More Animatin'

Here are a couple of new pieces of animation I've been working on.

A Good Bloke

I chose this quote from "Hot Fuzz" because it gave me the opportunity to show two characters interacting, and an emotional change for both. It is currently in the blocking stage.



An MOV version of the video above can be seen here

A higher-quality version (without the weird clipping in the face) can be seen here . Unfortunately, this one doesn't have the frame numbers... I've been looking for a way to add frame numbers onto renders produced by 3DS Max, but haven't seen a solution yet. A Playblast! A Playblast! My kingdom for a Playblast!

Invincible

A rather famous quote from Monty Python and the Holy Grail.

The bigger fellah is pretty well blocked out aside from the face and hands. The little guy... Well, his blocking is painfully basic at this point, with certain points (such as when he should be falling from the big guy's hand) not worked on, yet. I have some thumbnailed plans for the little guy to flail his fists about in a frustrated manner as he's jumping, but I wanted to get the timing down for the jump before attempting to squeeze the fist-flailing action in there. I also want to make sure the little guy convincingly counter-balances the movement of the big guy's hand, so that's something I'll be focusing on today.

Uuuh... And try to ignore the sound clip repeating in the video. That's one of 3DS Max's "wonderful" little traits. Once I have a final render, I'll composite the sound clip and an audio-less version of the video in Premiere or After Effects.


An MOV version of the video above can be seen here

A higher-quality version can be seen here

In addition, Randy and Kevin have given me some feedback on the animations from the previous post; I'll be refining those to completion during the next couple of days, along with these recent ones.

... Not sure what the deal is with my tastes being more on the subtle side recently; that is SO not me. I might take a whack at doing something really quick in 2D to see if I can yank myself back into fun, cartoony stuff.

Animatin'

Woo! So, I've been animatin' stuffs when I can this past week. As a result, I know much more about giraffes and their extremely goofy way of moving around. Such awkward animals, I'll tell ya.

For critiquing purposes, I've added a link to a .MOV file below each video. For the giraffe walk/run cycles, you can view them as a loop in Quicktime by going to View -> Loop (or hitting Ctrl+L).

Here are the blocking stages of a walk and run cycle I did for a giraffe. The tail remains without animation for the moment; I'll wait until the body movement is solid before trying to animate the tail's reaction to it.


http://amysaundersonline.com/animation/giraffe_walk_blocking.mov



http://amysaundersonline.com/animation/giraffe_run_blocking.mov

And here's an updated version of the "Out for a Drink" animation:


http://amysaundersonline.com/animation/ofad_second_block.mov

... I love how awful the silhouette is on the frame Blogger's automatic-movie-preview-frame-picker selected. Egh.

It's Business Time!

Alright, so I'll be spending at least the next two weeks getting my animatin' on. However, I need to make some choices on what to animate before I get to it! Fortunately, I already had some projects in the works...

Out for a Drink?
This was a project with a rather unusual set-up... I wanted to see if I could portray something without dialogue that normally would have dialogue. So, basically, I gave myself a script, but didn't record the dialogue.

Once I had the line decided on, I drew up these thumbs to help guide my performance:


I then set up the first (very) rough blocking. And I seriously mean rough... The hands aren't positioned and the eyebrows are only elevated and angled - not shaped. Heh!

And then I got an intense three-month freelance gig. D'oh! But, now I have a chance to finish it! Woo!

The Many Ways to Say "I Love You"
I can't remember how this idea came to me anymore... but it developed like this:

I started thinking about the different ways the confession of "I love you" comes out in movies - especially in romance movies (eh.) Sure, a lot of times the confession isn't so direct, but the phrase "I love you" gets said with a very broad set of emotions.

With that in mind, I wrote down nine common scenarios that occur in romance films where a main character finally makes that painfully revealing confession. I put the scenarios in groups of three, wherein each places emphasis on a different word: "I," "love," or "you."

I did some quick, nasty sketches of the first six... Looking on them now, I think they'll certainly need an overhaul.

I'll need to grab some friends (male and female) that have decent voice acting ability and have them do a series of recordings for each scenario. I can then pick which recordings I like best and animate to them. For the sake of time, I would probably pick my favorite three.

Cycles
I have a personal project of sorts where I'm creating some custom content for a Neverwinter Nights server a few Intarwebs acquaintances are running. For now, I'm going to focus on the following:

A land animal (quadruped)
A bird
An aquatic animal (fish or porpoise)

I'll make basic cycles for each, including: walk/fly/swim, attack, hit, and death.

And that's more or less what I've got planned for the moment. Any suggestions on things I should add, things I should drop, or things I should change will be appreciated.