So I just started my latest full animation, after months of being out of commission. It's nothing more than a short gif really, but it works like a charm.
(I would upload it as a .mov, but blogger won't let me upload videos for some reason.)
So, I began this video on Sunday, and worked on it for about two hours. I got the idea in my head when I decided that I wanted to experiment with water for a little bit, so this was the product of that idea.
The hour before the two hours was spent conceptualizing the idea, and thinking of timing. I drew up some diagrams on how a rock would fall in the water, and how long it would take for it to drop, using video reference to help me with the timing.
I also did my best to try and understand what happens when something does splash. How does the water react? Does the rock significantly slow down when it gets in the water, or does it still go at a fast pace?
Through this, I learned that there's this thing called buoyancy; a force that pushes things out of the water, however because the rock's gravitational force (what pushes it down) is stronger than the buoyancy, it sinks. So I realize that the rock will slightly slow down upon impact with the water, and as it sinks, but only slightly.
Also, with the water, I figured that when the rock sinks in the water it creates a temporary crater in the pool. The side of this crater will shoot up rapidly, unleashing the first splash of water, and making the rings in the pool.
It's at this point, when the rock is fully submerged in the water, that water is rapidly filling the hole. So rapidly that it shoot out a huge jet of water from inside the ring, making the second splash. The water from this splash spreads out and usually will create multiple little splashes that will have the same effect.
For this animation however, I decided to take it easy with the splashing and just used a small rock at close up. However, I drew this thing entirely straight ahead, no pose to pose or extra hours put in to fix timing. But it was fun to do this and I look forward to experimenting with water again.
To all other animators wanting to try an experiment like this, I have to recommend these videos to you, they're great for understanding the nitty gritty details of how the water works.
So school is now over for me, and there is much I can talk about of the school year which kept me away. First, the final project for a video class I had. We were instructed to make a +4 minute film using a camera and over such devices.
Unlike everyone else though, I decided to work alone, with only myself and my family as cameramen. I decided I would test out some more After Effects and put some animation live action mix up to the test.
So here's the finished product.
Making the thing:
To start off, I actually didn't start this in my video class. I actually got this idea from an old animatic from my animation pre-production class.
This film was made to be as close to the animatic as possible, but it had to be stretched for time as well, along with the issues of one of the characters being a floating head.
So my goals were pretty straightforward:
1. Think of ways to stretch time.
2. Film.
3. Work out how to make animated character appear.
4. Mix audio together and record dialogue.
Step One: This was a mix of difficult and easy, as it took me about a week to think of how to extend this thing. I would come up with ideas usually on the spot, and would think of extra dialogue I could add when a situation needed it. However, my goal was to always have an extra bit of humor to the extension; it couldn't just be there to fill time or it was a waste. Some of the best gags, I feel came from the extensions, such as the face slap joke, and the commercial. However, I did find the first scene featuring me on the couch to go on just a little too long,
Step Two: This was aggravating. My mother was my camera crew for the majority of the filiming, and she had a lot of trouble understanding my instructions, forcing me to use her as an example for me to film so that she could understand it. She would often complain about the many takes that we had to do, and the many shots that went bad. However, I'd say my time with her was quite fun. Certain shots, like the character coming down the hallway, needed my sister to help make them work because the early shots were usually messed up in some way that I couldn't notice. Then you have the shots with the character alone, those are all stills I took myself because I wasn't involved in the shot. The same counts for the first walk through the kitchen with the credits.
Step Three: This part was just a little more simpler than actually taking the footage, because I actually had some experience using Adobe After Effects before. I chose for the character to be a still rather than fully animated since I didn't want to waste my time with a fully animated character, which certainly was an easier route.
During the still shots I could usually keep the guy's movement limited and let his facial expressions take over the humor department. Whenever he had to join me in a shot though, that's when trouble began. The first shot I worked with was when he tackled me and I found myself having to manipulate multiple points of the movement so that he remained in consistent enough contact with me.
Then the next shot with us together was the one where he was in front of me. Making that look fairly realistic was in all sense a pain in my ass. I needed to feather him away from my hair while at the same time making him not completely fade away or be too clearly cut. Not to mention I had to move him around with the camera and alter his mask so that he could remain consistent with my hair. It was probably the second most difficult shot to accomplish.
The most difficult shot was easily the one where he punches me. Not only did I have to make his fist come towards me, I had to realistically increase it in size as I moved it closer to the camera. And then there was that screen shaking effect that made his fist look like I cut a piece of it off with scissors. But there wasn't much I could do about that at the time sadly. Time was not on my side and I had to get this project out soon. So I proceeded to finish up the shot with the cutout fist which you can easily notice if you just pay attention to what's going on in the shot. Of course, this is my favorite shot as it leads into the K.O gag, (another extension I was happy with).
The other shots that involved him was one with a sword being over him, but that was easy to mask over using two masks instead of one.
Aside from that, the rest of his shots were never as intensive as those ones where he needed to be by me.
Step Four: First thing's first, none of that music was mine. It was all copied from popular games. The sound effects were all ripped from various sources.
The dialogue was all mine though. I was all the voices involved in the recording. I was the live action actor, and I was the floating head as well.
However, I bring this up because I ran into a big problem involving the audio in these releases. What I did not expect was that my dialogue was usually coming in too low; lower than the music, causing a lot of dialogue to be hard to hear, and mixing these tracks together a simple pain. I had to rerecord some dialogue even, because the original was in such a unsalvageable state, there was nothing I could do but that.
And I didn't even notice this error until pretty late into the process, when some music tracks were mixed with audio tracks. What a chore that was.
So for all it's worth, it was a fairly frustrating event that really exhausted me, and stole my time away from my practices involving animation and the like, but it was fun to do, and the final product isn't that bad of a mess. I won't be eager to do something like this again though, that's for certain.
