Hey it`s me again.
It`s one day before the first interim and I think it`s time to have my first blog about this exciting project.
Exciting, but risky.
I have a complete storyline in my head, and I did drewthem down in a really sketchy style storyboard. And most certainly I won`t tell you guys the whole story from tip to toe. It would be too long and too boring.
So I made a very short version.:
1- This is my character.
2- She lives in this tiny house alone by herself
3-One day a giant robot shows up.
4-And the robot destroys the house.
5-And they end up in a fight.
That`s my main storyline. But don`t get me wrong I had detailed story about everything all in the storyboard here. Including where did the robot come from, what is inside that robot, where did the character come from and all that background story junk. The animation would be mainly about the character fighting the robot. It`s a little bit hard to tell but it`s mainly actions and character animation on the storyboard.
I did some tests and made some animatics alone the way. Trying to see if the storyboard actually works well with the animation. Here is one example. It is the first shot of the robot and it`s about to step on the house. I want to emphasis on how big it is so I put the hut here so you can see the contract. I typed test frames here because I actually did made an animation test for the robot.
It`s a pre-production test and I don`t really expect myself to actually use it. So the quality is a little bit off. Still, I hope you can see how I emphasised the weight of each parts of the robot. The momentum and all. I started drawing this robot when I was in First year. This here is a distant shot of the same design I did one year ago.
You can see it`s moving in a really slow speed. Because one year before I have no idea how to animate robots in such big scale and details. it`s always really hard to animate highly detained objects. And that makes this robot one of the biggest difficulties in this project.
And one year later although I am able to do the animation, I still want more details so I found a new way to animate those kind of thing. I made the robot in different parts and then assembled them as one. And then I animate each of them to make the whole robot move.
And here `s the test result.
Immediately you can see it`s completely different from hand drawn animation. In my opinion, right now it`s not as good as the traditional one but the strength of this one is that. As all those separated parts didn` change, I can color then and redraw them in great details and I don`t need to do it agian and again like traditional animation. If I can make all these motion graphics right, I believe it would be really amazing.
And I can used it in different scenarios. I can tell it to walk or jump, no need to draw more frames.
But still, there are things that have to be done traditionally. Like small fragments falling down from the main body, The dust and air beneth it and make the parts far away transparent. My ultimate goal is to use both of them together and combine the pros from both sides.
And besides the robot. Here`s also some sketches about the character. I took varies references from action movies to make sure I don`t make a close – up combat to some kind of magic duels.
I have never drawn any kinds of combat animation before, and that`s precisely why I am going to do it. And to see if I`m capable of drawing such things, I had another test with the character and her weapon. So she`s using her gravity and the elasticity of the stick to give a heavy blow on whatever I `m gonna put on the ground. I took the reference from this guy doing a martial art show. I broke more physics laws than he did so the animation may look a little bit more dramatic but it`s more powerful.
So all of these things is trying to tell you that I understand that the whole idea of this is to let us find a balance bewteen our personal projects and the professional practice. And my presentation shows a really ambitious project with little possibilities to succeed. I guess that`s all animators` issues that we don`t really know our limits until we find one. When I started preparing this presentation I also thought it would be impossible to make every imagination to come true. But while doing it I can gradually see how these fragments come together. I see the potential of this projects and I see the potential of the animation I made here. I can definetly go further with these. That is why I proposed such big plan.
I hope I won`t regret after a few weeks actually doing it. I really hope I won`t.
Anyway that`s enough for one entry. signing off.