Some Concept for "The Story"

Tried the silhouette technique for rough concepts to work with, thanks to Rick for the squid and spider idea. The next two are just quick photoshop mock ups with pictures from the internet but I did draw the spider. Since I suck at rendering clouds I just filtered everything to make it look more painterly ha ha. The cloud spider isn't going to be ridden on, it's more like part of the sky ecosystem that gets eaten by the monster (whatever the class chooses)

The next three are ideas I liked from my sketch book. Crystal didn't like the idea of beached whales at the end of the story so I steered away from typical fauna. Of course the first two are still animals but I tried to add more earth to them. The bonsai tree is my newest idea after spending a few hours in Sinclar library. It's the least animal like and more flora/monster so thats a plus.

The squid propels itself with by using it's tentacles as a propeller, and it stays afloat with gas sacks (ala SoTC). The flying fish has some gas sacks inside it's mountain cave and it flaps around to stay afloat, swimming in clouds to breath. The Giant Bonsai tree glides around, like an unbrella in the wind. It uses it's roots to suck nutriants/water from clouds and also has propeller roots to keep it afloat. It also has multiple eyes to keep track of it's surroundings and to make it more monster like.

Theres lots more concept art I wanna push out before Thursday, those would be more theatrical shots/compositions for the movie and to give an idea of what the environment would be.

Summer Adventure

Second story I came up with during summer. I was inspired after Up came out, and I've always felt that old people were inheritably cool because they have such awesome stories if you have the time to listen to them. Back in high school one of my classmates had a penguin living in her bathroom (no names) and I always thought that penguins in places where they don't belong was as a funny thought so naturally I had to combine the two.

There were two more stories I had in mind, one about a guy with an umbrella and a girl who followed him and how he dealt with more and more people under it until a whole crowd was gathered underneath. The other was about a boy running late and was chasing after the school bus so that he could get to school on time to present a project he spent all night working on. In the end he makes it to school at the same time after dealing with lots of different obstacles.

Umbrella story never got past concept, bus chase was stuck in storyboarding hell. Was fun coming up with these, ha ha.

Pincer Attack

One of the stories I was working on during summer. Quality of drawings changes because I'd add/remove shots and since I spent ~1 month per story, things change and I move things around. Characters look generic so that others could make totally sweet character designs for these two. Whichever story my class decides on doing, the storyboards aren't concrete so they can change depending on what the class wants.

All fuzzy and warm

First scene

I worked on the first scene a little bit just to mix things up, wish I coulda did more but I spent nearly all my weekend typing up a doodoo paper T_T

I do not enjoy green eggs and scan

Shaking/Water test
Ralph and Kristen

It seems that the time spent in front of my scanner is vastly more potent than any sort of prescription Hypnotic. With each page in the scanner, I wake up half as many hours later with drool dangerously oozing toward my animation stack. The water test is just that, still playing with the frame order and I need to erase the bottle line within the hand. It makes it look like his hand his moving up and down the bottle. Kristen is just in the layout phase here, she'll be more animatededed come Thursday.

I quit scanning and went back to finishing my 2nd pass on Ralph and continued finishing up on my 1st pass on Kristen. I opted to scan just the layout frames of Kristen so that I'm sure I can get the timing right and plan it so that I don't have animation conflicting for attention. I may abandon the single shot for the entire movie, theres just too many layers I have to animate and composite back in per scene. I've got 7 planned and in progress just for this scene alone. D:

Linda wasn't kidding when she said to animate your hardest scene so that you could get a feel of what you can/can't do in the amount of time you've got.

The Thing About Scanning

By far the worst part about animating is scanning. I use my camera and mac's built in camera for animation tests, but when all's said and done.

Scanning

is

teh lose.

