output size

I should test the output to see how my animation will look. Mainly to see how much detail I need to put into the small things like line weight or stroke style were applicable.
I most likely will get a tv or monitor to display on.

An easy way to test this is to create a vector image, and display it on the spare widescreen via my PS3. That TV would be the largest display possible, so if the images look good on that, I will be fine.

It will also be interesting to see what happens with transparent images. = black

rough room size: 3x4x2.8

animatic test

A rough test to see how troublesome his tail is to animate.
> link <
Easy in free hand, but I also need to animate it with sharp curvy lines to see how much longer that takes.

The characters in the animation in this post look great drawn free hand, contrasting with the sharp backgrounds.

1) animate every frame (similar to rotoscope)

OR

2) draw keyframes and use tweens

I need to do some more tests to see how long it takes to create a nice movement with each method and then compare them to see which looks better.

Tail animation using method 2: > link <
Head animation using method 2: > link <
I needed to put the head/horns on different layers to make it eaiser, so now that I know the best way to do it, it shouldn't take as long the next time.

maximum mood with subtle animating

Nice animation that achieves a nice mood with subtle animating.
The most notable element I saw while watching this, was the sense of depth.
-Slow camera movements through 3D looking space (ex. room)
-Foreground/main/background moving at different speeds for increased depth.

Ways in flash to show depth with flat characters/landscape:
-Foreground/main/background moving at different speeds.
-Layers lighter the further back in space they are.
-Blur filters (possible to gradient blur?)
-Shadows + light.


Shannon helped me to achieve this in photoshop. If I can't find a way to do this in Flash, I will go back to photoshop and try to improve the quality to vector standard.

mammoth concepts

mammoth layers:
-overlap lines
-tusks
-brown gradient
-fur texture

At the moment mammoths take up 4 layers, but I could cut it down to 3 if I combined the brown gradient + fur texture.
As you can see from the bottom right mammoth, the gradients throw off the overlap lines, so i'll test it with flat colour instead of gradients which should solve this.
I have used 4 different shades of the fur texture, but you cannot see it through the brown gradient. I'll need to test this too.


I took out the gradients and replaced them with varied flat colours.


Fur comparisons.
This shows that the texture colour doesn't matter at 10% opacity as much as I thought.
For ease I will use each box of the the second big row as jpgs and import them to the flash library.
This way I same time and not have to duplicate and modify into an extra layer.

using the theme within materials

using every part, no waste

digital practice vs traditional (ex.copy paste/rotate/skew.etc)
reusing/recycling elements
site setup - using canvas/mammoth

demon development

Not sure on which one to use yet.

site location

While looking for a space for site in painting I was directed upstairs to the student area, small rooms each with a window + wall socket. One of the teachers said that they should be availible for site.
The spaces could seat around my target 6 people and I can easily cover the window if needed.

I guess the file will play through a computer/dvd player.
I most likely need to loop the animation, I wonder if there is a way to do this with actionscript/programming.
edit: You cannot achieve infinite loops in actionscript because it crashes the flash player.
So I will have to loop it in the timeline.

edit: After a group crit discussion, I realised that a short loop will be more likely to be watched all the way through, rather than one with long credits.
For example if a person enters the room half way through, and has to wait ages to see the start, they won't stick around.
But if the animation loops quickly, it is much more likely the audience will see the whole animation.

So the casual audience will stay to watch as long as the section they enter upon is is engaging, which I think any part of the caveman/alien interaction will be.
If I saw two radically different characters fighting/taunting/etc, I would want to know why they are doing so.

taking the narrative to (art) school.

theme:
Don't waste resources (use every part of the buffalo)

revised narrative:
caveman is eating mammoth
alien lands and eats mammoth heart while caveman watches
alien goes away
caveman buries carcass in snow to preserve meat
goes to bed
next day he finds mammoth herd decimated and sees alien eating more hearts
motivation for attacking
attacking doesn't work
uses alien's tail against him
caveman kills alien, uses horns/tail for weapons
uses ship for refrigeration, solving the rotting mammoth herd problem (use every part of the buffalo)

= Newer storyboard link here =

-Possibly substitute caveman stabbing alien to simply dodging the tail
-Need to work on how the environment is layed out
-need to show caveman setting up fridge?

landscape tests

Rock colour palette tests. I do like the blue shadows, I might use that colour technique during the night section/s of the narrative.



I might experiment with textures also. Like a grass texture at half opacity so it's not too distracting.


Overlaying the characters onto the environment colours. Testing that the lack of outlines do not make the characters hard to see.


The texture result:

^Looks much better in my opinion. Much more organic. The texture opacity is @ 10% at the moment, I still might scale that back a little more.


^Trying out a material like border.


^Less distracting version. I think the first one looks better, I need to test them both with character animation and location changes.

I also tried out overlaying a 10% opacity material texture over the whole image (like in the freeze frame section of my previous animation), but it just made the grass textures harder to see.

I think I will project the animation, so the material outline mask should make the jagged white outer border invisible.

landscape

Needs to have snow + rocks/mountains + grass/vegetation.
Something like the following:

caveman development

I'm leaning towards #3, but I need to compare it to a sample background.

I also looked for "Ug : Boy Genius Of The Stone Age by Raymond Briggs" @ bil rob library, catalogue says it's in but I couldn't find it.

