Sunday, August 24, 2008

Starting animatics

Now that my armature is almost done I got into animating. I decided to do some rough animatics of my shot list and see how they flow and to just practice animating.
I only have three walls finished on his room set so I can't complete all the shots in the film.
It's weird to animate using keyframes and then extend the shot (to get the timing) by copying the keys from two to 8 times.



The clip above is Shot 5 and 6.
In shot 6, the black to the left is the incomplete set. Yeah I didn't think I would have to build the bay window that should be there.

6 comments:

jriggity said...

cool man!

Ill be back

jriggity

Sven Bonnichsen said...

The set and the armature are fantastic! I've been watching your project develop for a while now, and am looking forward to seeing how it all comes together.

Well-intentioned criticism: The camera move was confusing to me in this clip.

It's as if the camera is on an arm whose pivot is at the bookcase. In shot 1 we're looking at the bookshelf face on -- then in shot 2 we're facing the bookshelf from the side.

It took me a couple of viewings to figure out what I was looking at. After figuring out what happened, I'm left uncertain that the cam move is necessary.

How does the second shot convey new information?

If there were a reason why we should see the title of the book at this point, maybe you'd change distance and zoom in closer... But it might not be worth belaboring such a small moment/change.

Regardless: good work!

Kenneth Sipel said...

Great criticism, thanks.
My reasoning for the change: I thought it would be bad to just look at his back while he picked a book.
Yeah it did look weird to me, but I couldn't figure out what it was. I find it hard to capture these simple actions.
What if filmed the walk to the bookshelf then once he stood there for a second switch to a side view showing the book?
Actually he has to take a book out of a box which looks like a book then go back to the chair to flip through it.

Darkmatters said...

Hey, just discovered this blog. Very nice!

I agree the camera cut is a bit confusing... I suspect mainly because the size of the puppet (armature) doesn't change much, nor does the angle.

I remember reading about a rule stating how many degrees the camera angle should change, but I think it's more important that the size of things onscreen change rather dramatically, ie from closeup to medium shot or vise verse.
I did some pretty clunky camera cuts in my early Terror in the Pumpkin Patch (scroll down the sidebar of my blog till you see the thumbnail with the big pumkins) and following that there was some discussion about the subject on the message board. The consensus was that you need a significant change either in size or some other similar change so it doesn't confuse the viewer. So I've done a much better camera cut in my newest test: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HtyQxPYlEQw&feature=channel_page

Darkmatters said...

ourphoI think the cut in my latest test could be improved if the camera angle would also change, but still keeping Skulkin on the left and Buster on the right.

Darkmatters said...

Wow.... weird. ourphoI was the letters I was supposed to type in for the security word. Not sure how it ended up at the beginning of that message!!