Thursday 25 October 2012

Finishing off

Last day was spent fixing the colouring and masking out random noise. As I had left it to the last minute, the titles are very simple. I think it looks nice for the first few seconds coz you feel all moody and ominous, then it cuts to Jacque and music box and it completely throws me off. No time for anything more sophisticated however, so I guess it will have to serve to foreshadow his grim, grim end.


If I had to review my animation at this stage:

-aforementioned conflict with titles
-jarring and disorientating beginning
-laughs are a bit unconvincingly cut together, but otherwise alright flow for rest of scene 1-(oh and at the part where he jumps off the bed weird I added a blink in and it made such a difference)
-scene 2 feels good
-music good
-wut, random card
-not sure what to think of the solitary random card
-the director's idea of subliminal messaging?
-more like the director's miserable attempt to tie things together even when the absence of certain elements renders the effort absolutely meaningless
-anyway, still good up until they sit at the window
-there some animation needing redoing
-lighting is nice
-music not ideal, but not bad
-something happened now it looks like a climax
-music does not work to be honest
-no feel
-and yaaay it's over!


More evaluation:

I think the main problem with Slapjack as a whole is that it was built upon a retrospectively poor foundation. The story was weak to begin with, and would have worked better as a more stylised animation, but there was minimal work done for look and feel.

Some things to remember for future projects, KEEP IT SIMPLE STUPID. Like, actually simple. And do a lot of concept art and style frames. Since that's what I'm into.

I probably reiterate, but I think the best place for this work is online. Aside from the potential for a huge audience, there's that psychological aspect for me; online all of your work can be viewed together, whilst at a festival or something it's that one work representing you. It is something you have done, versus something you have DONE. And it really is too weak for DONE.

^Excuses

Anyway, I will be submitting this to festivals (bullied), but as the main place for it is online/showreel, again, online hand in tomorrow.

DONE!

Wednesday 24 October 2012

Glow abuse

Which level of glowiness?
Why, the level that most effectively masks the dodginess painfully apparent in a high resolution render.

low res, high res + small glow, high res + more glow

Background assimilation

Michelle's backgrounds:






I think I underestimated how difficult it would be to copy somebody else's style. Nevertheless, they were a massive help, and I managed to assimilate two of them with a quick blending & rendering job, plus some random texture/adjustment layers.



I am a bit irked by the bedpost colour on the first one, but I haven't had time to fix it, so hopefully I am the only one who notices.

Animation Festivals

Since After Effects is freezing up every five minutes (I should really learn to pre-render), I might as well take this time to update my log. I have been bullied into submitting my work to animation festivals, so here are some of them that I would be ok submitting to, I guess.

-2D or Not 2D Animation Festival
-Blue Mountains Film Festival
-Melbourne International Animation Festival
-miscellaneous free ones

Actually the only one I really personally wanted to submit to was the 2D or Not 2D one, because it was started by Tony White, whose books were an amazing resource for me trying to learn to animate traditionally. But I was searching for it a few weeks ago and found not much recent information about it. I'm keeping my fingers crossed that it hasn't died, but it is looking likely that it has. Grumble. I was also kind of interested in GRAPHIC, at the Opera House, but considering the due date is on Sunday, I wouldn't be able to polish it nearly enough by then, and anyway, looking at the calibre of previous animations done for GRAPHIC, it's kinda a lost cause.

The other two are because I prefer nearby locations I can get to, and they seem cool. Other than that, I am probably just going to go down the list of animation festivals with free submissions on that website I found, and just send it off randomly. I know I should prioritise the big/semi-big festivals, substandard quality or not, so I won't put it up publicly online too soon, on the off chance I catch myself in an optimistic mood. So for hand in, I think I will put it up on Vimeo, but on private, so it's sort of like, it will be public, but not yet... yeah.

