End of the First Semester

As we enter the final week of the semester, I take a step back and look at everything I've accomplished thus far. 

• I've trimmed my film to roughly 3.5 minutes
• I've completed the rough animation for scenes 2-3 save for a few effects shots
• I've recorded my final audio and have received the rough soundtrack from Rachael Milobar (she did an incredible job)

But more importantly, I'm much more confident in my traditional animation and am very excited to begin inbetweening and cleaning everything up.

While there is still a long road ahead, I'm sure that it will be exciting.  So now I prepare to start tackling scene 4 and I look forward to a bit of relaxation over the holidays with family and friends. 

I will post my most recent work reel on Wednesday after our presentations so I don't spoil the surprise. 

New Work Reel...again

Here's my latest work reel as of December 2nd.  I'm still keying away on scene 3 and have only about 24 more shots to finish and then I can move on to scene 4. 

So, after putting this shot off as long as I could, I finally decided to tackle the shot in Scene 3 of the ghosts running to attack Izumar and Korra.  I found some awesome video reference of track runners and that helped immensely.  I'd appreciate any feedback too.  These are just keys at this point. 

Updated Work Reel

Here is the updated version of my work reel with more shots from scene 3. 

Finally

After struggling with this shot for 3 days now, I finally got something that will work.  The problem was that the shot's initial composition broke the 180 rule, so Josh suggested adding another move at the beginning of the fight to correct the issue.  So, after much frustration, I shot some video reference which helped immensely.  So, here is the shot, feedback is much appreciated.  There is a small jump that I'm aware of and I will fix that now, but I still wanted to post it as is to show the progress.

Pencil Tests

So today I focused on reworking Korra's walk from the tent to the rock by the campfire from scene 2.  The old version was very stiff.  There are more breakdowns at the beginning of the test and then I mainly stuck to keys to make sure I got the positioning correct and she got to where she needed to on the rock.  I will continue to tweak this shot further down the road, but I'm much happier with how this one is turning out.

 This is the fight from shot 9 of scene 3 where Korra is fighting the ghost.  I need more breakdowns for the ghost at the end and the proportions are a bit wacky at this point, but I really like the motion.  I took video reference for this shot and it really has helped my animation a lot. 

This is another of the fight scene shots that I took video reference for.  It was very helpful yet again.  I'm really happy with the motion that I'm getting out of just the keys so far.  The fight scenes have been my favorite thing to work on so far.  

Finally, I got the keys done for 03_020: where Korra cries out in pain when she is struck by the ghost at the end of the fight.  Just keys at this point.

More pencil tests to come throughout the week I'm sure.  My main focus at this point is getting the entire film in rough key form so I can go back and begin to polish and tweak everything.  By doing it this way, I hope that my drawing of the characters will continue to become more consistent. 

New Work Reel

Here is my new work reel with more animation roughs. 

Making Progress

It's been a while since I've updated everyone, so there's a lot to cover!

First, I'm almost done with all the keys for scene 2, just a little tweaking, polishing, and adding a few breakdowns  before I start on any of the in-betweens.  I did a little color test of one of the shots from scene 2 as well so I could test out my clean up and color process.  Scene 3 is well on it's way in the key stage as well.  I've shot a lot of video reference which is really helping with the fight shots. 


The way I will be cleaning, coloring, and compositing my film begins by shooting all of my tests in iStopMotion and then exporting them as images instead of as a video file. I will then take those images into Photoshop where I will do my final linework and color.  Once colored, the images will be taken into After Effects where they will be placed into the scenes. 


I also hired Rachael Milobar to create the music for my film.  I was impressed with the music she composed for her senior film last year and am very excited to have her working on my film. 

Over the weekend, I will continue to work on keys, both on new shots and tweaking the ones I've already done so that I can add them to my work reel.  I will post the updated animatic with the keys as soon as it is done. 

Layouts Done...on to animation

I finished the background and character layouts for scenes 2 and 3 over the weekend and finally got to try out my new animation table.  I worked the rough keys for the first few shots of scene 2 as well and I'm really happy with how everything is looking.

The only major hang ups I've come across so far is trying to paint my backgrounds.  I am not a painter, never pretended to be one, but I think that with some patience and trial and error. I'll be able to come up with something that will work and give the film the style I'm going for.  Also, I'm still trying to figure out what I'm going to do for my music/soundtrack.  I still have a few options still so hopefully one of them will work out.

In the mean time, back to animating!!!

New Animatic

This is the new animatic with very rough audio.  I am now deep into backgrounds and will begin animating very very soon.  I am also going to do a litmus test on one of the shots to get a preview of what the finished style will look like fully animated and colored.  I'm so happy at how everything is falling into place.