Phew-groan-phew-groan

I think animation can be basically summed up in this way:

"phew(it's over)-groan(oh my goodness, another new frame)" repeat n times.

puke.

anyway on a different note, thank god!!!!!!! John is finally out! After 8 weeks of deliberating-redrawing etc etc, finally the main character looks "yeah!" to me!
But that means I have to redraw John and all the action sequences.

Timeline check:

1. Finish scene 4 landscape development ( I am lacking one more)
2. Fine tune scene 1 animation (this is haunting me bad!)
3. Finish scene 2 animation (oh no! so behind time!)

Ok, I think I have to switch on the "panic" button already.

Since I am feeling optimistic about the world right now, here's another reason why I love animation despite my lack of skills-patience-tenacity etc:



My favourite part got to be when "Here comes the sun" kicked in. WOAH surrealism!

I am doing all that I can to not throw in the towel and quit.

Animated scene 1/ animation is a bitch.

Having abit of problems with the opening - skipping ahead; now I am trying to close scene 1.

Not very satisfactory coz dun know how to make actions smoother. I m sure there is a damn way to make it work except tt I dun think I have the time to explore AE so much, which is a shame really. Maybe i shld try?

aiya see how.

sick of animation - and I still have 5 more scenes to go.
kao.

on another note, what is wrong with singapore?! every darn video i want to access is restricted due to darn copyright restrictions?? and only in SG? FUCKED UP.

ok chill, woman, chill:

let yourself feel. from Esteban Diácono on Vimeo.

Animation!

Finally I am animating some shit.

Quick ones:

1. having trouble keeping a consistent look and feel - i attribute it to an intense dislike for the current style I have to adopt to make it target audience sensitive. sometimes it is good to do shit that is self masturbatory - i.e. panders to no one but my own personal enjoyment. inner voice: designers are commercial, you know....
yes yes, let's move on.

2. still wondering if i should try to zhng john a little. he is really UGLY. i hate drawing cartoons.

3. have to re-paint the entire underwater scene. see point 1.

Timeline:

Think I am still on time for some stuff - hopefully I can get the majority rushed out before next Monday when I have to go to work.
This means:

1. completion of scene 4 (landscape development)
2. finish animation of scenes 1-3 (.........)
3. interim filing and organisation of development folder

Have a penchant to watch movies on my own - you don't really do much in a theatre except to fixate your eyes on the screen, so what does it matter if you have company or not? - but my point is this actually:



Azur and Asmar. first movie that i caught on my own at the PictureHouse some 2 years back. Wondered why it took them this long to export it to the US? Oh wait. They dubbed it in English. LOL~ I wonder if this is French pride at work? :)

Week 7 - Scene 3

Scene 3 is relatively easier to draw as opposed to Scene 2. I mean, underwater world vs old colonial singapore? that's a no brainer.

Anyhow, I am quite done with Scene 3 (at least the opening scene), just need to put in two (maybe three?) other perspectives and I can move on with animation tomorrow.

Was surfing around when I saw this video - very nice, reminded me of Disney, esp. the sequence in beauty and the beast and cindrella.

Week 6 - opps! its already week 7!

Week 6 flew by in a frenzy - not in the i-am-working-my-butt-off-for-the-project kinda way - but in the "I am screwing FMP and going out to play!" way.

My birthday week was hectic fun! it was shopping, dinners, drinks and more! Had a fantastic treat at Jaan par andre too. Extra sweet round up to the week :D

Alright - reality check time:

Still trying to finish the landscape development for scene 2 (i am only at scene 2. yikes)
settling all the perspectives, characters and backgrounds.
(I am late for this!)

Week 7 - need to do up landscape for scene 3
settle all the perspectives, charas etc
Finally - must start animating at least the first 3 scenes - try out and see if there is more work required. I foresee alot more tightening and streamlining though. hmm.

I am especially worried about the action bits coz i m not sure how it will work out. especially the transition between each scene?(this reminds me alot of my robot circus for 3d animation)

Lets see. Back to the grind.

Ok its official...

I don't know what the hell I am doing anymore - I think I need to put all the scenes into AE to at least have a look.

But - laters. Think I am going to move on with landscape development... ah, old colonial Singapore.

Darn funky.

Oh fyi, I hate John - bloody neh neh main protagonist. damn U.G.L.Y!! But I need to move on already... plus all the animatic poses of ugly John are out - no time to change or redo character. argh.

Characters are running?

Did up all the animatic poses yesterday - trying to finish up in Illustrator.
(now I am wondering why I have 3 monsters given that my storyboard has changed?!!! That makes a total of 4 main characters = 4 x 8 poses = 32 frames = 1 sec of running. For 1 sec of animation = 1 day of work?! @.@)

Did a mini output in GIF and AE to see if the poses fit together nicely and well, though far from ideal (coz too slow in AE; retarded in GIF) the feel of it is there I guess. Aim to finish scene 1 before class, if not really got nothing to update my progress man!

TOO SLOW!

Road safety

Interesting use of mood and colours eh.
I am not sure if its for kids though, coz somehow these gives me the creeps.
Think coraline or simply ghosts standing at their spots...







I just completed the background for scene 1 - i am screwed coz it takes me way too long to nail the look!

now i m trying to animate john's walk and run cycles plus finish up all the perspectives for scene 1.
All these and I am not even animating yet.

..............

Going to chart my progress here - FMP 5th week

Totally disliked drawing "manga"/"cartoon" styled characters - they are butt ugly. Pardon me, but I think I do realism pretty well. (ok, not that well....YET. ahem.)

But for sake of ease of things - i don't have that much time (helloooo animation!?) - i will have to stick with something that I really don't have the hots for.

So John is finally out! After two/ three weeks of character development and ploughing through tons of manga/anime (ok tats just an excuse to read trashy manga), John finally looked ..... agreeable to me.

Though I think he can still do alot more development work - except that I have no friggin time anymore!

Now its onto the medium - poster paints, oil pastels, watercolour or good ol' vector??
Thank God for the light box!

Also, side note about the style - target audience is for kids age 6 to 12 years - so goodbye to my kind of style (mixed media, pencil and watercolour etc etc) and hello - everything bright, happy, vibrant and literal.

GROAN - but ok la, ENJOYING!!!

side note: totally inspired about learning corel painter. WHAHAHAHAHA!!!