ar39acm320

[ar39acm320]

Final Entry: The End (For Real This Time)

Well, here we are. The end of the road. Here’s the link to my final film. I hope you enjoy watching it just as much as I did making it.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Va0CuM9rhGHlMkTzDng12Ro3e8k7AUGC/view?usp=sharing

Beyond that, I’d like to share my feelings on the semseter as a whole. The animation process, while certainly satisfying once you improve and finally manage to get something done, is really hard and I often found myself at odds with both time management and making the film look acceptable to my standards. I had to learn to stop having such impossibly high expectations for myself and take things slowly. However, the next time I go about this I need to make sure not to do it too slowly. Because of that, as well as the whole COVID-19 thing, I was only able to complete the rough animation. While I think the film looks good as-is and is quite evocative of works like Don Hertzfeldt’s, I would like to improve on it further.

This extends to my advice to any future students taking this class. It might be hard at first, but as long as you pace yourself properly and realize that not everything’s going to turn out perfect, you can focus on doing what makes you happy at this phase. Your film isn’t going to look like this forever (unless some dumb virus gets in the way of everything). But don’t pace yourself too much or else you’ll run out of time. A few hours of animation a day is fine.

Finally, don’t be afraid to look for reference, or other works of animation you can draw inspiration from. Sometimes inspiration leads to innovation.

Oh yeah, also, make sure to do your paperwork and not wait until the last second like I did (though I still have a full day to do it).

Well, that’s really all I have to say. This was a great class, and I’m more than glad I took it. I greatly look forward to whatever is planned in the Senior year. Until then, I’ll be content spending this time improving what I can in my film and enjoying my summer.

I hope everyone in my class (as well as you, the reader, if you are reading this when I post it) has a great summer, too.

[ar39acm320]

Entry #16: The End (Or Is It...?)

A traditionally numbered post? Dear lord, this must mean something’s up.

Yep, because I finally have the final rough animated cut of my film (and to that extent, the final film I’ll be turning in this semester.) It’s too big to see over here so you can watch it in the Drive link here assuming you have permissions: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1ZRkkT4Xj7dYDDYgmSzLwG5csVCLO7hnC/view?usp=sharing

There are a few things I would have liked to get done but all in all I’m happy with it. Will I give it proper sound effects? Well, I might not have time before the final presentation, but in the end I think it’s okay given that my horrid mouth noises fit the tone it conveys.

For a bit of background, due to the COVID-19 epidemic, the workflow of just about everyone got screwed up so now all we had to turn in (and, in the case of some, all we could turn in) was the rough animated cut.

A lot of other students in my class have said they’re going to properly finish up the film this semester and I’ll probably be no exception. I don’t know if I’ll be on this blog in the future, or how far I’ll even get this summer, but I can say this was an experience I’ll never forget and I’ll definitely be trying my hand to improve both myself and my animation in the future.

Well, until next time.

[ar39acm320]

Note to self, make sure that you choose the correct number of frames before you upload your work

Anyways, here’s most of the finished animation that I haven’t done yet. All I have left is the rest of the final shot, where PRKR grabs the ledge, pulls himself up, celebrates.... and then falls and explodes. These scenes in of themselves may be refined later on, mostly the explosions which I have no idea how to draw in of themselves.

Regardless, I’ll update once more next week, and hopefully by then I’ll be done!

[ar39acm320]

Well, I finished the run cycle (complete with background), and did both the jump and the fall from P.R.K.R.’s first trial! What you’re seeing here is sort of a mish-mash of different scenes. I plan to use the initial, ultra-rough run cycle for the first trial (which I still have in video form) and use this one for his second and third trials, with this fall in particular being from the first trial.

I’ll add the second and third trial’s results later but for now just know that this is what I have so far, and I’ll shake things up with a bit of editing magic.

Whatever the case, I’ll see you next week! Hopefully I’ll have the other trials done by then.

[ar39acm320]

Well, after a grueling week struggling with trying to figure out whatever the heck I’m supposed to be doing for all my classes, I finally managed to complete the run cycle! Keep in mind that the building he’s on will be added later. Hopefully I can have that up in the morning, but if not figuring it out should be pretty easy.

As always, I’ll be back with more progress next week!

