Thursday, May 29, 2008

Wednesday


I'm back...went to the Flight of the Conchords concert Tuesday. Mark and I really enjoyed seeing their music and comedy routine in San Francisco. (For those who haven't heard of them...they have a show on HBO. Basically, the premise is...they are a New Zealand band trying to make in New York City. Imagine Weird Al as a singer/comedian trying to make it in New Zealand/Australia).

It was fun seeing Kiwis telling jokes to Americans. We went with a couple from the Hopkins lab. We all teased Mark about his "r"s. But he should feel pretty good...most of the women thought those the Kiwis were very sexy. A lot of the women kept yelling out that they wanted them to have their babies. They said they would be glad to take any of said babies back to New Zealand.

It was a lot of fun. But it made for a late night. We didn't get home until after 1 am. Then had to leave for work at 7 am the next day.

Anyway, here's something I did tonight.

Goodnight!

Monday, May 26, 2008

A caveman and his land rover

I mostly did tutorials yesterday and attempted some script changes. Today I have been trying to rough out as many animations as I can on the timeline. Here's my first attempt at my hunting sequence. I still need to make the caveman sing eenie, meeny, miney, moe as he goes toward the tiger growls.

Saturday, May 24, 2008

A Walk to Beautiful


I watched a heart-breaking/inspiring documentary on Nova called A Walk to Beautiful. It's about poor women in Africa who have medical problems due to complications with pregnancy. Some of these women are in labor for more than a week, then finally deliver stillborn. Then, many times their bladders and/or bowels are seriously damaged causing the women to be incontinent.

After that, most of these women are shunned by all and live in shame. In the film, there is a hospital that is devoted to helping these women. It was very powerful film. It just premiered on PBS, so it will probably be on again many times this month. You can also watch it online by going to www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/beautiful/

Jumping catnapper with a tea towel

Here's my red jumping guy animated with a "character pack". Basically it's like putting a cutout doll and moving the arms and legs to match the red jumping guy's movement. It took about 4 hours, but it's helping me learn keyframing and inbetweening.

Thursday, May 22, 2008

Red guy with a sash and a ponytail

I was a bit brain dead tonight to do anything creative. So I sat down and made myself finish my red jumping guy tutorial. Turns he needed to be more flamboyant. The tutorial video had me add a ponytail and sash to my male character. They do not appear to hold to traditional gender roles at cartoonsolutions :)

Wow, I am going to be before 10!

Wednesday, May 21, 2008

Missing ingredients part 2

I almost have all my live action footage laid out in my timeline. I still need to do a few more rough animations and rough green screened toy sequences, but I am close to having a very, very rough cut. My plan is to submit this rough cut to my advisors before I go on vacation to Oklahoma/Kansas in a couple of weeks. They will probably be quite surprised since they haven't seen any footage from me for 2 years! Then when I get back, fingers crossed, they will not have forgotten me, and will give me feedback. Then I can start the script re-write, the real animation, the real green screening, music composition, and find a helluva better narrator.

Night!

PS. I am thinking I will do a human domestication film for my second PodclassTV installment if my advisors need more than eight minutes for my thesis film. I think I have all the footage I need to tell four of the five main great ape stories (gorilla, orang, chimp, bonobo, and human). I even have a little siamang footage if I want to talk about the other ape family. But I will need to go out a film other behaviors of mankind besides man/woman getting married. The only footage I have is from my wedding videography business.

Tuesday, May 20, 2008

Missing ingredient

Worked on laying out the rest of my timeline tonight. Looks like it's going to be about 8 minutes unless I add more to the script. I am pretty sure I am going to need at least 15 minutes for my thesis requirement. So I may need to do a sequel or think of another short kid's film that would be a good compliment to "Why don't we ride zebras".

Here's a quick sequence I worked on tonight.

Fabulous use of Web 2.0

I read about this in a magazine. It's a vocabulary online game that donates rice everytime you get the correct answer. What a wonderful idea. Try it: www.freerice.com

Monday, May 19, 2008

Stone-age man and his dog

Here's a test walk cycle for both the caveman and dog/wolf. I am getting a bit better at these walk cycles finally!

Sunday, May 18, 2008

Big numbers on youtube

Weird thing happened yesterday. I went to my youtube channel, and the timeline with the stop-motioned toys had over 4500 hits overnight. None of the other test animations I have made have more than a dozen hits over the last few weeks. I am not sure if people liked the timeline or not. No one rated it or commented. But I am hoping it means I am on the right path. It's funny, I was actually a little embarrassed to post it because it was so rough.

Wolf/dog walk cycle

Today I downloaded a template from cartoonsmart.com. It was a tutorial with four different animal walk cycles (cat, dog, elephant, and horse). The white dog didn't look much like a wolf, but I made some modifications and mine looks a little more like the wolf's ancestor. But I am excited, now I have my wolf/dog.

