SCENE 142-148....IN COLOUR

For the newly textured and shall i say unbalanced statue, i managed to add acouple more extra frames to increase the anticipation before falling onto impact. All it took was just copying the scenes which were line tested already and paste them just after, it couldn't get harder than that.
For gilbert i added more facial dash lines and incresed the load of question marks buzzing around his head, just to add more to the obvious "confused" look. do have a look.

SCENE 149-151....IN COLOUR

The scenes from 149-151 have definately in my mind improved when colours have been added. I am able to fully emphasise each scene in the way i wanted to interpret it. It's not so much animation in the end but alot of close ups of facial expressions from gilbert, the last moments seen before he is killed.
If your not aware what the dark area which is hanging over him, its the shadow taken from the china doll statue, when he realises that its about to fall on him. A brief reminder of what 149-151 is all about.

SCENE 152-172....IN COLOUR

Its been just a week since i came back to the "hat" scene as ill call it. Finally i textured a colour version. To be honest texturing over 172 frames took a very long time and very time consuming. At one point i almost lost motivation from all the repetition of texturing several similar scenes. But as you see now i've managed to slow down the hat alot more and enhance some more features in the scene to compliment the fish tank, such as bubbles, bamboos, bansai etc.

SCENES 152-172-TEST 01.

I wanted to close the animation with, just his hat floating slowly up to the surface. The idea originally was going to be a scene drawn where it shows gilbert being crushed and flatthen by the statue. But i felt that if i did interpret that scene instead of the hat incident it might of been to obvious, and thats the approach i didnt want to take. I felt that the hat was a significant element to the character and to see the hat come off gilberts head for the very first time, symbolizes that something has happen to the fish either inflicted by someone or just a fatal accident.

For the colour update, i will try to slow down this sequence, alot more seeing that i want the hat to float up ever so slowly, so more work to be done.

SCENES 149-152-TEST 01.

I mentioned before, that the scene i worked on played extremeley quick, did scene just below also did the same. So it was yet again adding more in betweens, and slowly down the duration of the clip.

This clip plays really fast still, but is just an experiment and a working progress to come. I do feel for this part, it does have some really nice close-up shots of gilbert, because this is the part where his life is about to end, being crushed or shall i say squish by the china doll statue itself.

But as soon as the colours are in incorporated for this part, i feel the scene will look a little stronger and clearer to the eye. So more to come very soon.

SCENES 142-149-TEST 01.

To achieve what i wanted in this scene became a little tricky, because here we have one character (the statue) whos been nudge, and is slowly losing its balance, rocking side to side. On the other hand theres gilbert who steps back with a nervous and confuse expression on his face, still trying to work out what he has done.

When this scenes does hit on to colour, i will work alittle more with the positioning for both especially the statue and maybe a little tweak and there for gilbert.

SCENES 131-141-TEST 01.

For my first attempt of line testing this scenes, i had to add alot of extra keyframes just to slow down the pace of the animation, in order for the audience to see exactly what is going on in the scene.It was the part where the fish can no longer tolerate the constant blanking of the feamale, so decides to answer back with a little action by tapping her on the shoulder, but what happens next continues straight ths scene.

Adobe Lecture Day.

All about adobe, I came in today purposly for the the flash animation lecture on CS4. an update to last year's software.
It's been a good couple of years since i last touched up on flash, so i took this lecture as a refresh of what i had forgotten.

I needed some advice as well as some vital information, that could help with my project. I must say that the overrall presentation was very professional with some interesting features shown on the program.
The lecturer mostly focused on compositing live action footage, a very brief outline on basic character animation with simple bone rigging.

I found it quite useful but would of wish he could elaborate more on the topic with character animation, as i was more interested in that area of flash.

But overrall a little insight of what to expect in flash CS4. got me thinking whether to purchase the software?

SCENES 114-130-TEST 01.

I was particularly chuffed in the way this sequence turnted out. I know for the meantime that this is just a rough video upload, but when it came to drawing and animating the scene i knew exactly where i wanted to position the character and roughly how many scenes i will need to draw up.
Just a quick brief of what scene 114-130 was all about. It's the part where hes realise and felt rejection from the statue. As he lets go of the sculpted pebble slowly hitting to the ground, he feels this sense of frustration, and begins to swim around it, in a very upset manner without taking his eyes off her.

SCENES 101-113-TEST 01.

Another attempt to my close up shots. The opening shot to 101 is Gilbert turning at a 90 degree angle whilst still on one knee presenting the heart shaped pebble to her. The position that he's in is an irony of a proposal minus the ring!!!!

