Mid-summer

I heard public schools start school tomorrow. I'm so glad we don't start until 8/24! But they sort of have it lucky they start on a Friday (seriously, what's the point of starting on a Friday?). Anyway, hope everyone's having a fun vacation. I'm currently working on a comic for a competition. Check out my first WIP!

Sqawk completed!

Finally, Sqawk is complete! :D Glad to have it off my shoulders as I'm beginning to find lots of flaws and stupid things in this "story". It's not supposed to be sad by the way. Next would be to try get it onto mini-DV.

Scenes 1 to 4

So here's what I have so far that I'm submitting to the festival next week: scenes 1 to 4. They're not perfect yet and I'm just trying to finish as many scenes as possible before I go back to fix the tiny nitpicky details.

Scenes 1 to 4

And here are two versions of the poster I did.

 

Bluewater Multimedia

There was a feature on Bluewater Multimedia today on KGMB9. It also has a video clip of the news segment on that article. Their productions were so cool, I liked the fish head a lot. And here's their site with some more videos of their work. My favorite is the first Mobi one.

New stuff

I have two pieces of new stuff today! I've added the adult stage flying for scene 7. And also the complete scene 1. There's lots of repeat frames for scene 1 right now so I'll be trying to add some more in-betweens for it later. Also, the timing right before the mother goes ?! is too short but I'm too tired to change that right now.

Am sick. Gots the runny nose symptom. Animating was annoying today because I had to sneeze and blow my nose every minute. Not fun. Gonna sleep early, let's hope this symptom disappears by tomorrow. Good night!

More and more and more work

So the end of the semester crunch is starting to hit me. In addition to the animation film, I must write a second short story for English as well as editing my other other story and essay. Final exam and oral for Japanese next month which Sensei said is going to be super hard. (-_-;) Burning a DVD for George's video editing class which includes fixing up all my previous editing assignments, I think that's due next week. And while doing that, I was planning to finish my web design for a contest, maybe enter DA's art challenge, and get to drawing my short manga. orz And putting up with procrastination of course. Hehehe, I find myself doing the following. From K-ON episode 3, it made me LOL.



I wish I had a clone. Lots and lots of 'em!

Spectacular Papermation

There's not much that looks good for this season of anime in Japan but Eden of the East caught my eyes. Particularly, its ending sequence. The sequence is an animation, each frame made with paper cut outs. Kind of like what we did with stop motion except everything with paper. Hence, papermation. But it's so awesome that I had to share it! :D



The other anime that seems to be popular is K-On which is animated by Kyoto Animation (who did Lucky Star, Air, Kanon, Clannad, etc) and I heard some pretty good things about it. By the way, Umineko no Naku Koro ni is slated to air in July.

What I have...so far...

I want my Spring Break back! \(=A=)/ Yes, it's true. This is what I have so far, the teen stage. He can fly a bit but still not perfect because he hasn't gotten the hang of landing yet. The first part he flies good and then lands okay. I will have to add more key frames so his landing is more slow. The second part, his flying is kind of weird. Not to mention, I have to make his landing here even more slow because he screws up. He's supposed to be flapping his wings rapidly. He's tired so flapping does not propel him and that's why he's slowly coming down. But he's not entirely falling. Do I make sense? I wanted to make him just slightly off the ground before he's totally exhausted and just falls.

KFC Fried Chicken

I don't know why but for the entire time while animating this, I was thinking of him as fried chicken. Because I was hungry. And his wings looked like chicken wings so I just had to imagine fried chicken. /random (._.;)>

Scene 7 Layout (Redo)

Here's my new layout. I really liked the baby form bouncing, I focused too much on that and got carried away. I wish I can keep him in baby form for the whole thing.

Scene 7 Layout

Here's my layout and (some) keyframes of scene 7. I think this is my hardest scene with all the flying. But there's not much composition and layout to play with. Basically this scene shows him growing up by learning to fly by himself. The first 3 jumps are in baby form, second 3 are in teen form. He doesn't know how to fly yet in those 2. The last one is his grown up form where he swoops in and out.

Teen form is the same as baby form? Yup. But it's bigger. :> Nah, I'll change that later.

