this is the end!

The quarter is over!!!

I am glad I took this class because I did learn a lot more about Flash than I did before so that was a lot of help! As a 2D animator I plan to use Flash a lot as my medium for animating...

As for my final project..I'm pretty happy with the way it came out...but I guess maybe there could have been some things I could have changed. The animation with the bird didn't come out PERFECTLY...if you look close enough you can see all the little messed up parts with it..I'm afraid the timing of all the scenes maybe was a little too fast? I wanted it to go fast but maybe it was too fast? I dunno. If I had more time I would have liked to have been more complex with the shape that terrorizes the bird..maybe make it evolve into much more complex abstract shapes that it would torture the bird with...

but overall I'm pretty happy with what came out!

THE ANIMATION!!!!

HERE IT IS!!! its only a little over a minute but I think that is plenty enough time...
but here is the final product...I hope you enjoy it!

My process

I figured I would explain my process on how I made this piece..might be helpful so see.....

I made everything into symbols and used motion tweening to do the animation, yet the only downside to motion tweening is if you have a lot of symbols all moving together at the same time between the start and end of the tween, parts move out of place..so after I added the tween in places I had to go back and add key frames to adjust the piece that moved out of place.

I had originally planned to animate the facial expressions within the ball symbol instead of creating separate layers for each face part on the main timeline..buuuut it didn't really work out that way and it ended up being easier for me to create a separate layer for each face piece on the main timeline...so I had a lot more layers but it worked out okay..

In each scene it was a different shape trying to torment the stupid bird...I thought i would use shape tweens a lot more but I only did for one scene...for everything else at the beginning of each scene the red ball would either appear before transforming into something else, or it would come into the new scene as a new shape....

and speaking of scenes I had 13 separate scenes not including the title and credits...I could keep everything more organized by splitting the whole animation up into scenes..the transition with each scene would happen with the background changing each time....the only thing about having lots of scenes is making sure the end of scene A matches right going into the beginning of scene B but I think I got that down pretty well.

let me see what else...animating everything wasn't that difficult since I kept the design of the characters super simple...in some parts things happening with the birds anatomy may not make sense.. especially in this scene that I'm showing a screenshot of...in some parts it doesn't make sense where the face and arms should be..this scene probably gave me the most difficulties and I had to go back and change it a lot...trying to make it look as convincing as possible that the bird was holding onto the spike as it was being whipped around..but since the bird is a abstract character made of simple shapes I figured it was okay if its parts weren't anatomically correct in all places of the animation...

as far as other problems I had..besides having to go back and tweak all the pieces after doing motion tweens I didn't really have any other problems.....overall I am pretty happy with the way the animation turned out.. its not PERFECT but I think I did pretty well and had a lot of fun making it!

its almost over!!!

I'm pretty much just tweaking little things in After Effects with the sound to make it perfect, but other than that I'm pretty much done! I am pleased with the results...

i'll put up another post to kind of explain the process I went through..might be helpful to see....

updateo

The quarter is almost overrrr!!!!

I'm now doing sound editing which I should be done with by today..I finally got the hang of After Effects and everything is running pretty smoothly.

so yeah that's about it for now!

UPDATE!!!!

I know I'm not updating as much as a should but not much has changed since I last blogged. kinda.

I'm now working on sound...a process which isn't going as easy as I thought it would...apparently, if you had sound to an animation with lots of scenes in it, the sound won't be synced to the animation when you export it as a SWF or Quicktime Movie :[ or something like that...so unless I find a way around that I can't do any sound in Flash..I guess I'll do it all in After Effects or Adobe Premiere.

anyways...I have all my sound ready and made I just have to put it in the actual animation...

and that's about it!!

quick update

I haven't updates in a while..sorry about that I've been pretty busy with this project and other stuff so I forgot to update this...

