Yeah, this post is significantly shorter than the past few weeks. With Easter over the weekend I wasn’t in the labs as much as I would normally.
Things are still coming along though. This week the main focus was finishing the animation of the stuff I’ve only blocked in so far. For the most part it was successful:
Jumping into the car? Check.
Create a pole for the trainer to hit her head on? Yup..
Get the reflections into the floor during the growing shot? Got cha’.
Have the boy move when in the pool? Done.
Add people to the leaf scene? There you go.
I even fixed the meeting scene that everyone was having issues understanding.
Of course I got most of that scenes animation done and decided the interior space doesn’t work. So now I have to re-design all those interiors…. yet another thing to do on the list of things to finish.
With that, here is the animatic. For anyone new to my posts, the video posted next week will only be viewable by my advisor until a year has past so it can be submitted to festivals.
When we turn in the animation next week we also have to submit 5 still frames from the short at a high resolution. These are the 5 I think I’m going to go with (though 1 isn’t finished…)
Maybe?
Maybe?
Absolutly
If it looks like it does in my head when done
Absolutely
It really is crunch time now. Everything need to be finished Friday night to get things rendered out.
The finish line is approaching and the view is a bit terrifying.
I didn’t exactly get done everything that I wanted…….
My goal, wish, deadline, was that everything would be animated by today so there would only have to be clean-up and color correction/lighting.
……yeah, no.
Instead I was completely un-inspired to work on the scenes needed for the longest time, but I still got a lot of sh--stuff done for this week. Mostly I went to some of the ‘done’ scenes and did some lighting or background corrections.
That is NOT to say things didn’t get done that had to be.
The leaf scene (which my advisor said to keep) got backgrounds and most of the proper dog motion. (People still need to be added.)
I got more of the pool scene put together.
And I did my best to have no board drawings showing for this week.
Okay, that didn’t quite happen.
There is still drawings for Shop Rite and the end of the Obstacles scene…….
The Puppy Raiser exterior isn’t yet made…….
Then animation wise:
-The obstacles scene still needs the pole that she hits her head on. And a small scene at the end of her glaring at Kramer is needed.
-The Raiser Training Meeting needs work. Period.
-The scene where he leaves his boy is comically blocked in but obviously needs love.
-Background character animation is needed in several places.
…Alright, I’ll admit that when it’s listed like that it isn’t the most encouraging…..
But a lot of stuff also got made for this week, see!
Now there was a little hiccup in the past week with music:
It’s late Sunday night and I still hadn’t received the 2nd draft of the music which I should have gotten on Saturday so I shoot the composer an email.
She responds that the 2nd draft isn’t due till the 15th but she can send me what she has on the revision and will send something more clean in the morning.
I get the new rough soon after but felt compelled to tell her that 2nd was due the 8th and the final draft is the 15th.
There was a bit more words, but what it boiled down to was that she basically got the dates between my deadlines with her and the ones she has with a class mate. I guess that’s what happens when a few of you use the same person……
It worked out fine since I got the music. Like I said, a hiccup.
Oh, as a treat I’ll leave you this.
Sometimes, when I remember, I screen record as I work so I have material for a making-of video. For now I spend this up and threw on a temp song. (Music is absolutely NOT mine - from the anime show Haikyuu!!)
So there you have it people. Only 2 weeks left and we’re hitting the gas full throttle here on out!
First off, I got a draft version of the audio. Unfortunately you won’t be able to hear it in the latest animatic because I was given it as a .mov over top the previous animatic with the voice over, and I don’t want to confuse you - I’m confused enough.
Scenes are actually getting done and for the first time in a long while I’m starting to get excited about the animation.
The graduation scene is basically fully animated. The only bits of animation that are still needed is the life animation of those on stage (still need to make all those people) and the transition from the Wish Flowers to the beginning of the graduation scene in general.
So one of the things I started doing is lighting.
Yeah, I didn’t plan on doing it until the second-to-last week, but I needed to get some done for the hallway scene to know if the dimensional After Effects lights would work or if I would have to get fancy with some blending layers.
Thankfully the lights work well……kind of. The bright light from outside wouldn’t work as a dimensional light (it kept showing up inside the hall even when the door was shut.) So I ended up having to do some 2D ‘lights’ anyway.
The dilemma came when things where starting to look done and I realized I was getting banding again.
This is an issue I’ve had multiple times in the past, occasionally with just using gradients, but most always when 3D lights have been added in. Teachers have noticed it but never offered suggestions on how to get rid of it.
So I asked google.
For this fairly common issue only 3 options exist to help - and several commented that it still didn’t fix the issue completely. Me I went with number 3 since #1 would change the style of my animation and #2 only applies to gradients and not lights.
Basically its all about the bit-depth.
Turns out the default is 8-bit files, and to get rid of banding you need to be at least 16 if not 32. I’ve tried out all and here is my comparison.
8-bit
16-bit
32-bit
Okay, not sure how well you can see it - but I promise there is a difference. If your picture is clear then you’ll see that the first one has noticeable banding on the wall both left and right of the characters. (This is 8-bit) The second one, 16-bit, no longer has the banding behind the figures, and the other side is much better but still there a bit. However, when looking at the 32-bit image there isn’t too much of a change to really warrant the extra depth and render time.
So for now I’ll go with 16-bit unless some scenes still show lots of banding still. Trick will be remembering to change the setting on all the other scene files before rendering…… And I’m only going to change it before the final renders because I did it for this little scene and it took 20 minutes for just over 6 seconds.
Yeah, I should test the look all together, but I’ll work with only looking at test stills because I’m not going to sit there for 40 minutes to render something that I’m going to change.
The last thing that had to get animated, that hadn’t really been touched at all, was the obstacle course. Simple right? Just one scene.
Only I sat down to work on it and nothing.
Zip.
…..okay, not quite.
I got done the basics for the 3/4 person walk and the profile person walk — 2 things that are actually needed in other scenes as well.
I finished those, went to start laying out the different shots, and just started getting so frustrated by the different elements. Where the things I tried in the Hallway scene ended up working, nothing was really lining up here.
And I can NOT cut this scene. Its very important in his story and why he fails.
So I decided to just take a step back from it. I’ll finish it next week but I really just need to figure out the logistics of the elements for the scene. Instead I went back to the first shot and tried fixing the background compositions. just by adding some trees it looks sooooo much better. I ran out of time to get more in there but its coming along.
……I don’t have a still of this so you’ll have to just look at the animatic…….
Right. About the animatic….
I got the first draft of the music over the weekend so you can here that in there too. There are some transition issues and gaps, but for a first pass of music that is workable. Thoughts?
