Group Crit Week

We stuck our completed work so far onto our animatic and got good feedback!

Suggestions we received:

• Add ambient animation to the outdoor backgrounds i.e. leaves rustling, birds etc. to give it more life.
• When the president approaches the gardener, have him enter from the other side of the screen so it's consistent with the direction he was moving in the previous shot and is less jarring.

 So they face in the same direction

We made a gantt chart to ensure we finish the project on time. It's made everyone happier.

Creatively titled

I'm continuing with the rough animation. It will all be done by the fourteenth of December. I'm pleased with it so far.

The gardener getting bashed

Unproductive Week

Fairly unproductive week due to MAF but I got a little done. I resumed the line animation for Medi to add detail over and I'm pleased with how it all looks.

I've started redrawing the interior backgrounds to make them more easily editable for group work and to remove some of the design inconsistencies, like how the pillows and side tables would change shape in between shots.

The above shot has a blue tablecloth in it but it's nowhere in the bottom shot. The colour scheme is also inconsistent.

The above is a background I discarded for the peculiar sense of depth and the position of the camera.

Now the backgrounds are more consistent and I'll collaborate with the other background artist about picking colours for them.

Lip Sync Practice

This task was important and it was good to further familiarise myself with the ways of Adobe After Effects, but lip syncing was mind numbing. Constantly checking numbers against each other and putting them into the computer went on for a billion years.

I enjoyed learning about time remapping and drawing my phenomes, although I could have made the mouths more exaggerated. Occasionally the mouths didn't communicate the sound properly.

A couple of my DOPE sheets

For a first attempt, I'm pleased with the result but it needs more practice.

More Line Animation

I'm carrying on my line animation and am pleased with how it's going. TV paint is really neat and intuitive.

I made a run cycle and another crucial shot in the animation. We will export all these as png image sequences and do the full line-work and colour them in photoshop.

I'm pleased with it but reckon I could do a better job of showing the weight shift in his hips

I'm pleased with how this punch turned out 

I really enjoyed animating this HAT falling off his head

Line Animation

I started the line animation this week and am pleased with how it's gone! I'm really happy using TV paint. It's well intuitive.

I'm proud of my character animation. I think it's expressive.

I didn't co-ordinate enough with Medi, the other animator, though. This meant our drawings looked too different in our respective scenes we were animating and it didn't mesh too well. Our solution now is that I am drawing the rough animation to capture the movement and Medi is adding the fine detail.

My rough animation, to be drawn over

When I find myself working with a larger group of animators, I will employ a guidelines sheet complete with little rules to be observed, like this.

Updated Animatic and Sound

We met and decided on a new animatic draft that we all agreed on, which was GOOD for team morale. Adding placeholder sound gave it better pace and mood. I'm feeling more confident than last week.

I experimented, recorded my voice as the president and tweaked the audio on Premiere so I sounded more like a 60 year old. He only communicates in grunts and sighs.

I've been training to draw characters in the art style of the character designer to keep a consistent aesthetic.