Finally.... animatic

YeY 

Finally, cut down the sound so that it isn't 5min long, and then poped the flash mov together with the wave file ... 

here is my animatic ....

hmmmmmmm

Went back to my test armature today ... been caving some shape into him and looking at the  legs and feet, apart from the length of the legs, i like the shape, they may just need to be longer as i can't do a walk-cycle


Also, squirrel needs to shed a few pounds (co-fat squirrel-ugh)

OK ..... so......


I'm not having unproductive weekend, so aswel as work fri' & sat' i need to  ........... 


*    find Storyboard - post on blog - print for 2001
*    finish Animatic  - post on blog
*   go to the market - buy fur for squirrel
*    draw squirrel faces showing different emotions
*    make pancakes on sunday (:

Emotion (test animation)

So i'm currently half way through making my first large scale armature, so keep coming across little problems. 
PROBLEM, I always knew that I was going to keep the emotion face movement simple, but when looking at my armature, I'm worried you won't feel the squirrels emotions. 


Before i go carving out the foam padding on my squirrel, I'm going to do some test animations with plastercine, just looking at the eyes, ears, and direction of the head.


This defiantly looks like a happy squirrel ....

This is a rough, refrence, of ear eyebrown and eye movement showing emotions that would be in my animation ....

As if i didn't think of this .... Ian suggested using Nick Park's Gromit as a reference for the emotions as he also just uses his eyes, eyebrows and ears...

Quick plastercine tests.......

TEST ONE!

Happy tail movement

TEST TWO!

Confused ear movement

Making My Squirrel

I wish I could afford to buy 4 large ball and socket armatures for my models, but afraid I can't.

I've decided to make my own using aluminium wire, foam board blocks, foam, and felt. From my last project I now know that I will need removable arms, as the wire snapped and I was unable to fix it.


Here are some of the progress so far, only a few cut fingers later ...

Squirrel

Before making my squirrel i wanted to check out how its tail moves, so that i know where is bedt to out the wire etc for a good movement. Here are some reference videos ...

Location

Here are some of my initial sketches for locations that would work with my vision of how it will look.

I took a trip on the bus up to Surprise View, a beautiful section of the Peak District, to look for some places to shoot my animation, the only probably was, there was still a fair layer of snow on everything, so i couldn't see as much as i wanted to .... oh well. A second trip will be needed but here are some of the photos i collected.

the snow was really icy and sounded really pretty when i kicked it everywhere

scene option 1

scene option 2

rabbit prints in the snow

scene option 3

scene option 4

scene option 5 (my fave)

i love the bottom of this tree, i love the detail

Soundtrack

Like in 'Buildings and Vampires that I posted earlier, I love the idea of having a child narrate my story to give it a that young, immature/naivety. I need a story first.

*   Making my own music, yeah, I tried and then I failed.

*   The option of using a pre recorded audio track and maybe adding some slight sound effects over the top to link the audio track and animation.

*   Two of my friends said they were happy to help and offered me some songs to use...

The first... James Gorman - Voices (acoustic version) 

The Second... David Ryder - Angel of Neon Flare

Scrap that ...

So after spending weeks on a story and animatic and presenting it to the group... I decided I didn't like it. I think my problem is I over think things. I'm not the best story writer and I think that was shown in the last piece.
I went back to a blank page, thought about the art direction, and the feelings and how some things can be quite ambiguous and open to interpretation. I came up with a selection of ideas which were going to be a lot simpler to animate, also would contain less props for me to find and make.

SCAN OF IDEAS

Storyboard

God knows what i have done with my neat storyboard, hope it appears soon tho.

So instead here is the rough storyboard I started with instead ...

Story

I delayed the story writing for as long as possible, it was time to do something ....

Storyboard

Spec: portrait
Frames: 6 on first page then 8 on the following
Size: 8cmx4cm - widescreen

This is the storyboard created for my first story.
( not knowing at this point that I would scrap this idea and follow another direction after creating my animatic :s  )

                    

Animatic

My first animatic... ever. Worked out the timings by acting it out, although the first 30 seconds needs sorting out or removing altogether. Still haven't got the audio track for the background so there are just a few filling sounds over the top to link the song and animation.