Caveman head side view concepts:

I'm leaning towards a mix of #4 and #5 because they will be the easiest for the audience to read.

character designs

Early character designs:

To fix:
- flat colour, less outline
- squint test (should be able to see main features from squinting)
- Change nose + mouth to black for clarity
- add feet for caveman
- caveman's arm hair maybe too distracting, scale down the contrast
- find best cloth colour, more like mammoth?
- demon looks better with moveable pupils instead eyes similar to Stitch
- maybe change the tone of the demons arms for clarity

samurai jack "style"

Breaking down Genndy's style of the show into its original sources:
Samurai jack influenced by:
- Lone Wolf and Cub (character development)
- Seven Samurai/Kurosawa films (film style)
- Frank Miller Graphic Novel Ronin (story)

Most notably the animals/character/enviroment designs were influenced by Charles Harper's images.

narrative ending + storyboards

- less mammoths = more justification for attacking demon
Possibly the caveman's prized breeding mammoths, demon kills the male

- demon doesn't "die", just transported to the paradox dimension

- After the final blow, caveman breaths sigh of relief, and pets his last mammoth.

After 3 critiques..

some ideas themes that came up:
- technology wars ("having a bigger stick than the other guy")
- masculine themes (caveman hunter/provider, violence)
- how to display final animation (project onto canvas maybe? Or maybe overlay canvas texture?)
- demon comes across as cute/lovable (bunny), audiences wont necessarily agree w/death
- need more/longer establishing shot/s (put into second scene)
- how many mammoths? more = less likely cavman would care VS less = more reason to attack demon
- original sound effects?
- research "ug raymond briggs"
- + human nature etc
- also similar to medusa (using own power against her)
- fix ending

narrative

Simplified my older storyline as suggested, putting the premise back into caveman times. The flat style with stylized shapes works well with the bare basic mentality of the earliest hunter/gatherer.

-caveman woken up
-sees demon eating sheep/mammoth
-throws spear, no effect
-charges with bone sword, no effect
-uses diamond spear, no effect + is cut
-diamond spear is sliced in two, caveman is amazed
-demon takes meat + walks away
-demon returns, caveman can do nothing but watch
-caveman thinks of ways to beat him, but is foiled by hide+tail
-keeps thinking
-challenges demon
-wrestles + manages to stab demon with own tail
-demon vanishes

timeline

My old dinosaur animation had about 12 scenes, and I did that in about 2-3 weeks = 4 scenes a week.
For this assignment I want a higher quality + sounds. So if I double the quality, it will take double the time, so 1-2 scenes a week = 10-20 scenes total,

I have ten weeks left for this one, so maybe 1-2 per week.

some interesting animations

http://translate.google.com/translate?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.gobelins.fr%2Fgalerie%2Fanimation%2F&sl=fr&tl=en&hl=en&ie=UTF-8


Monster animation based on Pandora's Box. Great monster design and interesting dynamic betweens characters.


Another based on Fenrir, a norse legend.


Mayan adventure with great shapes, similar to The Incredibles.


Nice use of colour and depth.

Teumessian fox paradox

In Greek mythology, the Teumessian fox (Greek: Αλωπεξ Τευμησιος (Alôpex Teumêsios)) was a gigantic fox that was destined never to be caught. The fox was one of the children of Echidna. It was said that it had been sent by the gods (perhaps Dionysus) to prey upon the children of Thebes as a punishment for some national crime. Creon, the then Regent of Thebes, set Amphitryon the impossible task of destroying this beast. He discovered a perfect solution to the problem by fetching the magical dog Laelaps, who was destined to catch everything it chased. Zeus, faced with an inevitable contradiction in fate turned the pair of beasts into stone. The pair were cast into the stars, and will remain there forever more.

uncatchable fox vs unavoidable dog
similar to..
unstoppable force hits an immovable object

What would happen if this situation arose?
I could translate this to my character by making him have impenetrable skin and a tail that could cut through anything.
The demon character could therefore not be killed by conventional means. The only way would be to cut/stab him with it's own tail, creating a paradox.

demons goal = survival
villagers goal = survival

storyline:
1) demon kills villages for food
2) villages retaliate and discover his impenetrable skin + cut-through-anything tail blade.
3) a villager thinks + discovers the paradox
4) he then stabs the demon with it's own tail, thus creating a paradox which makes the demon cease to exist.

interesting cryptids.

A drop bear (or dropbear) is a non-existent[1] Australian marsupial. Drop bears are commonly said to be unusually large, vicious, carnivorous koalas that inhabit treetops and attack their prey by dropping onto their heads from above.

flash tests

zoom camera test
a quick camera move to see if I need to use after effects. it works well so I don't need to atm.
Refresh page to replay.

cute test
trying to make the demon character more appealing to the audience.

streaking background
used for action shots with fast movement, I made the file as small as possible as well. I may as well attempt to make the final file as small as possible so it takes less to load.

predator stealth effect
used a magnified mask to achieve the predator like effect. Just a test, obviously it will look better when the masked creature is animated, etc. I think it looks great, better than just making the creature completely invisible.

creature artist

Michel Gagné's work is pretty interesting, and his effects are very impressive.


This flash work using silhotette style, similar to that of the Patapon video game. The creatures have very organic movement, my favourite being the "demon head" section. Credits say he didn't animate it though.

This animation shows off some of his great special effects.



His effects are pretty much perfect which will be good reference if I need to do something similar.

I'm still looking for a tutorial on how to animate good looking dust clouds. Same goes with water + fire. Honestly I think I will have to slow down some animation/live action scene, frame by frame too see how each one flows.