Whats a good going rate for hiring siblings? $4 an hour? I hate it so much, look at me! I'm wasting even more time just trying to avoid the unavoidable D:

More Animation+Old Comic

So after wasting enough time digging around my computer and setting up my ultra ergonomic low budget -get more stuff done- workstation, I went in and got some of my animation onto my computer. I have Kristen all layout-ed but after spending the better portion of the day just getting Ralph I didn't feel like it anymore (-w-)

Its close to 20 seconds, and theres more inbetweens to add in, mainly at the end. Then theres hair, the clothes, fingers, eyes, etc etc. and not to forget a 3D backdrop. Its going to be really simple, I'll try finish a mock up tomorrow before class. Also I solved the problem with not having enough room for Ralph's bottle shaking. I'll just animated it on another set and composite it later. Linda, you'll need to give me some directions as to making a shaking animation after class.

Le Animation

And lastly, while on my old desktop I found this nostalgic comic I did back when we were in ACM215/216. My friend had to do a daily schedule for her Design class and I figured I'd do one just for kicks, and post it up here just for lulz.

Now that I think about it, that was a pretty shitty day since I smelt like cat piss the WHOLE DAY. I've also realized that it's been long overdue for me to murder that cat.

Pre-emptive strike!

Well I was bound to actually post something that has to do with homework one of these days. This is what I have animated so far from my layout frames 1-6, its not the final animation just an animation test of what I have. I have 20 layout frames that need inbetweens and the basic layout of Kristen to do and modeling the chair and background all day tomorrow...or at least as much as I can before I find another devastating distraction.


DOODOO

Video for Linda, Picture for everyone else

lol Jose

Video I made so that I have something to reference while doing my animation. Acting ability? 0% In addition, I have this amazing picture of me and my students. Thats Ralph in the back.

Layout...ish?

Layout
Just a short 15 second layout, the whole thing should be 30secs though with inbetweens and whatnots. I have the layout animation of my leading lady but couldn't scan it in this morning because shes naked and faceless, and really really hairy from all the sketching.

Maquette and some Pimp Ass 音楽

So heres what I have, spent FOREVER on his hair and legs. Not at all satisfied with the face but I can't change it anymore least ruining his whole head D: I'm glad its almost done, still gotta smooth a lot out but for the most part I'm happy with it. Do we bring these in? I dunno lol. I guess I'll try to figure out how to transport this around -.-


Now I've somewhat gotten "kinda" used to getting around this japanese music site I've found some pretty すごいー音楽　browsing (randomly clicking) around. I admit, the only way I'd learn of awesome Japanese songs were from the OP and ED of different Animes. I'm not ashamed, though I kinda regret letting everyone know now. ANYWAY! Things are different now, because now I'm going to find the next awesome song BEFORE it becomes a OP or ED.



First video is a J-pop song by Soutaisei Riron, second is more glitch-core but done by OMODAKA, a Japanese artist and the video itself is amazing (inb4 lolmayaparticles), and the last is an R&B (!!!!) song by Aoyama Thelma. The last one is another one by OMODAKA but with Japanese this time, trippy with a delightful melody. While watching OMODAKA music videos, all I could think of was 誰か説明してください! Finding awesome stuff makes me smile :)

Shocking...

Oh my god you can see HIS BONES!!!111!!!!!1one1!!!




And I had a nice delicious mouthful of Super Sculpey because I wasn't paying attention. I thought it was a piece of chicken that fell from my bowl. D:

Absolute...MESS

Ha ha ha, so my first attempt resulted into a pile of poopoo and lose. I watched this video form the ACM animation main site and thought I could do it. How wrong I was. I'll try again, don't want to put the stuff I did up because well...it's crap. XP

Must see Linda before trying another attempt.

Break time & Test animation

Just scanning in my frames now and figured I needed some downtime from homework. Homework? That reminds me! Here are some projects/assignments that some of my students have done that I absolutely love. I wish I had all the toys they have now back when I was in high school.


