The Animation....

I really do love my animation. I would like to extend the last scene with the mouse riding the cat and maybe bring the camera in closer but that's about it. I had a great time working in flash and I can't wait to take Digital Cel 2. Have an awesome spring break!

Finished!

Woo hooo! I finished last class and here is the final product with sound. Yay!

Almost done!

Well all I have left to do is color the hat on the last scene and export it out and find some sounds and compile it all together. Soooooo yeah I plan to done by the end of class today but if not I can finish it aftereward.

Early!

Well I got to class at 7:15 so I figured I go ahead and do my blog entry. I am still coloring the last scene, which has the most animation but I will be finishing it by the end of this weekend. Here's one of my scenes all colored. Enjoy!

Ummmm...tired?

I've been busy working on all of my final projects. Right now I'm in the middle of coloring and so far I'm stilll on schedule. So yay! Also very tired.

I'm caught up!

Woo hooo! I've caught up with my schedule and I am now on track. I'll definately start coloring this weekend and since only half of my scenes need color I think I'm on good shape. Here's the scene I animated last time in class which I think turned out really nice.

I'm finished with Scene 8!

Well this weekend I finally finished scene 8 which has the most animation in it. Yesterday I finished with scene 5 which is just a camera move. But here's scene 8 all cleaned up. I haven't colored it yet but that's later on in the schedule. So here's scene 8. I'm not quite happy with the tail but I'm moving foreward anyway. I think I'm going to enlarge the cat and mouse or zoom in more so that they aren't so tiny.

I prefer using the pen because I've done some of my animation with a regular tablet when the cintiqs are not available and it's just not very easy. The thing that I like is that I can rotate the cintiq and draw that way with the pen because it's more natural for me to draw that way. I like the pen alot.

Still Animating

I started over on scene 8 because I didn't like how the clean up was going so now I'm color coding the different parts of cat to help me see it better when I trace it. So far it's going really goood. The scene is taking the longest because it has the mose animation in it but when I'm done with this one, all the other scenes are close ups and camera moves so they should be easier to animate.

Animating!

Whoo hoo! I started animating yesterday. I've started on scene 8 and I'm behind a week but I think I'll be okay as long as I really push it this weekend.

Background 2

Yeah! I finished the second background last class. So I am very far behind but I'm already at Monty today at 8:30 am to finish up the backgrounds today and start the animation but I also have to work on my concept animatic today too, so I'll see how much I get done.

Background

Yay! I finished a background. I'm a bit behind schedule but this weekend is catch up weekend.

Storyboards

Here are my storyboards. They aer read from left to right. I only colored the first two because my short will be in full color and not black and white so I'm not quite so much worried about the shadows right now. As soon as get a background done, I'll post it so you can see the color palette.

Character Design

The bottom design is of Mimi the stuffed animal mouse who will ride the cat. Mimi will be animated as a cut-out character. The top is the kitty he will ride. The cat will be animated frame by frame.

Update

I'm working up on finishing the character designs and storyboards which will be up by Thursday.

Script

Here's my script for the final project. I'm not using an dialogue but I do plan to use some music to help create mood.

Opening shot: A cat asleep on the floor and a shadow passes in front of it.
Sound: Scuffle of feet on floor

C.U.: Cat lifts head and opens eye. It looks around.

Cat POV: Nothing there.

M.S.: Cat falls back asleep.

Shadow POV: Peeks out from behind box and stares at cat.

Moves behind laundry basket and peeks out. Cat is sill asleep.
Scuffle

Move again behind pillow next to cat. Looks over pillow at cat. Cat is still asleep.
Scuffle

Slips back down and then jumps onto cat.

M.S.: A pink stuffed animal mouse wearing a cowboy hat lands on the back of the cat.

Cat wakes up and freaks out. It starts to buck like a rodeo horse.
Cat howling.

The stuffed animal mouse waves his hat in the air as the cat bucks off screen.

Lip Sync

Here's my lip sync tutorial. I'd like to maybe between the mouth movements but I'm really anxious to start on my final project for this class considering I have two other studios, so I'm going to leave it the way it is. The sound clip is from the Sweeney Todd soundtrack.

Some Questions

This is some research for my Senior Project. Just leave some answers if you want to these questions:

1. What is a nerd? What is it being a nerd?
2. Who is the best Star Trek captain – Archer, Janeway, Sisko, Picard, or Kirk?
3. Which is better – Star Wars or Star Trek?
4. Are you born a nerd or do become one?
5. Do you play D&D? If yes, why?
6. Are there different types of nerds? What types? Which kind are you?

Thanks!

Walk Cycle

Here's the walk cycle. I could not get the guide lines to line up perfectly by just moving the end of the tween so I went through and did most of it as frame by frame. I think it looks good.

Walk Cycle

I'm currently still working on the walk cycle, making sure it looks good and tweaking it here and there. I hope to have it on the blog by Thursday and on Friday I will be working on all the final project stuff such as script and character design.

Rotoscope

Here's the two rotoscopes. After doing this I realize how much faster it is to animate than trace.

I thought this up after to talking about St. Patties day and rotoscoping a drunk walk.

Jump

Here's the finished puppet jump and my angry turtle jumps.

I really enjoyed designing this little turtle and animating him. I found it was easier to use the custom ease in. It really gave me more control.

Bouncing Ball Exercise

Here it is finally. Thank you YouTube!

Favorite Book

I finally figured out what my favorite books are. The Lord of the Rings and The Vampire Chronicles. I don't like all of the Vampire Chronicles by Anne Rice but I like most of them. And Lord of the Rings is the best fantasy fiction of the 20th century.

I haven't finished rotoscoping the clip but I'm close. The only I wish is that the figure was on a different color background because sometimes it is hard to see where he ends and the background begins.

Puppet Jump

Well I got my puppet jump to upload, so yay! But I still can't get my bouncing ball to upload so I'm planning to upload it to YouTube sometime this week and put in a link.

The jump isn't quite finished yet because I want to add some squash and stretch.

Bouncing Ball Problems

I am currently unable to upload the video for the bouncing ball because blogger is having difficulty with it.

Premise

This will be a comedy sketch lasting about 15-30 seconds. It opens up with a nice kitty sleeping on the carpet and shadow passes in front of it. The cat just slightly opens its eyes but fall right back asleep. The camera then switches to the point of view of the shadow figure. Its very low on the ground, maybe another cat but there is no way to tell. The audience never sees any part of the figure while the camera remains the pov. The camera shakes and jiggles as if the figure is running. It darts behind a laundry basket and peeks out at the sleeping cat, which does nothing. It then runs again, hiding behind a box. It peeks again, no movement. It then starts to crawl to a large pile of clothes next to the cat. Once the figure is there, it peeks over the top and notices that the cat has still not moved. It lowers back down and jumps up. The camera then switches to a downward angle looking at the cat. A stuffed mouse is jumping from behind the pile of clothes and lands on the back of the cat. The cat freaks out and starts to buck like a rodeo horse, but the mouse stays on for the ride waving his little cowboy hat in the air.

Favorite Animation

One of my favorite pieces of animation.

The most recent 2d animation I've done. I used some reference video of my cat.

First Day

So far the day has been good and I'm really excited to start using Flash again since the last time I used it was with Flash 5.