[ar39acm320]

Not much to say, I just finished the shot I did last week. That being said, I also made two variants of it. The one you see here is the normal one, but I also did a tweened one that you can see here: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Njzvuy9hQDiC2CWT1k3osz-TIrQT-deA/view?usp=sharing

Hopefully I get feedback on both because depending on which one is better received, it’ll get in, but I feel like both can work in their own way.

Anyways, now that my tablet’s working again and now that I’m considerably more motivated, I’ll probably have more done next week-- not having class today kinda screwed with my head.

[ar39acm320]

Well, it appears as if the true April Fool, is me.

After trying and failing to get anything done last night, my tablet decided to start working this morning. I felt I wasn’t able to get too much done this week either so I decided to draw a static, zooming-out shot. Unfortunately, while I was able to draw all the assets, I wasn’t able to get everything in frame on time, so this is just what I was able to get done before then.

Hopefully I’ll have more done next week.

[ar39acm320]

Not much to say this week, here’s my midterm. I combined my animatic with the rough animation I had done. And boy it sure looks like it, I have considerably more rough animation to do. On the bright side, at least it looks presentable.  Some of the sound effects I did with my mouth were a bit delayed, so I cut them and moved them around, and I altered the speed of some of the animations since they were too fast.

Hope you like it, and hopefully I’ll be able to get more actual animation done come next week! This whole social distancing thing is really messing with me, so hopefully I’ll be able to overcome it.

[ar39acm320]

Entry #9: Technical Difficulties

Other note to self: Figure out which stylus actually charges before you do this.

So the tablet I’m using, which I’m borrowing from a friend, has an extra stylus. While in theory this is good since I could potentially cut down on charge time, the reality is that it doesn’t work and it took me three days of trying to charge it in various ways to finally realize it. While I do have a working stylus, by the time I realized it, it was too late to do what I wanted. Fortunately, I have more time than I thought, but I need to manage it better in the future.

That being said, I didn’t want to walk into this week empty-handed, so I have some reference I shot of me running in place and jumping. Had I had a better angle, maybe you could have seen my feet, but I think it works to get a sense of what the body does when it jumps, which considering how big of a role that motion plays in my film, helps a lot.

Here it is if you wanna see it: https://drive.google.com/file/d/18yA4LvzvcKG1Z2RwYi2OCzSUujWidu0b/view?usp=sharing

Hopefully I’ll have some actual animation done next week.

[ar39acm320]

Entry #8: Hide in Shame (For an entire month)

Okay, note to self: Just because some shots don’t take as long as you anticipate, doesn’t mean they all will. Follow your damn schedule.

On that note, the animation I did this week was really rough, but I’m not entirely sure why. I suppose it’s because I created a makeshift run cycle for the protagonist, or maybe it’s because I used too few frames so it looked choppy- but when I stretched it out to three frames per drawing, it looked too slow so I’m not entirely sure what’s going on here.

Regardless, I’m just gonna drop the Drive link because I’m that ashamed of it. Seriously, it looks like a ten year old made it in Flipnote Studio.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1X1BsMZGarlmX9Cg2LA72vlg3J-y_U22p/view?usp=sharing

That being said, due to the whole Coronavirus thing, I have exactly an entire month until I have to set foot on campus. This means I’ll have more time than expected to actually work on the animation. Hopefully I can iron things out then because I don’t want this shot my demo reel.

In any case, I guess we’ll know by next week.

[ar39acm320]

Entry #7: Smooth Roughs

Not much to say today, my two shots for this week (initially thought to be a 2 out of 3 in complexity) turned out to be considerably simpler than I thought so I was able to finish both in 2 days. There’s some ironing out of course, such as creating more distinct outlines or possibly changing the background color, but I think all in all it’s a good start.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1F9Wox8GPbFBQEG5xlPz0FaZfNCYezHu1/view?usp=sharing

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1S_5DCqWX4s1UHsEaIg2EzclmikFnZGrC/view?usp=sharing

Hope to see you next week. 

Side note, I didn’t have any dinner tonight, so now I’m not too tired and I’m planning on watching a movie before bed that I’ve been waiting to watch all week. 

As of the time I am writing this, it’s a quarter till midnight.

Here’s hoping I don’t end up pulling the most boneheaded decision of my young life.

