The Epic Acorn

... is done! I had less than half of it complete yesterday afternoon (about 13 seconds) so I basically just camped out all night with a small portion of the class and got it done. I'm actually pretty happy with it considering how much of it was animated under a tight schedule. The clean up is not as smooth as it could have been, but it still has a finished feel to it, which is all I wanted to accomplish for this class.

Flash was mean and wouldn't let me export a .mov at 24fps ... for some reason. It was only exporting at 12fps. I'm sure it has to do with the fact that I started the project at 12fps, and later changed it, but I'm not sure. Exporting as an .avi worked well and I was able to bring it into Premier then, but of course the quality suffered a bit, and it's a bit pixellated. .Avi's just stink like that, but I'd rather have the pixellation than the awful strobing.

If I had the opportunity to do it all again, I would definitely just try to get through the tutorials quicker so that I had more than 4 and a half weeks to work on the short film. Normally it wouldn't take that long, but I believe I got caught up with the new program, as I was completely Flash illiterate before taking this class. I'm glad I got through it though, because I feel once I get a better grasp on it, Flash is going to be one of my favorite animation tools.

Here's "The Epic Acorn". Enjoy!

Edit: It's playing horribly on here... -_-

Update!

So ... it's coming along a little slower than I had hoped. I may end up cutting it down ... actually I plan on cutting it down. I've got it all roughed but the very end, and I'm working on clean up and color as I go so that I don't get burned out animating.

Here's a snippet of a finished segment. (I don't know what those little red dots are <.< Anyone know how to get rid of them?)



Oh, and I did decide on a different ending from what's in the story boards. Rather than doing the crocodile (another character ... in water ... blah) I'm just going to make the epic acorn reeeaaally big, so when it falls Trigger can just make one of these faces O.O ... and be squished under it.

Wheee, progress!

Sooooo ... it's coming along. I'll be living at Monty this weekend, but as of this week a lot of other projects are pretty much out of the way. Whew!

So far, I have 4 more shots to rough out, and I've inked about have of the rough parts. After roughs and ink comes color which will be pretty simple. Trigger's only got two colors, after all.

I've tried uploading a few times, and it's not working, so I'm just gonna keep animating .... dum dee dum.

Storyboards!

Still have a few left at the end, but . . . I'm going to go ahead and start animating these. The end may change based on how quickly I end up getting most of this done.

Trigger

Here's Trigger: the cute-as-can-be token woodland creature. I wanted to play upon the idea of horrible things happening to cute characters, similar to the somewhat famous Bambi Meets Godzilla piece by Marv Newland. In terms of design, I kept him simple. Earlier designs had more fur detail, more sculpted jowls, and things like that, but I figured for the time we have to work on this film, it would be best if I simplified him. The coloring here goes pretty much right to the outlines, but I may play with a more airbrushed look and see how that goes with the backgrounds. Trigger will move very organically with -lots- of squash and stretch. Note his poses.

Script

SPEAKER	SOUND EFFECT	ACTION
(none)	Forest ambiance. Fade in music.	Wide shot - Establishing shot – water rippling out from the crocodile. A small bird flies by.
		Cut to: Mid shot - TRIGGER. Trigger emerges from under a large root and sniffs the ground.
	Trigger squeaks with glee.	Cut to: C/U - Trigger sniffs the air and looks around. He spies a nut nearby.
		Cut to: Mid shot – Trigger skitters off toward the nut.
	Trigger sniffs. Trigger squeaks again.	Cut to: C/U - Trigger picks up the nut and smiles. He takes a long whiff of it and pops it in his mouth. Trigger sees another nut under a bush
		Cut to: Mid shot - He bounds toward the nut and pops that one in his mouth as well.
		Trigger sees yet another nut and runs off to it, doing the same thing.
		Cut to: Brief montage – Trigger is collecting more and more nuts, and his cheeks grow bigger and bigger.
		Cut to: C/U – Trigger looks up and spies a huge nut in a tree across the stream.
		Cut to: C/U and zoom to huge nut.
	Trigger gasps.	Cut to: C/U – Trigger gasps with excitement and drops all the nuts from his cheeks.
		Cut to: Mid shot – Trigger begins bounding across the log spanning the stream.
		Cut to: Profile – Trigger reaches the opposite end of the log and is thrown into the air as it snaps open.
	Trigger squeaks.	Cut to: Mid-shot – Trigger is airborne. He looks down and squeaks with dismay as he begins to fall.
	Loud snap.	Cut to: Mid shot of crocodile – The crocodile’s mouth snaps closed. It smiles and settles back into the water.
		Cut to: Wide shot of the stream with a slow truck out. A small bird flies by again.
		CREDITS

Tutorial 5: Lip Sync

... is coming soon! I had issues with importing my sounds, and then just ran out of time. Bummer.