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Critique request-- my work in progress for this month's 11 second club: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TuxeDdVVFkI (by the way, it's a snowglobe, I'm going to animate the interior of it last) I feel like I've been staring at it for too long and I can't see why it feels so wrong anymore.
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Jun 10, 2012 01:17
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WcZGVuVN8cw The trailer for the music video I'm working on. Production's been slow as molasses so I had to whip this together in order to capitalize on whatever amount of attention they got from appearing on America's Got Talent last night. I also did the music. I guess it's weird to preview a music video using a different song, but it's at least based on the original. scrub lover fucked around with this message at 19:19 on Jun 13, 2012 |
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Jun 13, 2012 19:10
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I'm not sure if this is the right place to ask but does anyone here have any recommendations for free or cheap stop motion software? I've tried using Monkey Jam but it's refusing to recognise my camera (Fuji Finepix S1000) and I'd rather see if there are better/alternate programs out there before I go out and get a camera it might be willing to play nicely with. I'm looking to use it mostly for paper cut-out stuff and I'm not worried it's very basic stuff. Again, sorry if this isn't the place to ask. EDIT; Oh, and I'm using Windows 7, 64bit. Popo fucked around with this message at 19:33 on Jun 15, 2012 |
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Jun 15, 2012 19:16
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I remember using Stop Motion Pro during my college days, but that costs a hefty amount. Honestly it will probably just be cheaper to get a camera that'll work with Monkey Jam, since stop motion doesn't require high resolution picture. Hell, I remember getting good claymation from a webcam.
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Jul 25, 2012 21:58
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I am currently using Flash CS4 for animation and I seem to have everything I need: hotkeys all optimized, extensions installed, workspace organized. Now that Flash CS6 is out, is it worth considering? I don't use the coding side of the Flash - that's why I want to know if CS6 offers any features that animators particularly can benefit from.
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Jul 26, 2012 13:02
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Aleque posted:I am currently using Flash CS4 for animation and I seem to have everything I need: hotkeys all optimized, extensions installed, workspace organized. Now that Flash CS6 is out, is it worth considering? I don't use the coding side of the Flash - that's why I want to know if CS6 offers any features that animators particularly can benefit from. It looks much cooler. Besides that, it has support for HTML5 which is useful for web stuff, especially with iThings now. There's been more emphasis on 3D stuff, which I never use with Flash, but maybe it could be useful one day? It generates sprite sheets, which seems like an incredibly easy thing to add, but it could save you a bit of time if you had to do that manually. I just found out that in CS5 they introduced a thing which means you can resize your entire animation without having to change your canvas then individually resize everything.
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Jul 26, 2012 14:18
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Megaspel posted:I just found out that in CS5 they introduced a thing which means you can resize your entire animation without having to change your canvas then individually resize everything. Can you please give me an example how it works? I use alot of nesting: symbols within symbols, etc. (on different layers). I have been considering to implement After Effects into my animation pipeline process as it looks like there are alot of features that AE can do that would have been hard or tedious to do in flash: effects, camera, exporting. But I don't know. AE seems much much heavy/slow to work with and the editing of individual sound effects doesn't seem to great. Maybe it's a question of developing new habits. I remember for instance doing earthquake effect in Flash and it was not the best way of doing it: doing a 5-10 frames of cam-shake on a symbol that contains lots of other symbols inside (that again contain some other symbols inside as well). Plus you have to sync the frames afterwards. In AE I could have done it in a matter of seconds. I have been animating in Flash for over 12 years and I'm always looking for new ways how to take some shortcuts to make life easier animating by reusing old drawings, animations, sounds, using extensions and hotkeys. I would love to share some experience with other eager animators in here, and perhaps learn something myself. Just ask 
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Jul 26, 2012 14:56
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What extensions do you guys use in Flash? Right now I only have one that renames all selected symbol instances with one click.