I have gotten a lot done...I added in the extra scenes and everything...I'm almost done animating all the scenes..and after that I'll start going back and tweaking everything.....



so yeah things are going pretty good!

~~~update~~~

lookit all those keyframes and layers!!!...yeah..I had originally planned to make things more organized on my timeline but it didn't really work out that way and I ended up just going with a method that made things easier for me..but it looks a little messy...but yeah, the status of my project still hasn't changed much...the only thing you could say I'm a little behind in is getting the sound effects..but I'm working on it.. the fact that I have gotten pretty far with the animation this fast is good though....I now plan to add the the extra scenes I was talking about...I will storyboard them out and post it up here soon...I'm working on a big scene right now..that the screen capture is of... it requires a good amount of animation and lots of parts that have to all be coordinated with each other and stuff..and yet the actions happen so fast you don't see a lot of the little details...but that's just the way it is...

so yeah that's it for now I guess!

update update update

well not much has changed...I am animating through the scenes of my project pretty well..I'm already halfway done! unless I don't add in the extra scenes the whole piece will be under a minute long....adding the extra scenes would add a little more...entertainment to the piece...the scene would just be the evil ball attacking the bird in a different way...I might add it in...I might not....

I started to look for sound effects but so far I haven't found anything that fits what I want...I might just make my own sound effects for some of the parts because I don't want to have sound effects that sound really cheap and sound really obvious that I got it from some website...so I still have to work on that...

otherwise everything is going fine!

u...p...daaa..te......

updating again...right now I am working on scene 5 of my animation...which is a longer part... I will try to get scene 6 done and start on scene 7 over the weekend..sine the animation is taking faster to do than I thought I might add in another scene, or just go back and fine tune everything, making the animation in the other scenes more detailed? I'll see hoe it goes. I still am not sure what I am going to do about the audio.. well with the audio I'd have a ambient song playing in the background, or I'd make the music fit the mood of the scenes and have it being a fast paced song...I'll probably find something on Newgrounds because the audio on there is loyalty free..as for the sound effects..there are a million places to get those from but only a few sites have really good ones tha sound real....I'll have to figure all of that out soon......but for now everything is working out okay!

another update

Well! things are going pretty smoothly with my project....I've already animated 2 scenes..but they were short and simple to animate...at this rate if I keep animating so quickly I might be able to add in a couple other scenes that I had planned out into the animation..we shall see.. its just a little extra..it isn't too important to the story and wouldn't change it too much. SO yeah! the only thing I have to concern my self about are the sound effects...my animation will rely on them and I don't want to use crappy ones..so I'll have to figure that out.

other than that everything is fine!

uuuuuuuupdaaaaate

update time!

I was gone this weekend so I didn't work on my project, although I did manage to get some of the main backgrounds done for my project...I need to finish those up and then start setting up my scenes...laying out the main character puppets and parts..get everything organized so when I go in to actually start animating, everything will go a lot smoother....so everything is going okay so far...! I've finished all the tutorials so now I can put all my focus on my project.

Schedule

here is my schedule I plan to go by for my project...it is subject to change...I made it in a calendar like format.. its starts on the 20th of April and ends on the last day of class...Since the animation in my piece is pretty simple and since I can create everything in Flash I might have more time to do it...it really depends..but this is my schedule for now...I'll probably keep making changes to it as time goes on..

Lip Sync

I actually did this a while ago..before I did the walk cycle...I kind of used a different method for this tutorial..I still followed the instructions though..using the swap tool to swap out the lips was very useful....I used different mouths for each word, although toward the end I reused some of the lips..i figured if I had more lips the animation would look more smooth and convincing...in some parts I used 5 or 6 lips for one word so it looks like the lips move really fast... I probably didn't need to use as many lips as I did but I think it makes the animation sync better to the audio...as for the audio the clip I chose is a clip from The Dave Chappele Show, so I take no credit for it. anyways, here is the animation!

a bni

Walk Cycle

So here is the walk cycle that I did..it is still not perfect but I tried to do my best...It was probably the most challenging tutorial I have done so far..making all the parts so that it looked like the figure was really walking was a challenge..I had to make a lot of tweaks before it looked right..the method behind it was pretty simple and easy to understand though. Making a walk cycle in Flash is a lot easier to do than done in other mediums though. I still had fun doing it and I think it came out alright.