Sunday 21 October 2012

Error 16

Today, Adobe CS6:

Please uninstall and reinstall the product.
If this problem still occurs, please contact Adobe technical support for help, and mention the error code shown at the bottom of this screen. 
Error: 16

And the hilarious thing is, After Effects CS6 files are not backwards compatible with After Effects CS5.5, which is the version installed on the beasts at COFA.

Yet another manifestation of Murphy's Law.

Friday 19 October 2012

Shadows

For dodgy, inaccurate, but passable shadows in After Effects:

-duplicate colour layer
-skew
-rotate
-scale
-fill
-ramp
-gaussian blur

For when animated masks just doesn't cut it.

Thursday 18 October 2012

8 days to go

No time for anything, quick update, backgrounds done, colouring 99% done, cards 90% done, leaves done, music is passably alright, foley 20% done (!!!!), shadows, blankets animation, titles/credits NOT done, and I'm giving up on animating the falling cards, so there is a single transition type falling card randomly and THAT'S IT. I mean it's not necessary to the story but it woulda helped, I reckon. Sad, sad life.


Colouring list:

Me:
-1.02
-1.08
-1.10
-1.11
-1.12
-1.13
-2.04
-3.06
-3.12
-3.18
-3.20
-3.21

Pauline:
-1.03
-1.05
-3.05
-3.08
-3.10
-3.11
-3.13
-3.14
-3.15
-3.16

Kimmy:
-1.06
-3.02
-3.03
-3.09
-1/2

Nancy:
-2.01
-2.03
-3.01
-3.19

Juliana:
-1.04

Andrew:
-2.02


So I win! ...yeah.


Backgrounds:

Michelle:
-2.02
-3.05
-3.06
-4.02

Except the backgrounds are still quite different to my style. I have assimilated 3.05 and 3.06 but I haven't time to do 2.02 before assessment.

What else... note about the cards I guess, thought I was gonna do them in AE but found it was neater and less computer intensive to warp them directly onto the frames in PS.

The leaves I did today, a bit of an issue with AE not being able to import my multiple video layers and smart objects but I put each leaf in a separate file and that worked out.

And man! The colouring in some areas is horrendous. Mostly my fault coz I told people quantity over quality, but I cringe.


Final (thereabouts) look:


Gonna add a glow thing to it on Susan's suggestion and coz it do look nice.

Finally got around to zooming in the cards sequence and it's good after all.

Shadows takes longer than expected. Gah.

No other progress shots today, too busy progressing.

And I'll post up a list of festivals and stuff soon, just after I finish this... ok that's not soon.





Photoshop tip of the day:
Hold down R for one second to temporarily activate rotate canvas tool.

Tuesday 2 October 2012

Timing

The best way for timing out frames for me was in After Effects I found. Originally I was going to do it in Photoshop, but since most of my colouring people didn't use Timeline anyway, and also a host of other issues with After Effects not interpreting the layers right that I can't remember right now, After Effects was the way to go.

The files had to be really clean first however. I separated each shot into two separate files, colour and line. I got rid of any groups, and made sure each layer was on max opacity; it screws with you later otherwise.

Also important was to get rid of any Timeline information remaining on the Photoshop files. I couldn't figure out a nice way to just turn it off so I had to first switch it to Frames and then back to Timeline, so that all the layers would be active at once, then duplicate it to a new file. Frames puts everything on zero opacity though so had to remember to max that.

Or you could just duplicate twice. Whatever floats your boat.

So that way I get clean, consistent layers to work with in After Effects. You know, there is probably a way to clean up stuff in AE anyway, but I couldn't find any, so it was just neater to have everything there on import.

On working in AE, I gotta remember to do this:
  • Set durations of pre-comps
  • Set pre-comps to 25fps
Plus these amazing shortcuts:
  • [ or ]  -->  Move In point or Out point of selected layers to current time
  • Alt+[ or Alt+]  -->  Trim In point or Out point of selected layers to current time
Plus if you want to preserve the blending mode effects (like the transparency from Multiply) in a pre-comp, collapse transformations. I don't know why that works, but it do.