Wednesday, June 23, 2010
Thursday, May 7, 2009
research stuff
I got tons of sketches and storyboard stuff, but it's on refill. The only bad thing about online workbooks. :/
For next time...
More storyboarding. My thumbnail storyboards worked nicely, but I didn't think about all of the transitions between scenes. Which causes problems down the line with continuity, timing of the animation and extra time it takes ot modify stuff at the start and end of scenes.
More frame by frame. Some of the shape tweens really pissed me off trying to get them to work how I wanted. I used tons of shape tweens (rather than motion tweens) throughout the animation because shape tweens are eaisier to process by the machine, and if you have too many mtion tweens in one scene it causes slowdown. A problem with syncing to music. Flash player skips frames if it gets behind, and I dont like that.
If more was frame by frame, it will take a little longer, but it gives a more organic feel to movement. As I have found, there are a very little amount of shortcuts to animating fire/water/dust/etc (anything that "flows") and FBF is the only way to acheive realistic looking effects.
More story. Like a possible back story for the characters, personalities, etc. Also I think I need to finalise the complete story before animating. I love to jump into animating the characters and such, but if you change the story halfway through you might need to scrap some/all of the animation. Which would be a big waste of time.
The guys from Pixar are always going on about how "story is king", which I now understand completely.
More acheivable timeline. I was pretty much working non stop to just to get this project done. I was animating for 2-3 weeks for 80 seconds = 4.4 seconds a day. Roughly. Maybe i'll go for high quality 2 seconds a day? Depends on how much longer FBF takes for me.
Thinking about copyright bs. Copright material is so troublesome. Perhaps too troublesome to attmept again any time soon. NZ laws are whack. What's wrong with making something for entertainment. Lame...anyways...
A seperate flash file for character's body parts, and another file for effects.
It was time consuming to look through all the files to find a simple object. If I had a file library it would be a lot quicker. :)
More frame by frame. Some of the shape tweens really pissed me off trying to get them to work how I wanted. I used tons of shape tweens (rather than motion tweens) throughout the animation because shape tweens are eaisier to process by the machine, and if you have too many mtion tweens in one scene it causes slowdown. A problem with syncing to music. Flash player skips frames if it gets behind, and I dont like that.
If more was frame by frame, it will take a little longer, but it gives a more organic feel to movement. As I have found, there are a very little amount of shortcuts to animating fire/water/dust/etc (anything that "flows") and FBF is the only way to acheive realistic looking effects.
More story. Like a possible back story for the characters, personalities, etc. Also I think I need to finalise the complete story before animating. I love to jump into animating the characters and such, but if you change the story halfway through you might need to scrap some/all of the animation. Which would be a big waste of time.
The guys from Pixar are always going on about how "story is king", which I now understand completely.
More acheivable timeline. I was pretty much working non stop to just to get this project done. I was animating for 2-3 weeks for 80 seconds = 4.4 seconds a day. Roughly. Maybe i'll go for high quality 2 seconds a day? Depends on how much longer FBF takes for me.
Thinking about copyright bs. Copright material is so troublesome. Perhaps too troublesome to attmept again any time soon. NZ laws are whack. What's wrong with making something for entertainment. Lame...anyways...
A seperate flash file for character's body parts, and another file for effects.
It was time consuming to look through all the files to find a simple object. If I had a file library it would be a lot quicker. :)
final thoughts
I got it done. That took a while.
Two or three of the transitions dont flow nicely 100%, but I am satisfied with the overall result. Fun to create despite the little problems.
The blue dinosaur intro is probally my favourite scene since I like his character design better and I think the sphere landing with the spring effect with easing looks nice. The sand that blows past the sphere gives it a 3D impression, playing around with 3D space with flat looking objects and characters is interesting.
The final result looks like what I was going for, although if i had more time I would have added more objects (clouds, etc) and more textures. I need to practice with textures in flash, because I found you have to move the texture as well as the moving object.
Hopefully the viewer can determine that the two characters have met before. Perhaps a quick flashback would have helped this.
I added the ending which challenges the viewers sense of perspective. The lizard that notices the beams of energy in the middle of the animation (with little perspective), comes back in the end to show the viewer that in reality the fighting fire/electric dinosaurs are actually really tiny comapared to the lizard. This idea came rather late, and I think could be developed for more clarity.
When making it I thought to myself "what would I want to see in a fire vs electric dinosaur battle?" So I noted those ideas down while listening to the song. I chose the song because I liked the energy and attitude of it, and it gave me that gut feeling of excitement, and connected the music with the potential animations. For example the "explosion" of the chorus would go nicely with a "explosion" of movement, and obviously the fast parts require fast action.
