Merci!

I'm 99% sure nobody checks these blogs anymore, but I did this drawing to thank you guys for an awesome class, and to celebrate having successfully completed the course. So, thanks you guys!

Pee Ess

This is probably my last post on this blog, so I wanted to say thank you all for visiting here and giving me very valid comments. I hope this quarter wasn't too rough for everyone... >_<;;


Anyways, I'm going to (shamelessly) plug my art blog, because I'll keep updating that and if you guys could leave me comments and criticism there I would be all sorts of grateful <3>w<)

http://saratalmadge.blogspot.com/

Check it! (please)

Thanks again and have a great summer!

Sara <3

Post Mortem

Even though I really enjoyed this class and feel like I put in a lot of effort, there are still a couple issues that I would tackle differently if I were to take this course again. First of all, I would take more time to work on my character animation, so I could end up with a film I can put on my reel. I was more focused this quarter on getting a 1.30 minute film done in 5 weeks than getting quality animation, so even though I am satisfied with my film as an outcome of a Flash crash-course I feel it does not reflect my abilities as an animator. In relation to the first, if I were to make another short film in Flash I would explore more artistic styles that lend themselves better to being animated in Flash (lineless puppets, solid backgrounds, etc). I feel the style I chose was not making the best use of the digital animation medium, and made clean-up harder than it should have.

Having said all that, I really did enjoy this course and if Digital Cel Animation 2 is being sometime in the upcoming Winter or Spring quarters I will definitely take it. It was a good (as well as necessary) course to further my education as a 2d animator, and more importantly, I had a lot of fun with my assignments.

Fin!

My film is complete! Goodbye, finals! >w<




Oh, Marie Antoinette. I'll miss you.

Al....most...

I'm 2 scenes (1 still shot and 1 re-do of a shot I've already done) away from finishing.... I'm so delirious, but it looks like I'll get it done by tomorrow (hopefully). I cannot wait.

Title slide

So I spent a while last night working out a title slide, and now I need help deciding between the 2. I know no one's checking the blogs at this point, but whoever happens to be reading this... help me decide!


This one's the one I'm using for now. I think I like it better, but I'd like some opinions.



This one's pretty much the same, except there's a pair of earrings where M.A.'s symbol is.

They just keep on comin'

I just realized that I only have 2 more weeks in the dorm I currently reside in, which means I need to get all of my stuff into summer storage ASAP. To facilitate this process, I will get my short done by Sunday at the latest. Later dates not accepted. So tune in this weekend and you shall see what I've been working on!

(in the meantime, have some more screencaps)





I added backgrounds to all the scenes I have so far, and finished the scene where poor Leonard is snubbed by our dear M.A. At least she's satisfied in the end, right?

Oh noes!

So I made relatively steady progress over the weekend and in class this morning, and right when I thought everything was going fine I went and lost my flash drive. The flash drive with the last 3 days of work. I usually back everything up, but somehow it slipped my mind this time so now I'm being (unfairly) punished. ::tear::

I was able to redo everything I lost today, however, so I guess all is back on track. Since I still can't upload .MOVs, here are some more screenshots.





Now all I have to do is animate M.A's arms, add an insert shot, and then I've got 3 more cuts that are all just stills. I can do this! It should all be done by the end of this weekend, which is cutting it pretty close >_<;;

Clips

Here's a quick scene I worked on in class today. Trust me, I have a lot more done, but it doesn't really work without sound so this is all I'm showing for now. I'm sure I'll have more to show by next week.

Keep on

Keepin' on. Have some updates. My mac can't export my flash files as .avis, so I only have some screen shots to show for the time being. Hopefully it's proof enough (until I can get my hands on a windows, and then I'll actually update with a video).

Updates

Not much in the way of ground-breaking updates- I'm just trucking right along. I feel like I'm going slightly slower than I should, so I'll be trying to speed that up. I'm one lip-sync away from getting a frame-by-frame shot animated, which means I'll have one more to frame-by-frame, and then the rest will be all puppet animation which should go a lot faster.

So that's me. How are you?

Background 1

One out of two background for my final. This is the more complex one and the other shouldn't take half as long. ...Hopefully..

Animatic!

That is all.

LipSync

Marie wishes more people w0re funny coats.

Walk cycle

Here's Marie flashin' a little leg. Hoorah.

Storyboards

Crappy, crappy storyboards.



I will excuse my own crappiness, however, because I'll be doing an animatic to work on the timing and stuff. So... it's not like I'm planning poorly. >_>;

Leonard Hautier

Finally. Apparently I don't need 2 model sheets but I've only got 2 characters in this short so I figured I might as well go for it. Leonard took long enough, but I'm pretty confident with his design.



I'm also going to go back to using black outlines for my characters. I really liked the way colored lines looked, but I hear it's a pain to frame-by-frame colored lines and somehow it never looks right when I vectorize the puppets. Le sigh.

Shejule

Apparently I don't know how to make a basic calendar template that would show up properly on the internets, so here's a really hard-to-read breakdown of my schedule from now until the end of the quarter:

• April 15th: Stroyboards due
• April 17th: Animatic due
• April 22nd: Backgrounds rendered
• April 27th: Puppets due
• May 4th: Scene 1 animated
• May 11th: Scene 2 animated
• May 18th: Scene 3 animated
• May 27th: Finals due (in-class presentation)

I'm going to try and get things done (esp. the pre-production stuff) sooner than the deadlines so I can get more time to animate. Hopefully. I think I need a bigger buffer period :-/

Leonard

Some preliminary sketches for Leonard, the Queen of France's trusted hairdresser and gay companion.




None of these designs are what I want him to look like, but hopefully I'll get him right.

Jump!

Tutorial 02, aka Jump! Too bad my jumps aren't exciting enough to deserve that exclamation point...



This is the tutorial done following the professor's example, and using his puppet. The puppet looks weird, but the jump just looks dumb.



This is the tutorial done using my own puppet. You may remember this drawing from my color tests >_>;; Somehow this video came out all compressed and stuff, but I have no idea how to fix it. The puppet was imported at 300 dpi and then resized, but it still looks weird. Huh.

Either way, I think I'm slowly but surely getting the gist of this Flash thing. I'm also starting to think it's just like Maya, where the more you keep the program out of the animating process, the better. What do you, my classmates, think?