Monday, August 30, 2010

Animation Tests and Compositing

The first update is some animation of Sam as a whale. I should point out that all artwork is being produced digitally, so the backgrounds and pencil tests and full animation are being done in Photoshop, Toon Boom and After Effects.






The next video is a composite of the animated whale in an undersea environment created in After Effects. The character of the girl will also be placed in the shot.



Sam also takes the form of a dinosaur. The first 2 videos are digital pencil tests, followed by a version with some colour, then the animation composited into a background. The colour and background are at a WIP stage, with some refining to be done later.


Finally, the sequence that has the girl turning Sam into a bat. The shot is a little more complex, considering it has 3 animated elements and some VFX. The timing was worked out with the animatic. From that the girl's animation was planned to coincide with the temp VFX. The first pencil test of the girl worked terrifically. Sam as a bat was fully animated in an afternoon. It was a simple wing flapping cycle with a couple of blinks. The rough edit of the sequence included an added closeup of the bat to establish the character. Thanks to Sky Crompton for the suggestion.




At Long Last....

Well, after a huuuuge gap I am updating my blog. The last couple of months have been very hectic. There's been a few changes to the story and my animatic. Things are progressing reasonably well. I've been immersing myself in Toon Boom and loving it. After Effects is working really well for a compositing tool as well as tweaking some animation. All in all, things are good. There's still a huge amount of work to be done, but I'm feeling confident and energised at the moment.