Sheep Run Cycle

The good news is that each run cycle was easier than the last. The bad news is that now I'm getting into the meat of my animation and am finding myself with less time to work.

Plans For Winter Break

It's my last winter break EVER.

I'm working as much as I can on my senior film before Christmas comes and I get distracted by shiny new things. I'm also not looking forward to starting back to work in the deli and trying to also find time to animate at home.
I made myself a big long list of every little thing that needs to be done for the Tortoise and the hare project and it's HUGE. I want that list half done by the end of winter break, although that's probably not very reasonable. I keep picking out easy things to do on it, like the backgrounds, and scenes that only require me to animate a face instead of the whole body of a character. I should probably give myself more of a challenge so this project doesn't become hell later.
I will definitely have all of the backgrounds done by the end of break.
I used Facebook today to ask people for a critique on something I didn't feel was that great. I'd post a link to it here, but I'll be removing that video shortly. The internet sure comes in handy at times like this.
Normally during my breaks I'd try to complete a short project on my own, and I'm a little upset that I won't have the chance to do that this time.
I know that my senior show will be in the first half of April, so my intention is to get the animation all done for this by early March so there's tons of time to do post production.
That's not as much time to animate as it seems.
Wish me luck!

Senior Film Animation Sampler

This is posted on YouTube for the sake of showing off something in my seminar, but I'm not going to make posting bits and pieces of random animation a habit like this. Here we have stuff I have finalized for my senior film, including the walk cycles made a while ago.

Winter break is going to be busy. I want to make at last double this amount of stuff without having to worry about other classes.

Dance Of The Cloud People

My final project for my independent study is completed.

It can be seen on Youtube:

and Vimeo:
http://vimeo.com/33301276

I think a few things in this animation suffered from having to prioritize other projects over this one.
All of my work for my senior project and my internship piles up.

Hare Run Cycle

I was dreading doing this but it actually turned out to be the easiest of the three run cycles I did so far.
This required more frames than the other too because the Hare takes bigger steps.

Lately I have also completed a few little scenes involving the tortoise without his shell on, and the sheep pushing the button for his traps.

I'm working on backgrounds too.

When I sit down for 3 hours straight, I need to remember to get up and move. Everything hurts.

Animatic With Sound Effects

My animatic now has sound effects. Still missing music cues, though.
Not sure when I'm going to do those.

Where To Go Next...

In comparison to the past few weeks where I had a lot of things to show off, there's nothing new I can really present at the moment. I've been doing a lot of planning and organizing my thoughts. I made a list of every single background that I need to draw. I made a list of every single sound effect I need and I made a list of every place I need to make a music cue for. The past few days have been spent finding and making sound effects. It's taking longer than I thought. Once I have all the sound effects I can quickly toss them into the animatic and present that. I also will have a few new bits of animation done in the last few weeks of the semester, such as the tortoise without his shell on, and run cycles for the hare and sheep.
I can't wait for the winter break so I can sit down for hours working on this animation without having to worry about work for other classes, assuming my attention span lasts that long. Oh well.

Fun In After Effects

I was playing around in After Effects to see some of the effects I hadn't tried out yet.

Completed Tortoise and the Hare Animatic

Alright, the moment I've been waiting for. I can at last start the final animation. And if you look at certain parts in this video, you can see I already have.

Animatic Progress 3

After Effects: Color Blending

A new sample of my After Effects work is on Youtube:

Animatic Progress 2

Dog Walk Cycle

Animatic Progress 1

I have been busy lately and my animatic isn't as far along as I would like it to be at this point.
It's OK, though. At least I am giving myself until Thanksgiving break to complete it.
I will be posting my progress on YouTube:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rcOs7roaej8

and Vimeo:

http://vimeo.com/31620902

Racing Flag

This took me waaaaaaayyyyy longer than I had hoped. And it's not even 1 second long.
I'm just uploading it for the sake of recording that I spent a lot of time working today.

Miscellaneous Thoughts

My brain is scattered all over the place, so this post is probably not going to be understood by anyone except for me, but I don't care.

I started working on the animatic for my Senior Project, while also working on a lot of new internship stuff a final for my independent study.

I had a little freak out when I spent a few hours on the animatic and didn't get very far, wondering how my time spent on the animation itself would compare. And unlike my ugly storyboard, the animatic should probably look good...which it doesn't yet. Dammit Flash.
I think I'm going to start jumping around and doing things on all these projects out of order. For instance, I can start at least on the backgrounds for my Senior project now, and also maybe do some run cycles for other characters since they can be used several places in the animation.

Fun fact, blogger has "animatic" underlined in red as if the spelling is wrong.

Recently, I was told to make my work more shocking, so for my final project in my After Effects independent study I'm animating a plane crash. It starts off with happy dancing cloud people and then ends in carnage as the pilots were too distracted to see that they were heading towards another plane. *Insert comparison to recent events in my life here.*
I can probably post a storyboard for this in a few days.

In other Zach news-I'm most likely taking a winter class at Montserrat for stop motion animation.
Looking forward to the class part, but not the living in Beverly during the winter part.
I know during winter break I'm going to take advantage of not having any other classes and do tons of work on my senior project. It still has no name, The Tortoise and the Hare has just been a placeholder this whole time. I should fix that.

If you just read this, then congratulations. You deserve a cookie.

After Effects: Lighting and Reveal

A new sample of exercises in Adobe After Effects.

The Entire Tortoise And The Hare Storyboard