*yawn* I stayed up all night working on stuff for effects class. Pardon the typing or grammar if it seems a bit off. Or if I just seem a bit off my rocker.

Schedule-y schedule-y, here we go...

BG – background
SYM – Symbols (goat, egret, ducks, fish)
ANI – Animation (I decided on symbol animation)

Week 6

SC_08 BG – 6 hours
SC_08 SYM – 5 hours
SC_08 ANI – 3 hours
:14 hours

SC_06 BG – 10 hours
SC_06 SYM – 10 hours
SC_06 ANI – 5 hours
: 25 hours

Hours total (week): 39


Week 7

SC_10 BG – 0 hours
SC_10 SYM – 0 hours
SC_10 ANI – 1/2 hour
: ½ hour

SC_09 BG – 8 hours
SC_09 SYM – 10 hours
SC_09 ANI – 5 hours
: 23 hours

SC_02 BG – 6 hours
SC_02 SYM – 10 hours
SC_02 ANI – 3 hours
: 19 hours

SC_04 BG – 7 hours
SC_04 SYM – 8 hours
SC_04 ANI – 3 hours
: 18 hours

Hours total (week): 60 ½


Week 8

SC_07 BG – 8 hours
SC_07 SYM – 8 hours
SC_07 ANI – 5 hours
: 21 hours

(possible cut)
SC_03 BG – 5 hours
SC_03 SYM – 5 hours
SC_03 ANI – 5 hours
: 15 hours

SC_05 BG – 4 hours
SC_05 SYM – 6 hours
SC_05 ANI – 5 hours
: 15 hours

Hours total (week): 51


Week 9

(possible cut)
SC_01 BG – 5 hours
SC_01 SYM – 3 hours
SC_01 ANI – 5 hours
: 13 hours

(possible cut)
SC_11 BG – 6 hours
SC_11 SYM – 10 hours
SC_11 ANI – 5 hours
: 21 hours

Hours total (week): 34

That's pretty much it. I set the greatest amount of work for next week, so if I need to push it back into the following week, hopefully it won't be too bad. Scenes that I can cut out are at the end of my schedule, in case time doesn't work for me.

*digs around for stuff to show* Here, have a screenshot. I spent around 5 hours stippling this looping pan last night. Woo!

I haven't finished my test shot yet, but this gives me a decent idea of how long it'll take for me to get the entire animation done. I'm gonna say 6-7 hours average for backgrounds (this isn't the easiest background I have, but it certainly isn't the hardest either). Building the egret symbols I did for the walk cycle ... I want to say around 8 hours? So 8 hours for each character per scene... maybe another 5 hours or so for the actual animation part, though that'll vary greatly based on the scene... a total of 11 scenes...

Nya. I'll type up a nice little schedule later. (Possibly after I've gotten some sleep and can handle math better.)

Time to start up another checklist ... (which you can ignore, this is really more to help me stay on top of things)

Final Animation

- Script = in progress
- Storyboards = [roughly] done
- Character Design = in progress
- Schedule = to do
- Test scene (to establish schedule) = to do

I'll post the storyboards another time. I'm going home and getting some dinner now. =P

My last tutorial to be uploaded, the walk cycle.

... It's a bit wonky as the pacing changes throughout the bird's walk, so it ends up slipping when I use the motion tween to move it across the screen. The neck is also slightly off, but I won't nitpick on that right now. (and as usual, I'm sure blogger will eat the quality of the upload.)

Done with tutorials, hurrah!

Lip Sync

I'm done with the lip sync (at least with the syncing part of it; I'll add more animation to it at a later point when I have time).



Hopefully blogger doesn't destroy the video for you, but I know it's a small chance of the quality remaining intact. =P

edit: Yep, horrible quality. *sigh* I uploaded it to my website test page, so you can view it here (scroll down past the previous exercise)-
Lip Sync on Test Page

I used a line from Hitchhikers Guide To the Galaxy: "In the beginning, the universe was created. This has made a lot of people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move."

It was interesting trying to match it up for the sync. Given that the number of symbols is somewhat limited, translating it to help me better understand it ended up with this jumbled mess of a code -
'closed E-N T BE-GN-N closed T U-I-VSE WS (I?) TET closed TI AS MT A LT OF PEPL VE NG(R?)E N BN WIDLE RE GRD AS A BD MOV closed'

... MS Word apparently thought I was trying to type in another language or something, because at one point it took the text and flipped it to some symbol language. XD

So, the only thing I have left in this class to be up to speed for midterms is the walk cycle. Shouldn't be too hard. *contemplates starting it now, or getting some sleep* Sleep seems like a good option, given that I got up at 5:45am to go on the CAS zoo trip. ...which by the way, allowed me to grab some video reference for the egret/water bird that I want to use in my final for this class. Bonus! A day of fun, and beneficial to my classes!