Whats your flava? BAGS
Who ate my cookie?
Magic? OMG CLUSTERBOMBS
Fluffy the Bounty Hunter
Yearbook PSA
Mokes and Muppet Talk show
(I was in the room when they filmed this, frowning because they were talking about a sensitive subject and I didn't want them doing a talk show like this, and also trying my hardest to not laugh the entire time)



And my personal favorite, Satisfaction by the Double Deans. Warning, unless you're prone to flash induced seizures or dislike watching a room full of guys strip and dance around with their shirts out, this video isn't for you.

Mind you I had to grade this.



Kick back, relax, enjoy the night.

-Edit-
One part of homework. Tightened up animatic with ultra restricted dynamic camera angles! Rough composition to work with so I'll have to work my characters a LOT in order to keep the them interesting. I love the butterfly as much as I love the recording I got from the two of them, as much as I want to marry the butterfly and recordings, I'm sure that I'll have to cut down the chatter. As it stands, whomever's head the butterfly is flying around, thats who's thoughts we hear. I'll be very delicate with the butterfly, so that it doesn't command attention yet is noticeable.


3rd Animatic
-Sneaky edit-
Added to the beginning. I was falling asleep and this idea struck me right before I entered dreamland. Woke up, scanned stuff in and re-uploaded. Makes the beginning a lot funner to watch.

-Last edit of the night, I swear-

Test Animation (Ralph)


Follow through is wonky at places (sideburns) and missing a few in-betw-ins. Especially between the last two poses.

Animatic

Dear Kristen Animatic

Voices are provided by Ralph himself and Chelsea. I had a blast recording, and had a lot of trouble getting rid of my laughing in the background. Theres a lot more funny dialogue between Ralph and his friends but I decided to cut the extra chatter since it was well over 4 minutes at first. Final time is at 2mins 52 seconds, but I still want to cut it down to 2:30.

The scene after Kristen gets the letter is when shes with two of her friends. A tall one whos talking to Kristen and a short one whos obviously really really bitchy. Shes the one who actually circles the 'No'. I feel like I could push the ending, it doesn't feel convincing enough for me. Any suggestions?

Movie Poster

It took a hellvalot longer than I expected to color this piece. Mainly because I was shooting for a coloring style that I more or less hit and missed.

Ralph has this crush and understandably, he has that nervous chill whenever Kristen (his crush) is around. Ralph, being the nice guy that he is, gives her a bottle of water to help her cough one day in class. Being the nervous person that he is however, ends up shaking uncontrollably...spilling A LOT of water on Kristen. Not wanting to studder a mouthful of spit just trying to say sorry, he writes a letter of apology. But thats not all he wrote.



-Edit-

Heres a not so desaturated, more to look at poster.

11 seconds 2.0

11 Seconds playblast

Sweetness. I sure love splines and curves, yup yup yup. I think one more pass around with this and it'll be good.

Didn't get to work on the mouth movements's Spline and curves...next time fo sho.

Concepts and all that shizzle.

Bottom->Up = Oldest->Newest

In super simplify mode now, working on my line economy and making my characters look more interesting. Got a scan of the original note up there too.

11sec Layout

So heres a rough layout of my interpretation of the 11 second clip. The lead actress is in front of the mirror brushing her hair when her "boyfriend" lays it on her about their relationship. She was busy with the knots when it finally hits her. He's defending himself, restating what he really meant until hes finally home free out of her room.


I really like this sound clip, and felt like doing a study of the expressions I wanted to do. Of course the people in front of me prolly thought I was crazy or something.
Watch Josie, lolz

Insperation

So I was at work yesterday at the high school thinking up an idea for my animation. Hearing Crystal's possible story ideas made me rethink my animation so I was pretty lost in thought. Just then, I noticed one of those binders with a clear cover to put paper in. In the sleeve I saw the most amazing note ever on folder paper, handwritten in pen. It went like this.




I grabbed his binder and and asked him if this had really happened, he said yes and his group of friends laughed because they had been there when he had given her the note. The "no" was soo viciously circled that you could pretty much still see how mad she was at him.





And then I realized the entire class had been watching me, thinking I was a weirdo for getting so excited over a piece of folder paper. The gears are running in my head now (._.)