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Jul 26, 2012 16:07
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Chernabog posted:What extensions do you guys use in Flash? I use a few from http://www.toonmonkey.com/extensions.html "Enter Graphic at Current Frame" is a must in my opinion and to get the most out of it, assign it to a hotkey. When you are scrolling in your main timeline and see something you want changed at specific frame, you often double click the symbol and it takes you to frame 1. And then you have to scroll again to the frame you wanted changed. But with this extension, it takes you directly to that frame inside the selected graphic symbol. I also suggest taking a look at a book called http://www.amazon.com/Foundation-Flash-Cartoon-Animation-Barry/dp/1590599128 <-- it helped me alot organizing my stuff and some new animation techniques by "cheating" inside Flash. You will be amazed how much you can get away with by cheating the eye with lazy techniques and reusing stuff in a smart way. By the way http://www.animonger.com/animsliderpro.html I bought a smaller version of this extension. It's so awesome for lipsyncing and other things like finding the right pair of eyes for a specific face expression. Meaning that you have a nested symbol with different eyes inside on each frame, and Animslider makes it possible for you to be outside the symbol and by having it selected, scrolling back and forth to see the effect take place. You should try it
Aleque fucked around with this message at 18:54 on Jul 26, 2012 |
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Jul 26, 2012 18:48
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Aleque posted:Can you please give me an example how it works? I use alot of nesting: symbols within symbols, etc. (on different layers). You should get a virtual AS camera or something. Adam Phillips made them popular, so you know they're good. I have no idea how to do the scale thing, I just read it from a list of new features in CS5 from the adobe website.
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Jul 26, 2012 21:32
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Megaspel posted:You should get a virtual AS camera or something. Adam Phillips made them popular, so you know they're good. I have no idea how to do the scale thing, I just read it from a list of new features in CS5 from the adobe website. Can you please elaborate? I want to know all about it By the way a good method I found for lipsyncing is recording your own face speaking exactly what must happen in the animation, and importing it into Flash. That way you can scroll back&forth and see which mouth (AnimSlider) to use where. And to make it a bit more controlled, you can add an extra Layer "labels" and use labels (Properties Menu) to write on different keyframes, which mouth movements to use: "s", "p", "eeh", etc. It is an extra step but it makes it much more controlled. The more steps you neglect within animaton process, the more likely you are to get lost within your own work. I've read in Animator's Survival Kit: Take the long shortcuts. And a quote from the most awesome TV-series ever (LOST): The easiest way isn't always the best. Aleque fucked around with this message at 22:39 on Jul 26, 2012 |
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Jul 26, 2012 22:33
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Aleque posted:Can you please elaborate? I want to know all about it http://weblog.motion-graphics.org/archives/2008/04/as3_camera.html#more http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/a/javascript/2004/08/17/flashhacks.html?page=2 Basically you tween it like a normal object, and it will display everything in the frame, even with shearing or tinting or what-have-you. I don't think blur effects or anything work in it, it's rather old. It'll save you a bunch of time if you want any panning or other camera tricks in your Flash. The only problem is if you want a video, rather than a swf, it's impossible to export in Flash. You'd have to record the swf in Flashants thing or camtasia or something. There isn't actually that much support out there for making Flash into professional animation tool, but there's just enough that we can make do.
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Jul 27, 2012 13:12
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Megaspel posted:Well the AS3 and AS2 counterparts are here: Oh Action Script camera, now I get it. I tried it once and only had problems with it. I think it would be wiser to use AE for this sort of task. I am still trying to figure out the workflow process of importing Flash content into After Effects. I think both programs have their strong sides and when combined, they can save you alot of time and effort.
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Jul 27, 2012 14:52
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Aleque posted:I use a few from http://www.toonmonkey.com/extensions.html Awesome, thanks. And "Enter current frame" is no longer necessary with CS6. I wish I had known about it before though. I'm definitely going to try some of these.
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Jul 27, 2012 16:43
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Chernabog posted:Awesome, thanks. And "Enter current frame" is no longer necessary with CS6. I wish I had known about it before though. I'm definitely going to try some of these. No problem By the way I also just found another useful tool as an addition or alternative to what I mentioned so far http://flash-powertools.com/Also it would be nice to get some life in this thread eventually with some tips & tricks and workflow shortcuts.
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Jul 28, 2012 12:00
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I found these too http://ajarproductions.com/blog/flash-extensions/ I have some tips and tricks I have picked up over the years but I'd have to think about them because at this point I don't think of them as tricks, just as part of my workflow.
