THE LAST WEEKEND

Hopefully, the visuals will be finished by Monday. It has been an incredible process, and the possibilities and problems are limitless. It seems not quite enough preparation had been done for this production early on. However, I am super excited to get some constructive criticism and refine the piece for next spring's animation festival.

ANIMATION LATE STAGES

I am currently allotting about 4 days at the end of this week in which to complete the visuals to the animation. Being behind schedule, the audio phase of the production has been sidelined until winter break. Credits, legacy shots, and the fixing of several characters in many sequences still needs to be completed. It should be fun.

The animation is not complete, but 24 hours of additional work should be able to cap off the essential visuals.

last stages

The animation process continues....I still have 3-4 scenes to animate with characters in them, plus legacy scenes and the credits. The sound implementation might have to wait until next semester, as it is a very important project for putting the audio touches on this film.

In regards to the legacy scenes, they may be more of just slide show clips with very limited animation; these come prior to the credits--which are still planned to be their own animation sequences as the motor-home travels through different terrains.

Armature frustrations, remaining work

Getting down to the nitty gritty, I have constructed a to-do list (things I have yet to do to complete my animation). I would definitely wager that the animation is more than half way complete, and while the remaining items are difficult, they can take less time.

Armatures cannot and should not be duplicated in Flash unless the movie clip or graphic ITSELF is duplicated. I had a scene in which a girl moves her arms, however, going back to the scene, the arms were missing and legs were in their place, doing a totally different motion in another area of the stage. Armatures will be used for many upcoming movements.

to-do list at this point:

*Animating anywhere from 2-7 characters in 7 scenes (complete with environments that have been, for the most part, finished)

*adding additional effects to all scenes (9 of them), perhaps shadows

*Finding a title for the film

*Implementing 4 additional (very short) so-called "legacy" scenes, in which characters photos merge into events in the story and vise versa.

*Making a transition from the hardship phases to the legacy scenes (for the sake of flow)

*Credits, which WILL BE a series of shots involving animation (incorporating end credits with a tasteful animated sequence of motorhome travel).

*SOUNDTRACK INTEGRATION, a potentially enjoyable problem, considering the different solutions

*SOUND EFFECTS...have to be prudent with this one, because the music will fade in and out, and should not be obstructed by particularly loud noises.

(some all-nighters may be coming, even though I am theoritically on schedule and realized that the sound integration process should only be a 2-day ordeal instead of a week and a half).

Armatures and my animation

If you take two graphics and break them apart TWICE, you can then proceed to create an armature for those two pieces (this is incredibly helpful when putting together an arm for a humanoid character.

My animation has plenty of character work left to go, but initial constructions of characters can be used in other scenes.....just tingling with excitement here...as I imagine other animators in 424 are also doing. I am a bit all over the place now, working on several scenes at once. Audio considerations are still in the thinking phase.

revisiting with the class

Above are screen shots from scenes in my animation. The title of this movie is still a WORKING TITLE. I am at odds on what to call this, let alone how to structure the soundtrack for this flick.

Making a quick presentation of where I was at to the animation 424 class on Friday, it definitely appears that there is much more to be done and considerations to make (audio, character animation, time frames, etc.). However, there was good feedback and I am fired up to continue with the process.

Title and story flow for animation

I still need a concrete title for this piece. Anything I come up with is either cheesy or not accurately representaitonal of the visuals and overall theme. Another problem arises when considering the flow from the hardship segment of the animation to the finale shots. How do I go from one to the other with minimal or no text and smooth transition.

Not too excited about this mid-showing of the animation this Friday....totally incomplete and revealing, but that's show biz, the feedback could be immensely valuable.

Above are images of the family motorhome used for merging, rotoscoping, and animation purposes in this process.