*waves to Mom and Dad* I know you're reading this! And look, this one was only posted at 3am, not at 4am. =P Progress!

Rotoscope uploads

Muybridge rotoscope. Rave style, apparently.



Giraffe rotoscope. =D Video footage courtesy of BBC Motion Gallery.


I need to write up a check list to see what I have so far...

Tutorial 1 - Bouncing Ball - Done
a) bouncingball-01.fla
b) bouncingball-02.fla

Tutorial 2 - Puppet - Done
a)puppet.fla
b)jump.fla

Tutorial 3 - Rotoscoping - Done
a) rotoscoping-01.fla
b) rotoscoping-02.fla

Tutorial 4 - Walkcycle - To do
a) walkcycle-01.fla

Tutorial 5 - Lipsync - To do
a) LipSync.fla

Start web blog - well, I think the status of this should be obvious. (done)
Premise / Idea - done
Script - In progress
Storyboard - In progress
Character Design - In progress
Schedule - to do

Lesse, what have I done since last class...

Well, I finished the first part of tutorial three (the rotoscoping one). I'll have to get that posted later.

My roommate informed me of a plugin for flash that allows you to set up a rig with symbols. I'm interested in it, and am considering downloading the trial version to play with it. I'm waiting a bit on that though, 'cause if I decide to use it for the final, I'll only have a 20 day period to use it. I should at least finish my storyboards and character design first. Anybody else worked with it before?
Bone Plugin Site
... anybody know of something like this out there that's free? No harm in asking, I suppose.


Well, I know our professor asked us to post our favorite animation site, but I don't explore the web enough to really know of what animation sites are out there, let alone have a favorite (I know, bad me. I should check out these things more often). I tend to stay more in the realm of webcomics and virtual pet sites, so if you want to know more about those, I'll gladly share about them. XD

Speaking of which, if I might add a shameless plug for a webcomic:
Starslip Crisis
Kris Straub runs an awesome comic that is both sci-fi and art based. You probably won't understand it off the bat if you just read the current comic; you'll have to read through the archives a bit, but he's a good storyteller. Where else will you find a comic set in the future with a warship that was retired and became a traveling museum in space, only to be brought back into service when some lunatic tries to take over the universe with a piece of artwork?

My apologies if plugs aren't allowed in our class blog; I'm just doing my part to support someone who is trying to live their dream in doing their art for their full-time job, and needs the word spread to have a wider fan base (and income). I think that's a worthy reason, right? ^__^ (After all, I'll be deep in the poor house after graduating, but then, that's the cost of college for you. Here's to all of us hopefully getting the jobs we want!)

Let's see about getting some more of those tutorials out of the way today, shall we? *gets to work*

Puppet Tutorial N' Update

Our little bouncing puppet friend, who I still say is creepy looking:


...and it would seem that uploading killed some of it. It does bounce a bit more than blogger chooses to show here.

I've also been working on storyboards. They're not done yet, but here's a screenshot of them:


... and a bit of character design. I'm not sure if this will be the final look for him or not (Because it's still quite detailed with the feathers). It might be, though.

Bouncing Ball 2

The second bouncing ball. *will slowly get everything posted on blogger*

I have to say... I'm not fond of the graph editor. I figured it out, but blah.

Bouncing Ball 1

Geez, blogger takes forever to upload videos. Assignment 1, part 1: The incredible inedible ... bouncing ball. *thrill*

Alrighty, time to update. ... if I can manage to log in to Youtube to upload my work. >_> It's been a while since I used my account there, and I think I've forgotten the password. ^^; *sends for password reset and waits on her email to receive it*

I'll have to upload my bouncing ball assignments and the puppet jump later, but I do have one thing I can show you now - the second half of tutorial two, where we were supposed to take one of our own drawings and turn it into symbols to animate it:

Symbol Animation

I had fun doing that, and for my first symbol animation, I'm quite happy with it. (No, the play and instruction buttons don't work. I just built the game menu page. When I have the spare time, I'll go back and clean up the background on it, make the menu a bit more appealing, and work on the in-game graphics. Then find me someone who knows actionscript and can help me set up the actual game play.)