I am almost ready to start the detailed animation instead of doing all these tests. I am happy enough with the zebra and wolf/dog, but I need to either re-do my caveman walk cycle, or even better, I would like to make or find a cartoon stone-age man. The one I have is actually a caveman. Stereotypical cavemen never existed. Man wasn't around when dinosaurs roamed. But the stone-age man was alive when big mammals like mammoths and saber toothed tigers lived.

Friday, May 16, 2008

More animals on the timeline

I am not terribly happy with this test animation. But I think I can make it more seamless when I do the real stop motion. I am planning on renting a studio for a day to shoot all the green screens. That way with even lighting, the toys will be easier to key. I am still a couple months away yet. I want to have a complete rough cut before I spend the time doing the stop motion correctly. At this stage, I need to do a big re-write to my script. So I will probably be adding and subtracting scenes. I am having a hard time writing for a very young audience. Right now, the script is a little too complex for little kids, and a little too hokey for anyone over the age of three. So that's not a good mixture. We'll see what tomorrow brings.

Going to the Artichoke Festival tomorrow, so I get a whole half day off from all of this.

Cheers!

Thursday, May 15, 2008

Timeline toy test

I swear I wasn't slacking last night. I actually filmed one of my co-workers giving a talk at a "science cafe". So I had a real excuse for not working on my film. Although it was glorious to come home afterward and just watch TV. But I am back at it tonight. I quickly filmed all 13 domestic toy animals to go on my timeline. I have only had time tonight to start to put in the camel, but I will have more animals added tomorrow.

Goodnight!

Tuesday, May 13, 2008

Timeline


Here's the start to a time line of domestication. I am going to green screen toy domesticated animals at the proper dates.

Sunday, May 11, 2008

Sketch of the Infomercial Scene

Here's a quick sketch of the zebra watching TV and wanting to become a domesticated animal. The final product will be fully animated and the text will fly out of the screen.

Yard work and zebras

Mark actually let me out of my edit room this weekend long enough to plant a garden and to help landscape the rental. But I did manage to get some animation done. Here's a taste of what the animation will look like once imported into Final Cut Pro.

Saturday, May 10, 2008

12 frame walk cycle

Here's the zebra doing the full 12 frame walk. I realize it looks like he has a stick up his bum. :) I will work on that problem tomorrow.

Thursday, May 8, 2008

Three frames in three hours

Here's the first three looped frames of the zebra walking. Only thousands more to do! And it only took me three hours to do the first three :(
*Note, this film may cause seizures.

Wednesday, May 7, 2008

Four-legged motion

I have been doing countless Flash tutorials, but all of them are of humans. So today, I found horse motion images on the web (http://nicholnl.wcp.muohio.edu/DingosBreakfastClub/BioMech/BioMechWalk1.html), then traced the outlines in Flash. So now I have a horse walking template. I will position my zebra legs to fit within the rough position of these outlines. There are 12 individual outlines within this animation.

Oh, and I also found another Flash tutorial site that offers character packs. I could buy a walking horse character, but the movements are a little too cheesy. I think I can make my zebra look better by using what I made in Flash. But if anyone wants to get 4-legged motion cycles, go to: http://www.cartoonsmart.com/four_leg_cycles.html

Goodnight!

Sunday, May 4, 2008

Flash Animation Tutorial

I have been doing tutorials all day. Most of them have involved animating a very exciting circle. Here's one that's slightly more interesting.

Saturday, May 3, 2008

Meet my zebra!



Well, it was user error that caused my problems with Flash, not a glitch. I accidently had a button selected. I still have no idea what that function was for. But I have successfully drawn my zebra and positioned the stripes in the right places so I can animate it. I am still a ways off from doing the actual animation. I think I am going back to my tutorials so I don't keep running into stupid problems. I skipped ahead to lesson 11 to draw the zebra and break it into parts.

Thursday, May 1, 2008

Flash Frustrations

It's now 10:46 pm. I spent all day editing cutdowns of the strange days series. I can tell you right now... the last thing I wanted to do was more editing/animating. But I went ahead and came home and banged my head against Flash until now. I keep hitting a wall. I finally posted a message in the Creative Cow forum, but no one is getting back to me. Here's my problem:

I am using the trial version of flash. After a couple hours of using it, I can no longer use my drawing tools properly. Boxes keep appearing when I start to draw. Also when I select all of my drawing, many, many small boxes appear near the bottom. I am a little new to Flash...do I keep somehow hitting a hot key? If so, how do I turn it off? I have tried restarting, copying to another project, and repairing permissions. I keep having to start a new project and draw from scratch. This is the third night in a row, so is it me or a glitch? If it's me, please tell me how to turn off these boxes.


I guess I will go to bed and pray the Creative Cow Fairy will answer my question in the morning.