As i mentioned earlier on, the CU shot was focusing on Gilbert eyes and cut back to the china dolls face. The purpose to this scene was he's presenting a gift to her but however, statue has not responded nor.even moved, and gilbert looking back at us,audience asking himself "what is going on?" "why aint she appreciating the gift?" nor responding etc.

This hopefully should be a comical part to the scene, if executed really well. There are more improvements to be worked on for this scene, but the first upload is just to show how my work is progressing

SCENES 89-100-TEST 01.

As gilbert is attempting to sculpt a heart shaped pebble, i didn't want to show to the audience how he was making the model but a shot just focusing on his back,and his arms moving in and out, side by side, up and down in a frantic manner.
As this scene runs, my intentions is to play it quick but also giving the audience to establish what exactly is happening.
I couldn't really comment any further on this particular scene, but stating that this was pretty straight forward to animate, all it took was drawing the first set of hands to the desired position, and retracing but moving the arms ever so slightly and so, for the following scenes.

I added dash lines and fart smoke, as i call them to emphasize how vigorously fast his hands are moving.

SCENES 49-88-TEST 01.

Scene 49-88 challenged me to my limits, and i must say took the most time out of my planning schedule. The reasons being, was i wanted to animate the fish character from the moment he takes off from the ground and swims swiftly towards a pebble he's had fixated on. I had to consider most of the animation principles, such as the weight had to be right and distributed in the right position, adding anticipation just before he takes off and squash and stretch as he swims along. As you can see, the set of numbers and gap is quite big henced why this scene was ever so time consuming, ididnt want to split it because yet again it's just one big scene and less confusion, dilemma.
The purpose to this is scene leads straight after 48. Ill like to interpret this moment where Gilbert is trying to impress her so, an idea is struck, he could sculpt a reasonable sized pebble in a heart shape and present it to her, but still unashamedly aware that the statue isnt real. the question is what happens next.

Update...

So far i've managed to cover scenes 1-10 and half way through scenes 11-20, just alittle more to do, but going well, which is a positive side for a change.

i feel the storyboard in which ive drawn up is helping tremendously, because i'm using it as a guide as well as following it scene by scene to keep my frames in order.

But however just a couple more frames to draw up and complete from scenes 11-20, which will have to be completed tomorrow, just to maintain my scheduling.

SCENES 42-48-TEST 01.

For this scene i decided to put together scenes 42-42.5 and scenes 43-48, because as i went through my storyboard again, i noticed that both scenes interweaved with each other and just to avoid confusion in the long run, i scanned each one, containing them in one folder, labelled as shown above.
This part is where hopfully the first soundtrack comes in place. The idea is a close up shot of the china doll statue, starting below at feet position and slowly tracking up ending at a frame shot of just her face. Whislt this is playing, i want to in the final render to cut in and out shots of gilbert the fish's reaction shots.
Another close up is also placed for the fish, and only the eyes are animated which swiftly shoots up his eye lids followed by a set of heart-shaped pupils. Hopfully if i can find a good sound FX of a fruit machine "CLING" and in incorporate it in that last scene i was discussing, then i got something good going. Just need to find them suitable sound WAVs now.

SCENES 10-41-TEST 01.

This was the opening scene with the hand and the first revcealing shot of the statue. Drawing and positioning the hand whislt holding the model wasn't quite as hard to animate by hand i just ask myself where i would want the statue to land, which as you can see is at center point of the fish tank.
So from the scenes i just drew and animated, i just re-used the scenes and trace over each one slowly moving the hand up until it hit off the page. So all in all thats how i effectively achieved this animated scene.
Right now this is just a test one, which is a very rough upload,with just a faint outline, and no colour. But in the coming weeks another updated version with be uploaded but this time in colour, stay tune.

Most of the first set of videos, wouldn't make much sense. Seeing that it doesn't contain any colour, and some characters are unfinished. This was purposely done because i used it as a temporary outline, a template guide for positioning each character when it came to texturing all images, so that each scene will be in position when played together as one whole sequence.

THURS.30th APR.09

Today's session was on using and producing a working production schedule on MS project. I already briefly mentioned that i typed one up very roughly, and i must say has helped me very much, but however this version, jared introduce to us was far more structured and a more on a professional side.
The newly typed up schedule is to be used in the microsoft project:-

Pre-pro-Research
Planning
Concepts-Characters/Sets/environments
Storyboards
Mood boards
Animatic
Model Sheets? Characters/sets etc.

Production- Open up 2D
Animate- block out main key frames -scenes 1-10
-scenes 11-20
-scenes 21-30
-scenes 31-40
Animate- Draw out characters- facial/body gestures etc
outline everything/scan every scene
Texture everything on photoshop- lighting, working with colour

Post-Pro- Editing on flash?/after effects?/premier pro.?
Sound/music/foley effects
touch up on dvd menu.
burn dvd