Monday, January 30, 2012

gettin' TEXnichal

Let me tell you what synapses in my brain I had to reactivate to pull off a Tex Avery take AND a smear in the same second of animation. Whoa nelly.

Need some inbetweens still, but here's a taste:





Since tonight I have a chapter meeting I'll hang at the house (I get creeped out biking around late at night so it's hard to get to the lab) and work on the cityscape scene since it's background-heavy.

Monday, January 23, 2012

bloomin' inkblots, batman!

Well I had a super musical weekend! Met with my composer/musician/all-in-one awesome guy, Will Sturgeon. You should check out his music. It's amazing. When not laying down all of his own tracks on his computer, he performs around campus with his two bands Brightener and The Miracals (formerly The Smiles). Check them out on Facebook/YouTube/Bandcamp/iTunes, they're just all over the place. You won't regret it. Really. Don't believe me? CLICK!

I also dropped the new edits and reframed shots into an animatic. Hopefully that's the last of the timestamp-alterning changes I make. Some of these shots have really gathered momentum and are screaming to be animated, especially running through the city with the ink trails rising through the buildings. SO FUN.

Wednesday, January 18, 2012

a curiosity

Easter Egg! Ever wonder what these guys would look like with pupils?? A few reframes from the second scene. Thought it looked funny when I penciled them in for the first pic, so I just put a few more in for fun :)



Monday, January 16, 2012

this monday thing will never get through my skull...

5pm Monday always catches me off guard. Last semester it was because I went right from class to formal dinner at my sorority, had to be standing behind my chair at 5 o' clock on the dot.
This semester... I don't have class on Monday, so I get all day to work in the lab. I get in a groove and then suddenly: AHH! It's 4:50pm! Update update update. I'm still having trouble uploading files to blogger from my computer in the lab, but I can write with no problem. That being said, I guess you should expect a text update at 5pm followed by at edit around 7:30 (after chapter meeting) with any video clips / screen shots of the progress that I can upload once I get home to my laptop.

Anyway, the last couple of weeks I've bee working on integrating the suggestions made by the faculty review at the end of last semester:
*Need more of a "build"
*The beginning is abrupt
*Show frustration with communication she has when she cannot draw
*She looks at him- then tries to draw. Maybe not sound effects, but make it clear nothing is coming out of her hands.
*Could make pencils and pens for hands for clarity
Maye she draws a question mark?
*Show the reactions of the crowd
*At the beginning you show the boy first. Instead, you could show her in the foreground so we know the story is about her.
*Instead of drawing a crowd they could ignore her. The anger could cause the ink to stream from her hands.

I definitely agree with the vast majority of these. I really liked the visual communication bit so I've added that in with Penny's first 'conversation' occuring early on and demonstrating how their world works. I've added some bits to insert into the beginning and reframed a few shots to show Penny the most and people reacting to her inability. People are a little more confused at first rather than going straight to ignoring her. I'm not THAT mean...

So, those are all boarded and ready to be plopped into Flash for animating. Other than that, there was a little that we talked about during a sound spotting session last semester, too, about Penny's "flight" where she runs away from the crowd. I'm going to have her leave the city altogether, clearing the background away to make room for her own growth. That being said, I'll be adding more environmental background stuff to the rest of the beginning shots, i.e. the world that the city people have made.

These new inserted bits are a LOT stronger than the first pass, I'm excited to see it all take it's final (hopefully) shape this week.

edit: Also, I'm meeting my composer/musicial/all-in-one awesome dude this week to make sure he's still game to make some sweet, sweet tunes for this project and start getting stuff down on paper. Stay tuned!