so here it is!

storyboard

here is the storyboard for my project..It should be pretty easy to understand..I'll post the script again just in case....

Scene 1: The bird hops onto the screen from the left. A small red ball is hovering in the air on the right side of the screen. The chicken notices the ball and pokes it.
Scene 2: The ball suddenly floats back, and pelts the bird in the face fast and hard, the chicken is knocked back and hits the ground dizzy.
Scene 3: As the bird lies there dizzy, the ball transforms into a roof-like shape above the bird so when the bird recovers and sits up it hits its head on the roof part and falls back, dizzy again.
Scene 4: The ball hovers in the air above the bird as the bird recovers again and gets up. The bird looks angrily at the ball; the ball then morphs into 7 smaller blue balls; the chicken stares mortified.
Scene 5: the blue balls pelt the bird like hail as the bird miserably tries to dodge them, after the 5th ball the bird falls on its stomach and is pelted by the last two balls. The balls fade away each time they hit the bird.
Scene 6: as the bird recovers the red ball reappears. When the bird gets up it curses at the ball by shaking its fist at it. The ball then turns into three green spikes. The chicken freezes with its fist still in the air
Scene 7: the spikes then try to impale the bird, but the bird dodges them and is pinned in by two of the spikes. The two spikes that pin the bird in fade away and the third spike remains. The bird grabs the spike in an effort to attack the ball thing.
Scene 8: The spike suddenly flies in the air and proceeds to smash the bird against the walls of the environment. The bird does not let go for some reason and when the spike stops moving the bird slides off of the spike and hits the ground. The green spike fades away
Scene 9:the bird does not get up, the ball reappears in its original form and hovers around the bird; it then floats right in front of the bird’s head. The bird suddenly gets up and tackles the ball
Scene 10: The bird holds the ball between its feet and pecks the ball until it breaks; the broken pieces then fade away.
Scene 11: The bird is victorious! It cheers, all happy, raising its wings in the air. Suddenly a much larger, dark blue ball appears behind the bird in the air, the bird stares in horror with its wings still in the air.
The screen fades to black...

here is the storyboard






the reason there are no camera change directions is because the whole animation stays as a straight on mid close up... the world these characters are in is supposed to be very flat.

I have another scenes I created..but I may not have time to add it into the story so I left it out of the storyboard...it was just another scene involving the evil ball doing something else to the bird..but I think I have enough going on already...but If I have enough time I might add it in....

so the storyboard should be pretty straightforward!

character sheet

here is the character sheet for the main character of the story... I wanted to keep its design as simple as I could so i reduced its form to a ball with a face on it..so its head and body is in one piece..easier to animate..it'll be like animating a ball and having squash and stretch going on...the birds's head feather will move and also give emotions...and wings are just triangles that will rarely change shape/size except for a few scenes....the feet are just circles. Since my character is made up of such simple parts I will be able to create every part of it in Flash. This goes the same for the other character in the story, who is just shapes.


so there is my little character!

update update

Well I've finished all the tutorials unless I totally did the lip sync tutorial wrong.....

I've finished the character sheet and storyboard for my project which I will post up here shortly...I should be good to go and get started working on my project as soon as the prof goes over it with me...

so everything is going pretty smoothly! I am excited to start working on my project!

update!

well I have been doing the tutorials by myself and i've done all of them besides the walk cycle..which I will try and complete today...I actually went ahead and did the lip sync.. I hope i did it right though because it took me over three hours to do it and I'd rather not have to do it again! >_<.......as for my project...I finished up a character model sheet and next I will start working on the final storyboard for it..and after that....well I will start to piece things together in Flash...so everything is going pretty good!

Rotoscoping assignment

Here are my two rotoscoping assignments that I started on a while ago...Since I didn't know that we had to add our own features to the animation mine are pretty similar to the actual footage.


It was pretty easy to do frame by frame but at the same time it took more time to do it...but I didn't have any problems with it..rotoscoping is pretty fun!

for the second animation I just took my hand and did a little movement with it, nothing too complex....




and that's it really!

Critique from My Peers