[ar39acm320]

Entry #6: Off to a good start

Not too much witty commentary this week, other than the fact that even when I have a schedule I’m not too great at planning, though not in the way you may think. Rather, I gave myself too much time for doing this, to the point where I was able to comfortably get everything done in 2 days rather than 4. 

Considering the fact that I just got the Mega Man Zero/ZX Collection this week, this may have been a blessing in disguise, though then again Zero 1 is so hard that it makes me want to tear my hair out at times...

I wasn’t able to do the first shot like I wanted to, but I can do that any weekend seeing how that simply requires use of the rectangle tool. As such, as of right now I have rough animation of all the close-up shots of P.R.K.R.’s monitor, which you can see in the link below.

Hopefully by next week I’ll have rough animation of some of, if not all of the slightly more complex shots done.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1hnlBYSY0-AHrRa3SquAcCA_c2fxOWPe9/view?usp=sharing

[ar39acm320]

Entry #5: The End of Pre-Production (Hopefully)

Don’t have too much witty to say this week, other than the fact that I managed to finish the storyboard/animatic just when my free Storyboard Pro trial ran out. I’ll buy the full software for that and ToonBoom over the weekend likely. Now that I have an actual, finalized schedule, I should be able to get things done at a much more manageable pace. Of course, that doesn’t mean much if I don’t check it regularly, so I’ll be sure to do that.

In the meantime, my entire pre-production package is over here on Google Drive: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1YPYMgvaDCCch8PPfatgZ3lGNRomWM6NC?usp=sharing

That being said, these things change over time, and since I have a constant stream of helpful feedback from my professor and peers, here’s hoping it can help me further evolve my ideas into something greater.

Hopefully I’ll have rough animation for at least some of the simpler scenes done by next week!

[ar39acm320]

Entry #4: Recovery

Bad news, still have something of a cough and I’m still a bit congested. Good news, my chest no longer hurts and I can go to class!

Bad news again however, I had to skip class last time due to how sick I was and so I caught on what I was supposed to do this week relatively late. More on me for not doing the logical thing and, I dunno, checking on the weekend, and “I was coughing up bloody phlegm” isn’t exactly the best excuse.

It’s a decent one but it can only get you so far.

I digress, this week we were supposed to do a rough schedule (which I only filled out for most of this month, might as well plan the rest out for next week when I’m expected to finalize everything, and thus, when I know what’s gonna be in store) and a second animatic with sound. I just did mouth noises for the sounds, so it’s... obviously not going to sound like that in the actual movie, but it’s a general idea. The animatic itself is also slightly improved, I added the symbols on P.R.K.R’s shoulders, displayed what trial he was on via his monitor to showcase the passing of time, fixed one frame that was really bugging me where I gave P.R.K.R. a mouth (WHY I did that is beyond me) and added an establishing shot. It’s far from perfect, but it’s what I did.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1RDu9aac79fmtE22SAODW1Qgj4EURD4On/view?usp=sharing

Also attached are the storyboards and the schedule, not in that particular order:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1c6cIgfaa--0Fyo02mfZtBjR3rbZe6AZRZ4L_HyS-aCM/edit?usp=sharing

https://drive.google.com/file/d/15kbABLP-4mP59BEEhAjUEnvIdRoZq8F0/view?usp=sharing

Well, now that I have a schedule, here’s hoping I can manage things thusly. Things are going slowly, but at a pace I’m comfortable with. All in all here’s hoping the end product is something I’m happy with.

[ar39acm320]

Entry #3: Flu Season

This also hasn’t been a great week, but not for the reasons expected.

This week, vis dev was due, which due to the nature of my short wasn’t too hard. In hindsight I should have done it on my tablet, but I feel like doing it on paper makes it look more authentic. It takes after model sheets and animation notes I’ve seen from animators on various cartoons I like such as Ian James Quartey, so I have a lot of notes to myself on how to (or how not to) remain on model.

(I have an android camera, bear with me) For those who can’t read blur:

P.R.K.R.

- It’s okay if P.R.K.R. looks scribbly when he’s in motion-- he’s fast

- Lightning bolt is NEVER the same

- NOT perfectly proportional - He’s a robot, not Usain Bolt

P.R.K.R.’s head

- Monitor lights up for different expressions - ONLY EYES. NO MOUTH. No mouth = more visual appeal.