The still frames worked nicely as they differ from the rest of the animation because of the overlayed textures which I feel gives it an epic quality like pages from a book about a legend. Because they are only visible for half a second or so, this makes the viewer want to see it again, a technique I have noticed while watching some of my favourite online flash animations.
Two or three of the transitions dont flow nicely 100%, but I am satisfied with the overall result. Fun to create despite the little problems.
The blue dinosaur intro is probally my favourite scene since I like his character design better and I think the sphere landing with the spring effect with easing looks nice. The sand that blows past the sphere gives it a 3D impression, playing around with 3D space with flat looking objects and characters is interesting.
The final result looks like what I was going for, although if i had more time I would have added more objects (clouds, etc) and more textures. I need to practice with textures in flash, because I found you have to move the texture as well as the moving object.
Hopefully the viewer can determine that the two characters have met before. Perhaps a quick flashback would have helped this.
I added the ending which challenges the viewers sense of perspective. The lizard that notices the beams of energy in the middle of the animation (with little perspective), comes back in the end to show the viewer that in reality the fighting fire/electric dinosaurs are actually really tiny comapared to the lizard. This idea came rather late, and I think could be developed for more clarity.
When making it I thought to myself "what would I want to see in a fire vs electric dinosaur battle?" So I noted those ideas down while listening to the song. I chose the song because I liked the energy and attitude of it, and it gave me that gut feeling of excitement, and connected the music with the potential animations. For example the "explosion" of the chorus would go nicely with a "explosion" of movement, and obviously the fast parts require fast action.
The still frames worked nicely as they differ from the rest of the animation because of the overlayed textures which I feel gives it an epic quality like pages from a book about a legend. Because they are only visible for half a second or so, this makes the viewer want to see it again, a technique I have noticed while watching some of my favourite online flash animations.
Tuesday, May 5, 2009
final days
I worked on the more difficult/time consuming scenes left to do this week, and I may be able to actually finish it.
Don't know if I have time to do the extra final scene cause I want to add more effects. And I need the "reactions" scene to be quick to make.
wed:
-finish blue/electric running+crouch+jump+flight scene
wed night:
-still frame shots (x4) (already drawn on paper) + texture?
-plan reaction scene
thurs:
-reaction scene
thurs night:
-extra effects
-extra ending foot print squash
friday am:
final stuff like how it will be displayed + more blog
friday pm:
sleeep.
Don't know if I have time to do the extra final scene cause I want to add more effects. And I need the "reactions" scene to be quick to make.
wed:
-finish blue/electric running+crouch+jump+flight scene
wed night:
-still frame shots (x4) (already drawn on paper) + texture?
-plan reaction scene
thurs:
-reaction scene
thurs night:
-extra effects
-extra ending foot print squash
friday am:
final stuff like how it will be displayed + more blog
friday pm:
sleeep.
Saturday, May 2, 2009
weekend
Did some more. Very annoying when you can't get a simple inbetween going. The half of the "charge beam" shot took way longer than it should have.
Flash program has crashed a few times as well. I don't know why since the file aint that big.
Not sure if I can finish by the due date. I might have to cut some corners and flip some scenes horiztonally to get it done. For example the electric charging beam will be pretty much the same as the fire charging beam. Which sucks. I'm not even sure this will save time as I have done mostly shape tweens and not motions. Shapes take longer to edit.
Also instead of the blue dinosaur emerging from a dark cave, he will probably just fall into the screen from the "sky".
Blue dino's attacks shouldn't take as long as the red ones did, since blue dino kinda teleports because as he has lightning speed.
The fun factor definitely dropped off due to a lot of small tweens not working like I want it to.
Maybe animating some of the eaisier scenes will ease my frustration :P
Flash program has crashed a few times as well. I don't know why since the file aint that big.
Not sure if I can finish by the due date. I might have to cut some corners and flip some scenes horiztonally to get it done. For example the electric charging beam will be pretty much the same as the fire charging beam. Which sucks. I'm not even sure this will save time as I have done mostly shape tweens and not motions. Shapes take longer to edit.
Also instead of the blue dinosaur emerging from a dark cave, he will probably just fall into the screen from the "sky".
Blue dino's attacks shouldn't take as long as the red ones did, since blue dino kinda teleports because as he has lightning speed.
The fun factor definitely dropped off due to a lot of small tweens not working like I want it to.
Maybe animating some of the eaisier scenes will ease my frustration :P
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