In my little group we critiqued each others projects. Most of the people in my group still didn't have a complete idea of what they were gonna do...one person was going to try and animate to a poem, and we all agreed that that would be cool, another person had a pretty good idea of their story, and we all advised her that she should try to keep the animation as simple as possible because she had a lot going on in her piece. As for mine, I described to them how mine was going to be more abstract with simple animation and everyone agreed that it was a good idea to keep it nice and simple. We couldn't really think of that much else to say about each others pieces, but it was fine.

Puppet animations

here are my puppet animations....
just some simple animation, nothing too complex. Making the puppet jump was pretty easy..I tried to put some anticipation and secondary movements in both of them...As for the second puppet I just made the bird move all its body parts.

this is the clown jumping one.


this is the second one I did with my own puppet...


so that's about It I guess!

Script for project

Here is the script for my projects, I might make changes to it as I continue with the pre-production of it.
-----------
Script
Scene 1: The bird hops onto the screen from the left. A small red ball is hovering in the air on the right side of the screen. The chicken notices the ball and pokes it.
Scene 2: The ball suddenly floats back, and pelts the bird in the face fast and hard, the chicken is knocked back and hits the ground dizzy.
Scene 3: As the bird lies there dizzy, the ball transforms into a roof-like shape above the bird so when the bird recovers and sits up it hits its head on the roof part and falls back, dizzy again.
Scene 4: The ball hovers in the air above the bird as the bird recovers again and gets up. The bird looks angrily at the ball; the ball then morphs into 7 smaller blue balls; the chicken stares mortified.
Scene 5: the blue balls pelt the bird like hail as the bird miserably tries to dodge them, after the 5th ball the bird falls on its stomach and is pelted by the last two balls. The balls fade away each time they hit the bird.
Scene 6: as the bird recovers the red ball reappears. When the bird gets up it curses at the ball by shaking its fist at it. The ball then turns into three green spikes. The chicken freezes with its fist still in the air
Scene 7: the spikes then try to impale the bird, but the bird dodges them and is pinned in by two of the spikes. The two spikes that pin the bird in fade away and the third spike remains. The bird grabs the spike in an effort to attack the ball thing.
Scene 8: The spike suddenly flies in the air and proceeds to smash the bird against the walls of the environment. The bird does not let go for some reason and when the spike stops moving the bird slides off of the spike and hits the ground. The green spike fades away
Scene 9: (maybe)The ball does not return, and instead as the bird recovers, a huge orange (or diff color) square diamond starts to roll onto the screen from the right. As the bird flees to the left side of the screen, another diamond comes in from the left and smothers the bird.
Scene 10: (maybe) The ball then turns into a crane-like mouth, revealing the battered bird inside, the crane then acts like one and picks the bird up by its head feather and tosses it across the screen the bird falls on its stomach/face and doesn’t move.
Scene 11: (or after scene 8) the bird does not get up, the ball reappears in its original form and hovers around the bird; it then floats right in front of the bird’s head. The bird suddenly gets up and tackles the ball
Scene 12: The bird holds the ball between its feet and pecks the ball until it breaks; the broken pieces then fade away.
Scene 13: The bird is victorious! It cheers, all happy, raising its wings in the air. Suddenly a much larger, dark blue ball appears behind the bird in the air, the bird stares in horror with its wings still in the air.
The screen fades to black

bouncing ball

Here is the first bouncing ball..the Network was acting stupid and wouldn't let me save my original Flash file after I made some changes to it and it ended up being erased so I had to do it over again arrgh...but it was easy to do it again

after I did the motion path I went back and added in some ease in and ease outs.. it made some difference...I also made the ball hang in the air a little longer each time it hit the top of the arc..and I also added some squash and stretch....I didn't really have any problems with it.

For the second ball animation...it took a while to figure out the custom ease in/ease out window...I think its easier and faster to do it the other way..but maybe I'll get more used to it later. I didn't add any squash and stretch because adding another key frame changed the graph in the ease in/ease out window and I think we were only supposed to have one key frame.


So I was able to get the same results using both methods, but I prefer the first method for creating the ball bounce because I feel like I have more control over the whole thing....

update

Been working on the tutorials since I already know Flash relatively well. I will probably wait to turn them in when they are officially due so i fan fix them up if I need to when we learn how to do them in class. I'll probably start working on my project soon..start laying some stuff down in Flash..work on stuff that is simple..like the character designs for my main character..although I suppose i should start working on the pre production first like the script and story board and all that stuff..yeah..should do that first....

