Interim 2

A month had past and everyone had finally gotten their animatics done. What's left for me is to find voice talent for the ring master, improve the sound effects for the appluase and also to add in background for most of the scenes so the images don't look flat. I was glad that the animatic was quite a sucess in term of pacing. At first, I think that some scenes were too fast and people might not be able to digest it well enough. So, I held some frames longer and it seems much better now. Thanks to the feedback from Vivien.

It wasn't easy finding sound effects. I stayed up till 4am just listening to suitable SFX for my animation. Now, I think my audio is like 50-60% done. I should work on the title and backgroud now.

Gonna start on the production soon.

CD profile sheets

This are the profile sheets for the dwarf, lady performer, ring master and the Hippo.





Mr Alan commented that my Hippo's mouth should open wider so it's believable that it was able to swallow the Dwarf down. I had took the beard off the dwarf so he won't look like a Santa's elf. I hope he don't look like a child without his beard. To prevent this, I had deepen his winkles around his eyes and the mouth.
I haven't refine my storyboard yet and presentation is on Thursday. Oh No!

Third week-Friday

Woo~ Today Mr Alan went around asking what is the last novel we read. I was thinking really hard about it because it has been years since I last touch a novel. But was seriously good! I read like 3 times when I was in secondary school.

I continued my Animation 2 work when Mr Alan suddenly sat down beside me and Vivien to have a look at what we were doing. Then, he told us that it wasn't the correct way to do our animation in Photoshop because of the big file size and the worst thing of all, the timing is not real time. I was indeed horrified by this information. I didn't realize that Photoshop is only playing the "fastest" speed it can go, so even if we set the time nicely, it might not play right after it was exported. Mr Alan is such a wonderful lecturer, he explained to us that we could export the images as sequence, than import it to either Flash or After Effect to arrange the timing. Mr Alan also commented on the animation and said that we should have drawn the important keyframes than work out the in-between. I do agree that it Will be much easier.

I also showed Mr Alan my character designs and he mentioned that the Hippo's mouth should have been bigger so it'll be believable that a dwarf can be swallowed by it. The dwarf's beard should have been removed if not, he'll look like a Santa's helper. I shall try drawing him without a beard and see if it works. I showed him the storyboard again because I was uncertain with some of the shots. He said that I will need to find SFX of people clapping then stop abruptly. He also mentioned that playing with pausing is important. It gives audiences time to absorb the joke. A very good example he gave was . I love the the cartoon alot. It was really hilarious and crazy too.

I'll make amendment as soon as Animation 2 was over.

P.S: Thank you, Mr Alan =D

It's wednesday~

It's group 3,4 and 5's turn to consult Mr Alan today. And I learnt something important today. It's the Gantt Chart! It helps guide students though their working processes and make sure we finish it in time. I think it's very helpful and further more, with the Gantt chart around, one will not slack so much that everything ends up as last minute work. It's all about planning things smartly.

Mr Alan even said that we can have one long stretch of Gantt chart being printed out and it will be easier to keep track and also to edit the schedule again. And I didn't know that audio should have been done together with the animatics instead of doing it last. Reason, because audio does affect the mood greatly.

Anyway, I do hope to find some time for P3. I want to start on animatic soon.

Character Design

Wow, was really busy with both the 2 modules. Anyway, I've drawn out the style I have wanted and here they are:






The only thing I'm worried about this style is the consistency of the lines because I traced the lines with a brush in Flash. Maybe I should try out a few frames of animation to check and see for myself. And background references were hard to find too. Should I do the layout in Maya perhaps? But I'm weak at Maya, so I just hope it wouldn't take me the whole day to just complete modelling the circus. As you can see, I've been rushing Animation 2 for the whole of this week. *tired*
But it was really fun to see our animation flows smoothly and coming to live. I guess that's the greatest rewards ever for an animator. I just experience it today and I'm happy with myself.

As for P3, I did some changes to the storyboard. I had the dwarf bounce up and down with the camera following it. And I wanted to add some interesting angles, but had only managed to come up with one. I will do a more elaborate storyboard in a few days time.
Gotta rush off to get some rest now.

-TY-