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Jul 28, 2012 18:01
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Chernabog posted:I found these too http://ajarproductions.com/blog/flash-extensions/ Thanks. I added that link to my collection. A simple Flash animation technique that I can think of from the top of my head is following: If you are inside a symbol and you want to reuse a color for that symbol from another shape or symbol in the background, so instead of going all the way out of your current symbol and going into a symbol that you want to borrow your color from, you click on the fill color box on your Tools panel (while you're still in the symbol that you want to color) and and your cursor transforms into an "Eydropper Tool" icon. Then you can pick whatever color you can see on the screen. That doesn't work if you merely click the "Eydropper Tool". It doesn't make any sense but at least there is a workaround for you and that little workflow shortcut have saved me alot of effort. This suggestion came from http://bbs.coldhardflash.com/viewforum.php?f=2&sid=594319fd1c159642a2100ce0b578e064 It's an awesome community where you can get alot of info on how to animate. It's the same guys who made the Foundation Flash Cartoon Animation book I suggested earlier. By the way I have a question regarding copyright in animation and I would really appreciate if someone could shed some light on it or point me into direction where I might get my answer. I am currently planning an animation based on several computer games like: Warcraft, Diablo, Minecraft, Dungeon Keeper. It's going to be a series of web episodes with continuous story and same characters develop over time. On their journey they will encounter epic battles and stumble into hints and parodies from other computer games. My plan was to use some of the sound effects and short pieces of music from the games that I want to imitate (make parody of), but I am careful with copyright infringement as well. My long term plan was to make profit of my web series, but I am not sure what kind of revenue I have right to when using some copyrighted audio material. The rules are a bit vague on that subject and I can't seem to find any specific answers. Ofcourse I can't sell the episodes on DVD if they contain copyrighted graphic artwork taken directly out of a game, but what about short pieces of music and sound effects? I can't seem to find any specific information about intellectual property regarding web animation in correlation with usage of existing copyrighted material, and I would really appreciate if someone could help me. Thanks in advance. Aleque fucked around with this message at 11:31 on Jul 31, 2012 |
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Jul 31, 2012 11:26
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I think as long as it's a parody you can get away with many things that would otherwise be infringement. The gentleman at Mega64 sell dvds with soundclips and even graphics from games and nothing has happened to them. Personally I'd ask for permission though from whom you're borrowing from before doing anything.
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Aug 4, 2012 14:52
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Aleque posted:I can't seem to find any specific information about intellectual property regarding web animation in correlation with usage of existing copyrighted material, and I would really appreciate if someone could help me. Thanks in advance. I make a point of altering most of the sounds I use so that they're a little different, and when I make sprites of existing characters, I draw them from scratch and make slight adjustments. I also pretty much do the Robot Chicken thing and run the below disclaimer in the credits of each episode. EDIT: When it comes to sounds, I try to find similar ones instead of direct rips, but sometimes it can't be helped, so I take the 'official' sounds and dick them up a bit in Soundbooth/Audition. Dodgeball fucked around with this message at 19:30 on Aug 4, 2012 |
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Aug 4, 2012 19:24
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Thanks for the replies. I'm avoiding usage of any existing copyrighted visual art, hence I draw everything myself. I am not sure about the sound effects though. Let's say I make a 20 sec. long parody on Dungeon Keeper: I draw all the artwork myself. I make the animation textures as close to original game's as possible... (colors, pattern, lighting, ambience) ...without directly ripping off the existing textures. No harm done, right? But it comes to sound effects. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AO0BapJsSK0 Please listen the first 10 seconds of this video - how the Dungeon Heart beats and that whole atmosphere. I am trying to recreate that same feel from the game but it will be challenging if I am not using any of the sound effects. I know this might seem neurotic from my side but I want to make sure that I'm not breaking any laws at all within the "Copyright-World". Ofcourse I'm making animation because I love it, but in the end getting paid for it is a bonus that gives me more freedom to create even more animation. The problem is that if I break some rules. I want to avoid all form of lawsuit and I want to know where the limit is - I'm sure other animators will benefit from this knowledge as well.
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Aug 6, 2012 20:57
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I recommend trying to find sound-alikes via http://www.freesound.org/ For that specific dungeon sound, you might try combining a bassed-up heartbeat with a slowed down wind ambiance sound. About 95% of my sounds are from there, just take note as to which licenses are on which sounds. I use the creative commons sounds and the sampling licenses ones, mainly because I'm too lazy to keep track of attribution licenses and I don't want to use the sounds with the non-commercial license, because some sweet day, I'm going to DVD. As much as I'd rather be animating over finding sounds, sometimes doing foley work can be fun. I needed a squishy, almost Meatwad moving sound and I made it by boiling macaroni and squishing it next to my microphone.