I wish I had Flash CS3 at home so I would work on it in my room..I have a old version of Flash but i don't think it would work to work back in forth in two completely different versions of Flash.. *sigh* I need to find myself a free copy of Flash CS3 since i'm sure its like over $500 or something ridiculous like that...pff...Adobe and their overpriced software...

Premise for personal project in Digital Cel

Been trying to think of some ideas for my main project....I want to keep it simple, but since we practically have the whole quarter to work on it I don't want to make it too simple to the point where it is really boring. I'd figure I'd have some character animation...but not a whole lot...with just one character...after looking at mojizu I see how a character design that is very simple can still be appealing. i was thinking of using this cartoon chicken character that I always use. or a character with very little features so it be easy to animate. Here are some ideas for the chicken character

very simple. The body could be one piece and most of the animation with it would be squashing and stretching, or jiggling. I'd probabaly create more than one body shape for different actions of course, but I would try and keep the body one peice so it be easier to manipulate.

Anyways,

the character would come across a ball, but when it would touch it the ball would come alive and start morphing into different shapes and lines, attacking the chicken(or whatever) Some inspiration I got from this idea was Chuck Jones A Romance in Lower Mathematics.....a animation that only has geometric shapes and lines, but it is very entertaining and tells a great story.



the ball would keep morphing into different shapes and lines and use itself as a weapon to terrorize the character, and the character would try to fight back but fail at every attempt...so it would be a comedy piece, a silly little character being attacked by some non-objective character..so it be more of an abstract piece. the non objective character and the objective character do kinda clash.. but I think by making the character with geometric shapes and stray away from more realistic features the two should match together more. I was thinking of not using the chicken character and making something more geometric like some little robot character or something non-animal like but I think having a cute stupid little critter getting attacked by something not cute is more appealing.

The animation would be a minute or less...I still have to figure out how many scenes I want to have..basically each scene would be the ball thing morphing into something else to attack the chicken with...I'd maybe have it change into 5 different attacking forms with maybe some small little things in between...for example in one scene the ball might change into sharp pints that would try to stab the chicken and then it would morph into lots of dots that would pelt the chicken, and then turn into robs and slap the chicken around...the whole animation would follow in that pattern..the chicken being attacked while putting up a weak defense, and that is where the comedy would be, the chicken unable to defend itself. The end would be the chicken finally destroying the ball by squashing it or shattering it in one big motion, and when the chicken is relieved to see the ball gone a much larger ball appears behind it and the screen goes back as you see horror come across the chickens face.

Now this can be a very simple animation or a very complex one...even though most of the animation would be with shapes and lines..it could still be difficult to animate depending on how much movement and morphing I want going on..I would hardly use frame by frame..and use motion tweens and the shape morphing tween..and I'd probably have to use path layers for some of the movements. I would have to be very organized which is why I'd probably create a new scene for every attack/morph the ball does, including the chickens reactions to each attack. To avoid choppiness between each attack/morph from the ball I'd have to create little transitions between each part so the animation would look smoother instead of having each attack/morph just pop ontu the screen each time..for instance in some transitions the ball would return to its original form, and then morph into something else.

As far as the backgrounds...since this would be in a geometric world so it be in some kinda void....so the background would be simplistic with flat colors. For audio I'd either have some song playing softly in the background or I would just use sound effects for the chicken and the attacking shapes/lines...

I will continue to update this..but this is what I have for now.

My favorite animations..inspirations...

picking a favorite animation is IMPOSSOBLE for me, but I will pick out a few that I particularly like or ones that are a big inspiration to me....

first one.....Yuri Norstein's Tale of Tales.. I fist saw this as a kid in an animation camp I took back in the day.. I was totally blown away by it because it was so incredibly beautiful and just amazing. This was done back in the 70's in Soviet Russia with no computers...its all stop motion animation with paper.....you can do this kind of stuff in Flash with cut out animation...but doing this by hand? it just blows me away.


he also did Hedgehog in the Fog which is another beautiful piece.


I have such a great admiration for traditional animation where you can really see the craftsmanship and the work put into it..the fact that people like Norstein can create such amazing pieces without the aide of computer software just blows my mind away...even though now you have to rely on computer software to create animation stuff like this is a huge inspiration to me.


