use as reference all the time, so better to have it memorised so if any discrepancies occur then I can talk about them and the solutions here.

I'm working on the storyboard currently, drawing it all digitally and rather roughly so if I need to change anything I won't need the scanner in the studio.

(Opposite order, read from top to bottom)

Trying to get a feel for the movements here, so far I've made 7 pages of this and I'm still not that far in. Feels like another big storyboarding job, but hopefully smaller than Knight Rider.

I designed the small dog the Old Woman owns, which sits on her lap for the most part of the animation. When the character designs are finalised, the characters can have colour tests to make sure they dont look strange next to one another, hence the multi- colours of the dog at the top.

Some of the jobs we chose to assign to the whole group, like animators, colourists as when we' re actually creating it we want a good work flow going so the group won't have to rely on one person before the rest of the group feel they can do anything. This also allows for assisting other people with the work should anyone want extra help and to take some of the pressure off.

So far, Chloe, Darrien and Nigel have been working on the conceptual work. Darrien has created the concepts the animation will be based on, Chloe is designing the characters and their actions and Nigel is working on the 3D background using Darriens background concepts as an influence. I need to get in contact with Alan to see how his own background work is doing, and Alberto is the final decision on the work we produce. So far, everything is working.

I will post about the Animal Firm project as me and Alberto are working together (did I say that in a previous post?)and we've split the character designs between one another. I'll post the characters when they're coloured.