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.

Tutorial 4: Walk Cycle

This one was probably the most difficult for me, due to my limited knowledge of Flash and the amount of setting up the tutorial required. I got stuck up on managing all the symbols within symbols, and I never got my guide lines to look or work like the ones in the demo, but the walk across the screen still turned out alright. Maybe I just got lucky? But anyway, once I got the asset management all straight, it was pretty much smooth sailing. One foot in front of the other, and all that. (haha...)

Tutorial 3: Rotoscoping

Yay! This was my favorite so far! I've never rotoscoped anything before, so it was a fun experience, and .... I got to draw everything, which is a big plus. I wasn't really happy with the reference video we got, but whatever. I also didn't feel like drawing a horribly strobing naked dude, so I drew a horribly strobing chicken-legged robot-dude instead, using the naked poses as a guide. the high contrast images of the video made it very easy to see the basic poses, and therefor translate them to another character.




And this one is me. Don't laugh. It was late, and I needed some video. It actually turned out pretty well, I think, with the hair flipping and everything. No, it's not sped up. Yes, I was being that spazzy. Most importantly though, this was a fun assignment that I really enjoyed doing.



Hmmm ... The lines are kinda thin ... sorry 'bout that.

Tutorial 2: The Puppet and Jump

Here's the first jumping exercise with the little springy foot man thing. It was relatively easy. The only tricky part was the fact that the various symbols didn't always move together from one major pose to another. In other words, his head would float off his body which would detach from the foot as he moved to the peak of his jump. Because of this, I had to add extra keys in the passing poses to stick all the parts back together.




Aaaand, the second. He's a blue penguin! I had a little fun with him, and really exaggerated the squash and stretch as he jumps, almost treating him like a bouncing ball from the last assignment. For some reason, I didn't experience the problem I had with the other; all his limbs stayed in tact as he bounced around.

Tutorial 1: The Bouncing Ball

Here's the first of the bouncing ball exercises. I'm not sure what else to say about this one besides ... The ball goes up and then down and then up and down again. Look at it go! The ease slider was an interesting tool to use, but I kind of prefered the custom ease in/ease out window. Utilizing a motion path was very helpful as well, and I'm glad I learned about that.




And now, the second ball! This one is blue. I found this exercise much easier to tweak using the custom ease in/ease out window. I'm guessing it was because of the visual representation of the movement as a motion curve rather than a simple numeric value that the slider uses to describe the tweaks. Also ... it was pretty much like the graph editor in Maya, so I was used to working that way. *bounce bounce*

Short Premise

I -finally- decided on a short story to tell in my animation. It is about a charming little squirrel on a quest for the largest acorn in the forest! It begins with him scouring the underbrush for acorns, popping them into his mouth as he darts through tall grasses, under tree roots and around bushes. All of a sudden he comes upon a shallow stream with fallen log spanning it. He spies a tree on the opposite bank full of giant acorns! His jaw drops and the nuts he was carrying fall from it and scatter across the ground. He must get to that tree! Bounding quickly across the log, he almost reaches the other end when the top of it snaps open, flipping the squirrel into the air. He squeaks in shock as he falls back down, right into the open mouth of an alligator. It wasn't a log at all ...

Oh, here's a background - an establishing shot. I think I need to up the contrast a bit to get the look I want: a look similar to the second watercolor animation below.
Character turnarounds and storyboards coming soon!

This blog has cobwebs already ...

Hey dudes. I haven't updated in forever <.< Portfolio's been a pain and I had a rather personal issue come up in these recent weeks ... but it's resolving, and there will be more stuff posted later this week. I promise!

Favorite Piece of Work ...

Oh, here! I finally got it to work. Granted, it's on YouTube, but whatever...



My senior film would have to be my favorite piece of work so far. I put a lot of work into it last quarter, and it's the most complete piece I've put out. I mean it does need some work - some tweaking here and there that I didn't necessarily see when I was looking at it every day before. I think it looks a bit floaty as well, but that's not too hard to adjust. It's also just a playblast with unfinished credits and editing.

The characters in this film went through a lot of changes in development. I actually had them all modeled and half-rigged when I decided one day that I just didn't like them anymore . . . and redid them. I gave them a new color scheme - black and white and pastels - and edited the colors in the set to match that look. It kinda set me back a bit, but I'm very glad I did it. It sucks working on something that just doesn't inspire you, and that old aesthetic . . . just wasn't doing it for me.

But anyway, there it is. I love my characters and the story, and I'm pretty proud of this one.

Animation in Digital Cel:

In this class, I'd like to try a digital application of the traditional animation process: drawing out each frame and simply skipping the capture station. I've always loved sketching out animations on paper, however the the time-consuming capture process has always frustrated me. It's always been a trade-off for me when choosing a medium: in 2D, I get to draw; in 3D, I get to scrub through my animation as I work and view real-time playbacks. Flash seems to offer the best of both worlds, and that's why I'd like to choose a traditional style in this new medium.

I really like the idea of a strong outline and soft color similar to the look of this video:


Or this one:

My Favorite Animation:

Here, Noodle gets down with her bad self as she dances her quirky dance around her room, catching the attention of her fellow Gorillaz roommates. Animation to music has always fascinated me. I think it's great how all her movements are just slightly and consistently off-beat, because no one really moves perfectly when they're just dancing for fun. I also appreciate the combination of live action and animation in this video. It seems to me that the video and animation have both been tweaked to work together in pacing and style, which I think is pretty neat.

About Me:

My name is Kaitlin Rees Dimka. I go by Katie.
My hometown is Crofton, Maryland.
Crofton was named one of the most desirable towns in the country to live in by ... some survey.
I'm a 4th year animation major.
In addition to digital cel, I'm taking portfolio and ancient art and architecture.
My favorite meal has to me my mom's ham and bean soup.
My favorite song changes just about every week.
My favorite website has to be YouTube.
I enjoy Dr. Tran and Homestar and his buddies. I also like the Gorillaz' music videos.
Root beer is my favorite drink. Pomegranate martinis are my favorite real drink.
The first 'favorite' animation character that comes to mind is Colette from Ratatouille. I probably have more though.
I wish I read more.
My favorite show is Project Runway. Yes, I make it work.
I don't think I can pick a favorite animated movie.
I don't watch much Anime, but I probably should.
My favorite movie is Love Actually.
The person I admire the most would be my fiance, Matt. He's pretty much the most awesome person ever.