who doesn't love Miyazaki's stuff? WHO!?!?!?!!? this is just a trailer for his film Spirited Away but I love all of his stuff...all of it. I even have a DVD collection that includes ALL of his films.
but yeah his stuff if just incredible...the designs of the characters and the background and the fantasy creates..everything is just so mindblowingly beautiful.. I will actually break down in tears at some of the scenes in his films because the beautifulness of this is just too much more me...his storytelling is just amazing and his work doesn't have that sappy corny feel to it like lots of American feature films have. I just love his stuff to death... I hope he never retires and keeps making films because I love his stuff to death.

from Gake no Ponyo....his newest film... SEE IT NOW. do DL it somewhere because it will be a while before its released to the states


Prolly my favorite Disney film...plus its the first Disney movie I remember seeing as a kid..and I've watched it 284836589326 times since.
something about animation animated to classical music really moved me...some might find it boring...but I love it. The Animation is beautiful and the images and stories they used to go with the music is just perfect....when I watch sequences from this film it makes me wanna try harder at being a successful animator so I can create my own amazing stuff. The clip I posted btw has always been my fave part of the movie even as a kid..just love it.


Love this guys stuff...great animation HILARIOUS. He's just some independent animator..nobody special..but his stuff is great...hilarious stuff about a cat that everybody who owns cats can relate to.

lastly... I figured I'd post something made by nobody particularity famous...done in Flash.

I'm pretty sure this guy has a ton of experience in his field cos uh...this is just incredible..i'm sure he used a combination of frame by frame and cut out-motion tweening but uh.. yeah an amazing peice.. a big inspiration to anyone who wants to be a Flash animator.


this guy's stuff is really silly and retarded..and the style of it looks simple and sloppy but he actually can animate really well..the animation isn't all choppy...and I think its really awesome when people can create an animation that uses a simple style but the animation..the movement of everything is so smooth and well done....I admire that.


I swear most Japanese people are BORN with amazing artistry skills. This is from an awesome series that was started many years back yet due to the popularity of the first one, this animator made 4 more! Its just a great story... great animation...done in Flash. great stuff.


I could post hundreds of more videos but I just leave it here....I get so much inspiration from animation....mostly 2D stuff..even though the market is all about 3D stuff I still cling to all the amazing 2D animation that is out there... old stuff and new stuff....

Digital Cel-Introduction

HAI :B



my name is Alex, I'm a Junior at the Savannah College of art and Design majoring in 2D animation and minoring in Sequential Art.

umm...I like to draw and play video games and spend time on the internet being a lurker on several different websites. I love animation..love to watch it....create it...

Other interests...music...um..I listen to all kinds of music like alternative, indie rock, rock, classical, some hard rock, techno....all kinds. I don't read much...except for comics which includes Mignola's Hellboy and BPRD and BL manga....I read lots and LOTS of BL manga..kind of an addiction....movies....? any animated movies of course...I also like comedy movies..serious moies and war movies. yeah.

ANYWAYS, when I'm not slaving away at the projects for my classes...I either play video games or draw my own original stuff...the kind of stuff I have been drawing since I was a wee-child...ya know..characters and stories and wot-not...I have a DeviantART account where I used to post my stuff...but DA is LAME and I never use my account hardly anymore so I'll prolly use this blog to post any new work of mine...maybe...if I feel like it.

not much else I can think to say.....I'm into all sorts of random stuff on the internets...where I spend a large part of my freetime. sad....more about animation? um. I havne't done much outside of class...but stuff I have created where I could use my own orginal ideas usually revolves around this chicken character I have been using for years...i get lots of inspiration from old cartoons back in the day....Looney Toons and old Nickelodean stuff like Ren and Stimpy and Rocko's Modern life.. teh good ol days of animation...and movie stuff.. well of course old Disney movies...and uh Miyazaki....who is a GOD. I also get lots of inspiration from independent animators like Yuri Norstein who is incredible...go check him out....as far as where I see my self as an animator in the future? Well if the market brings 2D animation back into the movies then maybe I'll get in on that..but I'm not particularily interested in going into some huge company like Disney or Pixar....get into a small company instead.. or get a job in production....or if I can support myself become a independant animator and just make animation for fun.....

SO YEAH. That's about all I can think to say right now... mmmmyep....

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