FINITO!

We have finished. It's been a little hectic but the Lewmeister and Mr Pinnock did it! We had many many problems. Rendering issues in maya with the 'C++ Errors'. We also found out that some of the renders had become corrupted and so we had to re-render them. We also had problems exporting the film. I also had a problem with one particular shot where I had to composite some 2d animation onto a TV, I did it first but it looked rubbish. Then the godly god Simon Butler showed me how to do it properly! We were originally going to have all of our 2d animations in the film but we had to take all of them out except for one because the film was already 10 seconds over the limit. I'm moderately pleased with the look of the film. It was mainly an animation project for Neil and myself, not a modelling, rigging or compositing. Overall, I think it looks good but there is always room for improvement. I would like to thank everyone that helped the project along the way, Dan, Jared, Spence, Stu, Tom, Daryl and Simon.

PRODUCTION SCHEDULE

Hard at work. I finished all my animations on Friday, so Monday and today has been rendering. Which is now complete. It has been pretty frustrating, I must have seen that damn c++ error over ten times today! Allot of the shot's we've had to render in layers, but not in the traditional sense. We had to separate our layers into different projects as we could not have the animations in the environment as it kept imploding. Anyway it is all done with now, after running backwards and forwards across the college trying to get my renders. We have to do the editing now, put the sound and stuff in. I am going to quote my motto for this project..."Must keep going".

Animation Overview

The Animation in this project has been interesting. Blot is a strange character as he is very theatrical. All his movements have to be very grand and expressive. On the flip side, Durg's animation really is quite undramatic as there is no drama or reason for it. He just does things and that's it. I've had to bee quite calculated about my animation. Because we have so many shots and so many movements to fit into 30 seconds, we have had to keep all the animations quite fast passed. This is difficult as you have to take time for anticipation and things like that. Overall, I think my animation is quite mediocre. It's not great, and we don't have allot of time to tweak it as it is due in on Friday. There are many better animators than me in the class, so I won't be expecting Pixar to knock on my door anytime soon!

Animation Vids 5...ummm, they haven't made any more Die Hard movies!

Neil was finding doing the run cycle and the drool shot quite time consuming. Considering they are now half done, I decided to lighten his load and take a couple of his niggly little shots away from him. The first shot I tool was just a close up of Durg. This is supposed to reveal how idiotic he is, so I decided to have him glaring off into the distance with his eyes blinking at different times. There's not much more to say about this shot...does Durg looks dumb, YES!

The second shot is going to be a panning shot closing in on Durg illustrating how blot is now flying through the air towards him. With this in mind, I thought a normal person would look scared if they saw someone flying at them, so i did the opposite and made Durg smile idiotically...priceless. These Durg shots are pretty simple, but have been the most enjoyable pieces of animation in this project so far.

Animation Vids 4: Live Free or Draw Hard

I've tried soooo hard to make this shot look good but I just can't. I've fiddled with the animation and the graph editor and it just looks terrible. I'm really just hoping that I can edit this into the movie so it looks OK.

This next shot was a tough one. This is after the crash when blot realises that the knifes are coming towards him. For some reasons the arms kept freaking out and all I wanted to do was to get them to shrug down. Oh well it looks decent enough in the end.

Animation Vids 3: Draw Hard with a Vengence

Not a whole lot of difference with this shot, I just fiddled with the graph editor to make the timing a little better. I like this shot and I think it works. Obviously there is more I could do but I do not have the time.

This next shot is simply to show blot slipping. It is really quick and really not that impressive. There's not really more I can say about this one!

Animation Vids 2: Draw Harder

This is the shot where Blot finds the knives that he misplaced. Here we see him rumaging through some junk untill he comes across the knives. This is the shot where we reveal to the audience that the audience is not real, but actually a 2d cartoon on a screen. I will import our 2d animations onto the screen in after effects. I thought that the TV could go on the fritz and blot could punch it as a joke.

For some reason the laptop, does not like the scene where blot throws the knives so I'll have to fiddle with that one at college. Instead here is an unimpressive animation of some knifes flying through the air. This will be used in the scene where blot runs past them. It doesn't seem like much now but it will look better with a background and some motion blurring in after effects!

New animation vids!

This is the first shot of Blot from our film. I have now fiddled with the graph editor and make the flick in his wrist more dynamic and fluid.

The Second shot is the shot where Blot walks onstage and remembers he does not actually have the knifes. I wanted there to be a stark difference between his confident showmanship as he walks on to the frustrated realisation that he feels afterwards.

Title Card

I thought it would be a good idea to create a title card for our short. I was inspired by the title Cards to the old Hanna-Barbera cartoons, which seems fitting considering the style of our original designs. In my title card you can see what colour Blot will be in the film, which shall make him visually different from Durg. I originally had him far more darker, but I decided to lighten him up so that he will stand out of the shadows a little more, also it will make him look less threatening. I also chose a circus style font as they are putting on a show, after all.

The last two weeks have been pretty hectic. PPd presentations, nightmares with making a DVD, the mammoth Rave on Air, a contextual studies presentation and an essay. With that all in mind, the progress on the project has been slow, however, since that stuff is all over I have been busting my gonads trying to get this work done. So by the end of Friday I have pretty much finished all of my animations...yay! I've been tweaking them today. Neil's got two more shots to do and I have faith that we will finish this movie...scratch that we WILL finish this movie. I'm getting ready to render the shots on Monday. On Thursday I rented out a sound effects hard drive from the store with my buddy Sam. I've found most of the sound effects. We still have to keep pushing.