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Aug 6, 2012 21:11
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Once again. I appreciate your reply. Every new piece of information is useful. I just don't understand why the rules and laws have to be so complicated. They hinder not only the creative freedom for artists but also the potential revenue for the companies that stand behind the original products. For instance if someone made Minecraft animation using ingame sounds and artwork, one would think that it would benefit the creators of Minecraft because someone is doing animation about their game, hence advertizing for it's existance. But unfortunately it's not the case. I hope there will be much less bureaucracy in the future and more flexible rules regarding this matter - and trusted Facebook-like websites that allow easy donation transactions between the Fan and the Artist. Aleque fucked around with this message at 16:36 on Aug 7, 2012 |
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Aug 7, 2012 15:43
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Aleque posted:Once again. I appreciate your reply. Every new piece of information is useful. You could make a Minecraft machinima and you'd be fine. I know that for educational purposes, you can use trademarked sounds and upwards of 30 seconds of a trademarked song, but for parody (or at least being able to use parody as a shield) I think there needs to be a percentage of difference (20% I think, for visual art, sound might be different). Even if you go by the books, sometimes you'll get screwed. My "That's Not My Game" music video is a legal parody of a Ting-Tings song, we recreated the background music to sound alike, but be different, the lyrics are all changed. For all intents and purposes, we pulled a Weird Al, and YouTube waffles every now and then with monetizing it. It's gotten to the point where the next time it automatically goes back to being monetized, I'll manually un-monetize it, since I know in a week they'll flip-flop again and the headache isn't worth the nickel they'll throw my way to run 100 ads on it. Infringement law can be a bitch, and I recommend that before you make any major financial investment in your project, you consult with someone who has proven, professional expertise on the matter. UltraDavid might be a good source of info on this matter: http://gettingbodiedbylaw.com though I doubt his services come gratis. Also, the guy who wrote the book for which I'm making an animated promotional video wrote this on the subject of machinima, and I can see some overlap with creating something in a similar vein to what you're hoping to do: http://gigaom.com/video/how-to-make-machinima-without-getting-sued-blind/ The major difference between machinima and creating something based off of a popular game is that machinima acts like an advertisement. I think Bungie would more likely support Red vs. Blue over Blizzard supporting The Guild, if you catch my meaning.
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Aug 7, 2012 16:25
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It was a grueling 7 months, but it's finally done. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wC5g9M5FAq4
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Aug 15, 2012 15:08
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That's really awesome, makes me want to start my own project.
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Aug 15, 2012 16:53
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So the TF2 saxxys are up this year, and this time they're all about the source filmmaker: http://www.teamfortress.com/saxxyawards2012/quote:Entries must be no longer than five minutes. Anyway, I'm a decent new-to-CG animator looking to get more experience in it, and I'd love to do something for this. If people want to collaborate for this, we can group up to make an actual little short film. (There's an 'original universe' award on that note, for films where the creators make the content rather than use TF2 models.) The submission deadline is all the way into the middle of november so there's plenty of time to work on it. If anyone - animators, modelers, riggers, etc would like to collaborate for this, give me a buzz either via forum PM or on steam: http://steamcommunity.com/id/Spacedad We don't have to decide on anything - I would like to chat with animation-inclined people interested in this though.
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Aug 18, 2012 00:54
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Uncle Jenkins posted:It was a grueling 7 months, but it's finally done. Dude, that was awesome animation! I really admired how you animated characters, physics and effects. My animations look so crappy compared to that, but I guess I am too lazy drawing too many drawings  I have to fight that bad habit of laziness.
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Aug 22, 2012 21:30
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Uncle Jenkins posted:It was a grueling 7 months, but it's finally done. Wow that was amazing. I really liked seeing your progress in daily doodles and stuff too. I think it all came together nicely. This also took my 7 months or so. I haven't ever posted in the animation thread. but I guess I should start seeing as how its my main job. I'm just more on the illustration side. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=41yKGdiwk2Q This is a short animation I did for my senior thesis. Its about two kids who find a dead body in the forest and use it to gain assess to the adult world. Humor is kinda risque. I did all the Designs, Bg's, key poses, and etc. And about 45 seconds of the animation in the middle. A few other goons did the opening and closing.
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Aug 24, 2012 19:30
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Your illustration skills come through in that video, but the film is weakened by all the tweening and lack of fluid animation. I know using tweens is reaaaallly tempting, but so much character is conveyed through body language, which is lacking if you're using the same assets over and over again. The style in your film was really exaggerated, so if the movement was also exaggerated it would add so much life.
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Aug 25, 2012 04:16
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My friend and I made an exercise in reusing models from an older cartoon. Does our newest short look too cheap?
