Most of us met up at my house today. 

We did some stuff. 

We're all switching to digital apparently.

I tried, and I kind of miss traditional. 

More control I guess? 

Still a lot more to go.. 

I'm pretty worried.. 

My gears need to start kicking in. 

More work, less slack. 

5 more shots to go. 

Oh the joy. 

Update on progress

HAHA, finally i am done with 3 shots of my scene. I still have 6 more to go. But i am quite happy with the results of my drawing. haha! I will be working on my in betweens on monday already, i am quite sure i can finished my task on time. For 3D, as i have posted on my earlier posts, i have modeled the fridge, the table, the shelfs at the back of the counter and the car already. 

Right now what concerns me most is my lip syncing. HAHA. good luck to me! As for my entire group, everyone is doing very well. HAHA, we are all feeling the pressure and stress working with p3 and anim2 together, but, we'll definitely be able to pull through it. haha. 

Same as Kevin, this is the first time i am actually working on a 2D animation work. Its really tedious, but its turning out awesome. haha, im really happy. KEVIN! haha, this is the first time you're working with us, i am glad that you're enjoying yourself=D keep it up!! =D

Me doing 2D! :D

Well, I finally felt useful today actually. I finished a shot where the dude reaches out to grab a can of soup from the shelf. It's in the opening sequence, basically the first shot of the interior of the shot. Since we weren't showing the character, and showing only the character's hand, I used the hand which I had used in P2 and re-rigged it for better control (though afterwards I realised that I didn't need to). I modeled the soup can and textured it and made a few copies and framed the shot. I animated the hand pulling the soup can out and then applied the cell shaders and rendered in cell-shaded style.

Well, that's not it. I took some of Angie's hand-drawn frames and cleaned it up in Photoshop. This was a tedious process, but I enjoyed it nonetheless. I then colored the frames. I wasn't too sure of the two-tone shading, so I just did the base color and Angie or someone else would be applying the second tone. But I'm trying my best to do a clean job so that there will be less work for anyone to do when they do the second toning.

Pretty cool huh... never imagined myself doing this, but here I am, helping out and feeling good that at least I'm doing something :)

Update Progress

update on the production

Angie and I have completed the key frames of 2 shots of our scenes. only two of us in the 2D lab, the rest in 3D so don't know what the update for them is.

Raj has completed the 3D arm rig from what i know, that's good. meanwhile we're still trying to get our scenes done.

soon to move on to in betweens, i'm thinking of using digital methods for that, Angie doesn't seem to mind traditional all the way. whatever suits fine i guess.

by far this is the best and also most complicated animation i've worked with, so i'm really looking forward to see it's completion. whether that might be in time or not i leave it up for grabs, but i definitely am having the most fun i've had animating now yet.

Switching to digital

Switched from traditional animation to digital. Raj suggested that we switch to save time spent scanning and inking. I kind of agreed and switched over. Overall I think there isn't much of a difference, just need to get used to the wacom.

I did some shots today and realised that when animating, it's best to start with the first and the last frames and fill in the center portions afterwards.

Yes, if you were wondering, I have been drawing my frames linearly. I feel that be doing so, i do not have control over how long each motion takes. This isn't very good as timing is really important in animation. Lesson learnt, and I'm doing things the other way round now.

*Note*
The last computer at the senior's corner of the 2d animation lab is really laggy. I'm not saying that the computers in the 2d lab are lousy, it's just that that particular piece of hardware is exceptionally slow. It takes ages to save and keeps giving me the "program is not responding" rubbish.

Drawing!!!

Right now, i have started drawing the important keyframes of my shots. Not the in betweens yet, because it would be easier to have all the important ones blocked out first. I cannot draw really well, but im trying! haha. Last weekend, i drew the keyframes at home without a lightbox. So i had to press the paper onto the previous drawing, and draw it slowly, so that its like how we use transparency paper. But the paper im using is quite think, haha. But i still managed to draw a few out. 

When i went back to school, and used the light box. It was so much better. haha. I am very worried about my shots where there are lip syncing. Because i know i cant do it very well. But still, i will try my very best to make it nice=D. 

Regarding the 3D car, haha. Its my first time modeling a car. I realised its different from other props or organic modeling before. To me, it was much harder. Its not that I am dragging, but really, its very hard to do. haha. Trying my best to fix the problems of the car now. So Raj, be a little bit more patient. haha, i know you need my car for your first scene, very fast one. lol, wait wait. HAHA, im not so pro, but i am trying my best to do the car. LOL.....AT LEAST TELL ME LA.

Animatics and such...

Today we had a group discussion:

- Angie showed all of us the new storyboards that she created based on the feedback gathered at the proof of concept presentation. She took good care to ensure continuity and pacing in her shots and I thought they worked pretty well. She also worked on the characters to create character sheets to help the 2D animators later to refer to.

- Greg showed some 3D models that he created for the set. Apparently, he's still working on the car.

- Kevin showed the test animation he was working on - the shot of the cashier. It was still works in progress.

- Dion suggested that we do animatics so that it would be easier to gauge on the timing of the entire film. I offered to take on this role as I will not be doing much on 2D animation, except maybe clean-up work... it all depends.

- I wrote out the schedule and a proper timeline. All keyframe animation to be finished by this coming Thursday by each individual and the in-betweens to be done by Sunday. Meanwhile, I will be working on the animatics (including editing, sound mixing and editing so that in the last phase, its all about "dropping" the rendered clips over the animatics), and all the 3D elements.

So based on that, we dispersed. I'm still working on the animatics. Since our film isn't really a funny kind of movie, I wanted to give it an eerie suspenseful feeling through the opening. The opening really impacts an audience, and I wanted to make it pretty powerful. Thus, I took Angie's drawings and started piecing up the animatics. At the same time, I looked for sound effects and background score to bring about that suspense feel to the story. It turned out that the opening sequence takes up about roughly 35 seconds of the running time. And I don't plan on shortening it simply because I feel that the impact would be lost.

The sounds I particularly chose are those with heavy emphasis on bass. If viewed through a system with normal speakers, the impact would be entirely lost. But if heard on a decent enough system with an attached/extra sub-woofer, the audience is able to feel the impact better - or at least that's what I feel.

I'm done with the opening. I'm now going to work on the next few scenes. Animatics should be done by tomorrow, after which I can resume my 3D work.

SPLIT WORK

Raj - Opening ( Shots 01-08 )

Angie - Scene 1 ( Shots 09 -13 )

Dion - Scene 2 ( Shots 14-20 )

Gregory - Scene 3 ( Shots 21-29 )

Angie - Scene 4 ( Shots 30-33 )

Dion - Scene 4 ( Shots 34-35 )

Kevin - Scene 4 ( Shot 36 )

Scene 5 ( Shots 37-44 )

Yeah it's ugly. Bear with it. Hahah. I even drew the uneven table. OH WELL. 

Currently i am working on some of the 3D models for the minimart. The table where the cashier will be, the shelfs behind the cashier, the fridge and some table items. The car above is the improved car.