Keep in mind - P.R.K.R.’s head is not perfectly flat. It retracts back, sorta like an CRT.

Backgrounds

- Suburban. Try to add little to no detail to buildings. It’s not lazy, it’s stylized.

- You have two buildings and not much else to work with. Don’t complicate things.

- The rectangle tool accomplishes this perfectly. Use it.

Last, don’t stress out if not everything is as in your head. These things change. And nothing is animated in a day. These things take time, so be patient and keep at it!

In addition, I also did a shot breakdown and assets list, which you can find here: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1Gl8xZ44tnqj6XZkSIGh3zBFkT5dF0SUriKyqBaqi4NE/edit?usp=sharing

No, the problem this week was that I had an incredibly high fever over the weekend and into Monday and that just when I thought it was over I ended up with the worst cough imaginable tonight, to the point where my chest actually hurts when I cough. Yeah, I’m coughing that hard. Here’s hoping that I feel well enough in the morning.

(Also, Professor Biggs, consider this my sick note in the event I don’t go to class)

(Kidding)

[ar39acm320]

Entry #2: Deadlines Bad, Inspiration Good

Well, this hasn’t been a great week.

On top of not knowing how to charge my tablet’s stylus or how to use Storyboard Pro until the last second, I was also swarmed in homework and wasn’t able to get the rough draft of the storyboard done until just now. And boy, lemme tell ya, this looks like a rough draft. That’s the best way to describe the semblance of an art style that I have. Rough. Maybe it’s because, as of this post, I’m sleep deprived half past 1 in the morning, but overall I’m happy with what I have. And hey, it’s better than nothing.

I tried to go for the simplistic backgrounds and colors of Don Hertzfelt, mixed with the off-model, yet dynamic characters seen in the works of Hiroyuki Imaishi (or at least, what I thought looked most like it in my head). The protagonist P.R.K.R. is, in of himself, based on Canti from FLCL in terms of design but I tried to do my own thing with him. 

I also used my unreliable style and the software itself to my advantage, both in sort of a way inspired by Imaishi-san’s latest film Promare. The first are the buildings. I used the rectangle tool to draw them, and while they look considerably more uniform (a sharp contrast to P.R.K.R. himself), it manages to work in a way. The buildings in the background in Promare also have a minimalistic look, which both offsets and compliments its considerably more wild characters.

The other is the lightning bolt on P.R.K.R.’s chest. Something Imaishi said regarding Promare is that they had a lot of fun animating fire. Since it constantly moves, no two drawings are the same. I decided to go about a similar approach with the lightning bolt. It doesn’t really make sense in-universe, but it’s stylistic and I think it works to convey the sort of energetic feel I want to give this.

Attached are the link to the storyboards and the animatic. I pray that they don’t cause some unfortunate soul’s eyes to melt.

Whatever the case, there’s a lot to learn from this experience. Maybe I should plan things out in advance instead of doing all my homework the day before it’s due.

Only time will tell if I actually take this lesson to heart...

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1H9qHs-ItpwXqX8Ssaxkt-kLITXMRy8jY/view?usp=sharing

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1rWW0pj8TOrzWN5P3N_NWB-rHm-9ReJa5/view?usp=sharing

[ar39acm320]

Entry #1: And So It Begins

What am I doing?

Why am I going about this the way I am?

So for my ACM 320 class, we’re all supposed to create a 1-minute long animated short by the end of the semester and instead of doing what I think I’m at least decent at and going at it through Maya, all my ideas revolved around the use of 2D animation so I just decided to do that instead.

The only problem being that I have dysgraphia. I’ve never been particularly good at drawing. That being said, I’ve never tried to draw something over the course of an entire semester before so maybe that’d make a difference? And hey, I also have to do the art assets for a video game this semester so that’s even more experience. At the very least though the movie will look interesting, I guess.

In the event that it looks like total garbage (which hopefully it won’t come to that) I must apologize in advance to everyone I’ve ever met.

Attached is my production pitch. I haven’t gotten started drawing anything yet, but I probably will come next week so you can expect to see that there. Here’s hoping I can pull this off.

https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1jZWJZMeyzQW0gPHwPHDIScjt50a3bdHDFm5_dZm_DAM/edit?usp=sharing