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Sep 3, 2012 15:27
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Hey everyone! I'm really glad to see an animation thread in these forums, I'll try posting here often. I've started working on my 11 Second Club entry yesterday. I'm trying to solidify the timing before I clean things up. Any advice, comment or critique would be vastly appreciated! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C7eWT3XaB20 I'm working primarily on Adobe Flash CS3, I don't have any other animation programs available. I notice that I'm getting some issues with choppy framerates and timing when I upload my video on Youtube though... Is there any way to fix this?
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Sep 17, 2012 04:54
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HelloWinter posted:Hey everyone! I'm really glad to see an animation thread in these forums, I'll try posting here often. I've started working on my 11 Second Club entry yesterday. I'm trying to solidify the timing before I clean things up. Any advice, comment or critique would be vastly appreciated! I like the angles and positions. Plus the background has a nice lighting and feel to it. Good job. Do some more inbetweens and clean it up
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Sep 19, 2012 17:20
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korusan posted:My friend and I made an exercise in reusing models from an older cartoon. Does our newest short look too cheap? Yes. No offense, but the level you're at now, you should get all the practice you need in drawing, it really lets you be more creative with your animation anyway. Try a few different camera angles.
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Sep 19, 2012 23:06
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I have some questions as a non-animator: How long does it take to render the final frames in a modern "tv quality" 3d animation? I'd imagine that the time scales pretty linearly with the resolution, so a full hd frame would take about 5 times as long as a dvd-resolution frame, but adding fancier lighting and physics and such would probably slow the thing down more. Are they even rendered at some fixed "media resolution" or is everything just rendered at like 4k and then scaled down?
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Oct 7, 2012 09:03
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HelloWinter posted:Hey everyone! I'm really glad to see an animation thread in these forums, I'll try posting here often. I've started working on my 11 Second Club entry yesterday. I'm trying to solidify the timing before I clean things up. Any advice, comment or critique would be vastly appreciated! Why is she drinking the coffee as she's talking? It feels like it's unneeded as she's going through a strong personal moment. Don't be afraid to kill off what appear to be initially good ideas if they don't tie into the drama of the piece. This character is having an intense internal moment. Also I noticed that it's October and I was going to do a breakdown but might be pointless if you were aiming for September's deadline. Doh
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Oct 10, 2012 19:03
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It's been a long time since I've peeped into this thread. I know I've even asked about similar stuff before, but my life has just gone in completely other directions and I haven't had time to invest into stuff like this. Right now I really need a personal project and I want to finally produce something. So what I'm wondering is — can anyone share their process? More specifically, I just am at a loss as to how to get my stack of pencil drawings onto the computer and actually animated. I don't even care if it's just completely rough, but what program should I use? All of my efforts have gone into learning After Effects but obviously this is a whole different ball game, and I'd like to produce some traditional animation and work on less technical stuff for once. I'm fairly sure I can come up with my own solution for photographing each drawing and getting it onto the computer, but then I really dont know what to do from there. Edit: To contribute here is some fun stuff I did for After Effects practice! They're different logo designs/animations for an art show (real art show but I just made this all up for the sake of something to practice with). https://vimeo.com/50450173 https://vimeo.com/50649571 https://vimeo.com/50450172 mareep fucked around with this message at 18:40 on Oct 15, 2012 |
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Oct 15, 2012 18:34
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Wheany posted:I have some questions as a non-animator: How long does it take to render the final frames in a modern "tv quality" 3d animation? I'd imagine that the time scales pretty linearly with the resolution, so a full hd frame would take about 5 times as long as a dvd-resolution frame, but adding fancier lighting and physics and such would probably slow the thing down more. Varies horribly depending on what equipment you have, the content, the lights, etc... There is no one answer for this, everyone does it differently.
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Oct 15, 2012 20:39
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I figured, hence my confusion, but if anyone wants to share that would be awesome. I think it'd really help to hear even if they are varied. It's really hard to know what would work for me at all but I might get a better idea, or at least know where to start!
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Oct 15, 2012 20:49
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On one of my projects we scanned each picture, imported it into photoshop to clean it up and up the contrast, then into toon boom where we vectorized and colored each one. Finally we rendered the image sequence from there.
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Oct 15, 2012 20:56
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Interesting. Could you have just as easily just imported the Photoshop files and animated it with toon boom for rough tests? Or would you just have put that out in Photoshop? If anybody's interested, these are really fascinating, and they have some making-of bits in there. I guess they painted every frame in Photoshop but also used After Effects for compositing. However they did it these are absolutely stunning. http://motionographer.com/2012/10/15/process-psyops-prequels-for-dishonored/#more-49278
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Oct 16, 2012 16:52
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