Alien duck + bad day

So here is my bird. I have no name for him yet. Rawk? I really like the beak and didn't want to add eyes because I was afraid it would ruin the whole thing. And what do you know? It DID! D: I tried Linda's way of making round eyeballs and then gouging his face to make holes and then sticking in sockets and eyeballs. But it didn't work because the foil is right underneath. So I squashed the eyeballs and added lame attempts of eyelids around the whole thing... So now it looks like an alien...duck. And it's still so bumpy, it's really hard to smooth the thing and I keep leaving fingerprints and more bumps as I touch it more. And the feet... I had a heck of a time doing his legs and the feet were the last thing on my mind was not on my mind. Just...uh...pretend they're invisible. :D Ya, I'm probably the only "artist" in the world who hates crafts and ceramics with a passion. :P




I don't think I will bake it. The head is too heavy so I'm afraid it will fall off. Or something will break. Because ceramics is always like that. Are we supposed to bring it on Tuesday? I have a full day of classes so I cannot guarantee that it will look like this by the time class starts... Heh...

Edit:
Oh yeah, I was supposed to have one wing up. But I screwed up the arm wire by twisting it again and again. Same with the leg. And the hips. Haha, if you take away all the clay, I swear the skeleton is so retarded.

Final Animatic

I guess here's my final animatic. I've decided to stick with the bird design above. But he has a blob design for the baby version. Without the time travel, it seems like just another generic story. :(

Out with the Dream and in with the Rawk!

So I changed my story. Because Dream was pointless. The animatic is there if you click the above image. So here's the story, kind of long.

It starts off with some eggs hatching in a nest. There are 3 birds that go "chirp" but this one plumper bird goes "rawk" instead which scares the mother and she kicks him out. Rawk wonders why he's so different and he tries to go "chirp" but cannot. He grows up by himself learning to get food and fly. One day while getting food on a tree branch, a random squirrel falls onto the branch sending him flying into a tree in the hole. He falls down through this hollow tree and when he looks up outside, he sees his baby self in the nest. It seems he traveled back in time so he gets this idea to make his old self stay with the family. He goes through the tree one more time and then he flies onto the nest to make his baby self not go "Rawk". The mom finds him and kicks him out. He tries again this time wrapping his wings around baby Rawk but again, the mom finds him and kicks him out. The third time, he disguises as an egg with the words "Shut Up" on it hoping it can do egg-to-egg communication but same thing, he gets kicked out. Finally giving up, he goes back to the current time. He feels down but a girl bird flies next to him and likes his "Rawk" sound. She flies off, intending him to follow and Rawk feels that it's not so bad being different after all.

And here's my character turn around. I know it's really bad but I never imagined it'd be this difficult! I had trouble drawing the side angles when he's waggling from side-to-side. My new film poster will come later this week!

Dream Animatic

Film Idea

So here are the endings I came up with. I cannot decide which one. The first one doesn't feel that much like an ending though. And it doesn't feel like there's any climax either.

Scenario 1:

1. Boy is unhealthy from studying for a big exam.
2. Cannot get to sleep with a mind full of exam stuff.
3. Starts counting sheep but becomes strange and random experiences.
4. He "wakes up" and realizes he finally somehow got to sleep.
5. His mind is a complete blank during the test.
6. Can only remember his dream sequences (letters on test jumping out at him).
7. All these letters and numbers crowd around him.
8. "Enough is enough" and he clears his head at that instant.
9. Starts doing his best on the test.

Scenario 2:

1. Boy is unhealthy from studying for a big exam.
2. Cannot get to sleep with a mind full of exam stuff.
3. Starts counting sheep but becomes strange and random experiences.
4. He "wakes up" and realizes he finally somehow got to sleep.
5. His mind is a complete blank during the test.
6. Can only remember his dream sequences (letters on test jumping out at him).
7. All these letters and numbers crowd around him and he collapses from exhaustion.
8. He wakes up at the hospital frantic.
9. The nurse gives him a note from the Professor specifying and appointment to retake the test.
10. He frantically reaches for his bag to study but the nurse takes it away saying he needs to rest up.
11. The nurse gives him a tray of food and an apple and then leaves.
12. He looks at the food wearily and sighs, then starts eating slowly.

Film Poster and Character Turn Around

So here is my poster and character turn around. It is called "Dream" (tentative title). Synopsis: A young man studied too much for an exam and cannot get to sleep spends the night in bed desperately thinking of solutions to sleep.






I think this will be pretty fun to animate. Can't wait! I'm actually dreading making the maquette though... I suck at crafts and ceramic-type art. D:

Final 3D dialogue

Here is the updated dialogue assignment as of 2/3/09! I can't wait to see everybody else's! :L Honestly, I actually found this to be funner than drawing 100+ frames. But that's because we didn't have to rig the rig ourselves...

3D poses

So here are my poses for the 3D dialogue assignment. It's very rough actually. As for the camera angles, here are the thumbnails below.